February 23

Getting Your ATI Desktop Video Extension To Load

By David Nagel
Senior producer

For low-end video capture on the Mac, particularly for Web video applications, the ATI Rage XClaim VR 128 offers an affordable (about $190), easy to use option, with plenty of inputs and outputs to satisfy the needs of its users. However, while the hardware is all there, the software is not, and ATI's given no indication that its Mac drivers will be updated anytime soon. In fact, despite several reported flaws, there hasn't been a new post for the ATI Universal Installer since December.

One problem a lot of users have experienced is the failure of the Desktop Video Extension (and Desktop Video Control Strip) to load at startup. Here's a simple solution.

1. Go to your Extensions Folder and locate the ATI Extension (not the ATI Desktop Video Extension).

2. Change the name of the Extension to include a space character at the beginning.

This change will force the ATI Extension to load before the ATI Desktop Video Extension by putting it higher up in alphabetical order. Restart your Mac, and you should be on your way to video on your desktop, which you will probably disable after four minutes, owing to the fact that it makes it difficult to see your desktop icons and can make it impossible to use the regular ATI Video application.

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