Multitalented: All-in-One Graphic Boards

ATI All In Wonder 128 - Supplied Software

ATI supplies its total solution software "ATI Multimedia Center", which is currently available in version 6.2, with the board. All the components such as the TV tuner, video editor, DVD player and other software have a consistent design. This means that not only is the operation of the software intuitive, it's also easy to use. The figure shows the standard video editor. However, it is unfortunate that the functions are restricted to the basic essentials. The supplied Videowave II program from MGI (16 MB version only) is actually better, but still not satisfactory. The only good editing program is the one from Ulead. VideoStudio Version 3 is only supplied with the 32 MB board. This even has a plug-in that enables the direct editing of MPEG-2 videos without recalculating them (recompression).

Newcomers have it easy with ATI. The settings don't include any cryptic resolutions, instead one sees the TV standard, such as NTSC for America or PAL for Europe. The frame rate (25 or 30 fps) is optimized for the correct region when first set up and ATI deserves a real compliment for that!

Uwe Scheffel