Introduction

I wrote this tutorial in response to the overwhelming cry from ATI TV Wonder Pro capture card owners. Unknowingly, many of us upgraded to Windows Vista to find that our capture card is no longer supported. I searched ATI.com for hours, searching for a solution, before leaving unsatisfied. I began playing with the disc ATI includes with the capture card, and before long, I had found a way to manually install the drivers.

This tutorial covers how to install all software necessary to capture video on Windows Vista, using the ATI TV Wonder Pro. I use the Home Premium variant of Vista in this tutorial, but I am sure that other versions of Vista work similarly. The version number of this software is 100, but I'm not sure whether that needs to correlate with your capture card or not. Either way, you're probably fine to continue.

Downloading

To use this tutorial, you need to download a few different things.

1. ATI TV Wonder Pro Drivers -- This is a copy of the CD included with your capture card. I would recommend downloading and using this so that we're on the same page. If you no longer have the CD, you have no choice!
   [ FileFront ]
2. VirtualDub -- This is a popular application that records uncompressed, very high quality video from a number of capture cards. We'll use this to capture video and audio from our ATI TV Wonder Pro to our computer.
   [ SourceForge ]
3. HuffYUV Video Codec -- Optional, but I'd recommend using it to lower the file size of your captured video.
   [ Free-Codecs ]
4. Smart Deinterlace Plugin -- Optional, but I also recommend this to deinterlace your videos. Interlacing is where every other line of video is loaded first, then the rest is loaded in a second pass. It often will create distracting lines on your video, and this removes them.

Installing Drivers

When you finish downloading the drivers, use a program such as WinRAR to extract all of the files to a folder.



I'd recommend putting this folder on your Desktop, as it will be easily found this way. There should be the folder "TVW" on your Desktop (or another new folder, with the "TVW" folder inside). Open it and open the Application file "Setup."



ATI will load the Setup application wizard. Click Next and it will begin installing the drivers for your capture card.



When this is done, it will ask you to restart your computer. I've done this without restarting my computer, so I can confidently say that you needn't do such a thing. Select No and click Finish. No notifications will show up yet, because there is but one more step!

You now need to load the Device Manager, which can be found by going to Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, and then Device Manager. It should look something like the screenshot below, but with your computer name at the top, and more or less device categories below it.



Right-click "Sound, video and game controllers" and click "Scan for hardware changes." Your computer will scan for hardware and it should find your drivers. Unless you've turned off all notifications, an information box will pop up from the notification area of your task bar.



And when it's done installing, it will show you this.



Now, Device Manager should show three items in the Sound, video, and game controllers category. If they're showing up like so, the capture card is installed properly.



Installing VirtualDub, HuffYUV, and Smart Deinterlace

Using WinRAR once again, extract the VirtualDub file into its own folder some where on your computer. You don't need to actually install VirtualDub, it runs on its own. Do the same with HuffYUV, putting it in its own folder, and right-click the Setup Information file "huffyuv.inf" and click "Install." Extract the zipped Smart Deinterlace files and move "Smart.vdf" into the "plugins" folder of VirtualDub. You can find the "plugins" folder in VirtualDub's main directory. Once you've done all this, you can continue on.

Configuring and Capturing with VirtualDub

Open the Application "VirtualDub" in its folder, and a large, blank, gray screen should load. Click File at the top-left, and select "Capture AVI...." Here are a few things that need to be done, I'd recommend doing them in this order.

1. Click Device at the top-left, and select "ATI TV Wonder Pro A/V Capture (DirectShow)."
2. Click Video and select:
   • "Preview"
   • "Video Source" and then select either "Video SVideo" or "Video Composite," depending on which your console is plugged in to.
   • "Set custom format..." and set the frame size to 640x480 and the data format to "YUY2 YUV 4:2:2 interleaved."
   • "Compression" and select "Huffyuv v2.1.1."
   • "Filters," click "Add...," select "smart deinterlace," and hit OK three times.
3. Click File and select "Set capture file...." Every time you record, you need to set a new capture file. If you do not, it will overwrite the file! Type in a new for your video, and press "Save."
4. When you're at the point you wish to capture, click Capture and select "Capture Video." When done, click "Capture" again and select "Stop capture." Don't forget to reset your capture file.

After you're done capturing, click File and select "Exit capture mode." Click File and "Open video file..." to open the video you captured. If you wish to keep only a small portion of the captured video, simply drag the the slider to the beginning of the wanted portion, and click the black arrow pointing left. Drag the slider to the end, and click the arrow pointing right.



Then, go to File and select "Save as AVI...." Name the file and VirtualDub will begin to save the video segment. Then you have just that clip as an AVI file, and you can delete the huge captured video. From here, you can edit the clip, encode the clip with something like Windows Media or QuickTime, or save the file for future use.


Conclusion

I hope I've helped you save some money with this tutorial. While results may vary, I've found that most people were successful. If you have any questions or concerns, please post in this thread, and I will try my best to help. Please report any images that do not show up, as well as any broken links.

Video Samples

I will keep samples of video captured by using this tutorial here. If you wish to have yours added, message me or post a link to your video in this thread. Thank you!

Cramesta's Video Sample: Mythica (Windows Media, 5.19 MB) | Mythica (QuickTime H.264, 3.53 MB)

Updates
August 9, 2007: Rewrote the tutorial and added more video samples -- hopefully more user friendly.

Originally Posted by Shiggy Oh, wonderful, here's a tip- Get a girlfriend. Although I personally don't have one, I think you guys are a little bit female deprived. Either that, or your 14-18 years old, thereby qualifying as good douchebag material. Bring on the flames.

Originally Posted by Thepanzergnome OMFG mini zee.