{"id":108984,"date":"2026-07-25T13:02:45","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/?p=108984"},"modified":"2026-07-25T13:03:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T20:03:32","slug":"recovering-converting-old-ati-vcr-video-files","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/recovering-converting-old-ati-vcr-video-files\/","title":{"rendered":"Recovering\/converting old ATI VCR video files"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>In July 2002, I purchased an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500 with an RF remote, a TV tuner, and analog audio\/video inputs. I used the analog inputs with an ancient Sony handicam from the 80&#8217;s as a webcam and for some early digital video capture. I have a few files created from the ATI Multimedia Center software in .vcr format (or perhaps .vcr2 format?), which is an ATI proprietary format with no current converter available as far as I can tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" src=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37-1024x768.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-108985\" srcset=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37-1024x768.png 1024w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37-768x576.png 768w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37-1536x1152.png 1536w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-37.png 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The old computer with the older &#8220;webcam&#8221;, shown here in 2004<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>When you open the files in VLC they play audio but just have all gray video. ffprobe says it&#8217;s an MPEG-2 video stream, but there&#8217;s obviously some ATI proprietary stuff messing with it. There are a few old blogs from like 2010 where people tried to figure it out, including one guy who said he did but the link was dead :(. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At first I thought Claude could just reverse engineer it and make a ffmpeg plugin for it. That did not go so well. But I&#8217;m happy to report that I did figure it out and now have working video from my old files, re-encoded into a nice h264 mp4 file.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here are the steps I took on my Linux workstation:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Make a new Windows XP virtual machine with virtualbox and boot into it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Install the Virtualbox guest tools<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Mount a shared folder with your files in it so you can install more stuff easily and get the files onto it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Download an old version of GraphStudio from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.videohelp.com\/software\/GraphStudio\/old-versions\">here<\/a> (I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.videohelp.com\/download\/graphstudio0310.exe\">used 0.3.1.0<\/a>)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Download and <a href=\"https:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/ffdshow-tryout\/\">install ffdshow<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Download and install these <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20020602080338\/http:\/\/download.ati.com\/drivers\/ATIVCRx.exe\">old ATI drivers<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Open up GraphStudio and hit File -> Render Media File<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Choose a vcr file<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hit Graph -> Insert Filter \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>You should see a ATI VCR Video Converter option. Insert it.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-38.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"696\" height=\"449\" src=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-38.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-108986\" srcset=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-38.png 696w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-38-300x194.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 696px) 100vw, 696px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Change the graph so that the ATI Time Shift Splitter goes into the VCR Video Converter. At that point you will see your video for the first time in 25 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-39.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"407\" src=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-39-1024x407.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-108987\" srcset=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-39-1024x407.png 1024w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-39-300x119.png 300w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-39-768x305.png 768w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-39.png 1345w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>To save it, remove the renderer boxes at the end and insert the following other filters: MJPEG Compressor (after the AVI decompressor) -> AVI Mux to remix the recompressed video and audio into an avi container, and then into a file sink (Graph -> Insert File Sync). That will write a pretty standard avi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"306\" src=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40-1024x306.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-108988\" srcset=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40-1024x306.png 1024w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40-300x90.png 300w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40-768x230.png 768w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40-1536x459.png 1536w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/Screenshot-From-2026-07-25-15-27-40.png 1753w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Now you can go out of your VM to your normal modern computer and use modern ffmpeg to fix the aspect ratio (mine was in 640&#215;240 at this point but should have been 640&#215;480), and recompress into something like h264 or whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<pre class=\"wp-block-preformatted\">ffmpeg -i output.avi -vf scale=640:480:flags=lanczos -c:v libx264 -crf 18 -c:a copy revived.mp4   <\/pre>\n\n\n\n<p>Huzzah! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-40.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"520\" src=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-40-1024x520.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-108989\" srcset=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-40-1024x520.png 1024w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-40-300x152.png 300w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-40-768x390.png 768w, https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/image-40.png 1088w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I had also installed numerous versions of the old ATI drivers\/MMC from ISOs on archive.org but I&#8217;m pretty sure it was only after I installed that set of ATI drivers that all the ATI specific filters showed up in my graph menu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now I get to cringe about what I was like back then! Hope this helps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In July 2002, I purchased an ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 7500 with an RF remote, a TV tuner, and analog audio\/video inputs. I used the analog inputs with an ancient Sony handicam from the 80&#8217;s as a webcam and for some early digital video capture. I have a few files created from the ATI Multimedia Center &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/recovering-converting-old-ati-vcr-video-files\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Recovering\/converting old ATI VCR video files<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108984"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108993,"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108984\/revisions\/108993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/partofthething.com\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}