Found a Capture card that we can all afford, does 720p!

[dieKatze88]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815100049

Alright, I'm not going to lie, after several months I was about to break down and start saving for a massively expensive VGA capture card and deal with having to split the video, and handle audio sync myself, and all that garbage.

Then This guy poped up on newegg. For 90 bucks I'll try anything once, especially since I have owned Avermedia gear before, its decent stuff.

This card blows my mind. It does 1080i, and 720p. It has HDMI, Component (possibly supporting RGB, I haven't tested yet - but it does do 480i in YPbPr mode, so if it supports RGB, it supports 15khz too) Composite video and Svideo. The quality is really good.

http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/7553 ... 204359.jpg (Warning: Picture is hilarious)

Now here's the one that will Blow your mind:

If you are capturing in Progressive Scan mode - there are 0 frames of video lag. Really. So not only can you play Deathsmiles or Otomedius Gorgeous at 720p, and record it, you don't have to drag a 2nd monitor or TV over to where the Xbox is along with a computer. Just bring your Xbox to where the computer is, connect it and away you go. Using my 1080p secondary monitor, I am able to play while having other things up on my first monitor. Its really quite nice.

There are some cons however, The software kinda sucks. Notice how that picture looks a little dark? Well, I have the overlay adjustments set for my Xbox 360 properly and they display properly on monitor - but those adjustments aren't applied when capturing a screenshot - so if you plan on using this guy to take high resolution screenshots of games for reviewing purposes, look elsewhere unless you're a photoshop wiz. The requirements on the box (which are identical to the ones listed on Newegg) are absolutely Hard. Like, I have a 2.13ghz processor and using a RAID 0 of 2 SATA II drives, a Fast video card, and gobs of ram on a 64 bit os, I was able to SLIGHTLY skate by the 2.4ghz processor requirement, and unless my hard disk is freshly defragged and Firefox is closed, I can't record without my video and audio going out of sync (however, I can record without the desyncs my videos up there have shown. If someone needs proof I have a video of Fallout 3 from my PS3 that is in perfect sync) There are no options to change the default codec that recording happens in. its MPEG2 and its pretty close to uncompressed. that whole 8gb/hr rule applies here, and that sucks because it likes to break things up. There is no option to say, offload the encoding of video to my Radeon HD card which does that, shame.

HDMI Capture will OBVIOUSLY not capture HDCP sources - so if you plan on recording a PS3 with this guy, get a set of Component cables. Xbox 360s however SHOULD output without HDCP unless you're using the HDDVD player add on (and its 2010, get a bluray player already) in which case HDCP should kick in and the software will tell you with a cute little pop up that you can go to hell.

At least with my setup, which is a Very Old Japanese Xbox 360, a set of bog standard Xbox HD/SD combo cables, and my computer, I cannot get the video to sync when using uStream. If you want to uStream with this card, your millage may vary, but I'm telling you it didn't work for me. Please don't yell at me if it doesn't work for you. I tried every resolution that the Xbox 360 supports too, before someone asks that.

Also there are about 3 frames of lag when displaying interlaced video.

Overall the card does a REALLY good job, and I'll see about throwing my PS2 into RGB only mode and testing it sometime soon, see if I can get it to display.

Quick review:
Pros:

• It does 1080i, and 720p, and all the way down to at least 480i, MIGHT do 15khz captures from PCBs.
  It is only 90 fucking dollars.
  In Progressive Scan video modes, it has 0 frames of lag.
  There is a HDMI port, so if you have a non HDCP source (or a stripper) you can capture full resolution digital video.
  Picture is REALLY GOOD

Cons:

• Requires a beefcake PC to run. The hardware requirements on the box are pretty set in stone.

• You might want a small raid 0 of 2 or 3 drives to capture to. Uncompressed MPEG 2 is pretty high bitrate - my PC which plays back H.264 video fine can't load these MPEG2 files fast enough to play them back fluidly, if reencoded however they work great.

• Oh yeah, those files are HUGE.

• 3 frames of lag in interlaced modes, so games like Otomedius G that can run at their original arcade resolutions at 1080 lines can't be played at their native resolutions. Recording replays should be fine though

• Wouldn't work with uStream for me. YMMV

[Ed Oscuro]

• 3 frames of lag in interlaced modes, so games like Otomedius G that can run at their original arcade resolutions at 1080 lines can't be played at their native resolutions. Recording replays should be fine though

That's when you split the input off to another display.

Did you try it with any older consoles, or via RCA jacks (same thing)?

Cool use of the Forum's "list" tag by the way; never knew about that one before, cheers.

[dieKatze88]

• 3 frames of lag in interlaced modes, so games like Otomedius G that can run at their original arcade resolutions at 1080 lines can't be played at their native resolutions. Recording replays should be fine though

That's when you split the input off to another display.

Did you try it with any older consoles, or via RCA jacks (same thing)?

Cool use of the Forum's "list" tag by the way; never knew about that one before, cheers.

True story on the splitting, but the games I'm really interested in are all Progressive Scan capable. so, I'm kinda in a situation by which to say "Fuck that" but really, 1080i is still useful because you can capture a superplay recording with it. Like if I saved a replay of an Otomedius game I could easily record it at 1080i, who gives a flying fuck how many frames of lag are on a replay that you aren't controlling?

The only game I have that would be super cool to capture in 480i would be Gradius V anyway, and I have several upscalers around here with low to no lag that can solve that problem, or I can hack the game to output at 480p, because apparently people are doing that now.

[Fudoh]

Thanks for the impressions! I noticed this card a few months back, but nobody around ever gave it a try. Good to know that it does it's job.

its MPEG2 and its pretty close to uncompressed

that's a statement you should reconsider MPEG2 HD might be good enough in your eyes (and most people's eyes as well), but it's far from uncompressed. 8GB/h on the other hand is a good argument, 2.3 MB/s doesn't stress the HDDs, so you don't need a Raid array.

I general I found it amazing how Avermedia pulled off this price tag. While I wouldn't call a BMD Intensity expensive at 200 Euro, it's still twice the price. On the other hand, the BMD has more capture options, is lagfree on interlaced input as well and has analogue and digital output which allows an easier setup for gaming and capturing at the same time without the need for an additional splitter.

Oh yeah, those files are HUGE

(BMD: 750 GB/h for uncompressed 10-bit YUV in 720p60)

[Jockel]

can someone recommend me a dead cheap one? doesn't need to be HD.

[StarCreator]

Wow... this is pretty intriguing.

Can this card be used as a capture device in, say, VirtualDub? Or are you locked into using their software?

And if you're locked into their software, can you at least choose what compression you'd like? I typically capture using lossless compression.

Also, can it capture in 480p? I've heard the BM Intensity Pro can't for some reason...

[Fudoh]

can someone recommend me a dead cheap one? doesn't need to be HD.

The Avermedia presented here is the cheapest Component capture solution. The Sweetspot remains the cheapest RGBs & YUV capture solution (though SD only).

[dieKatze88]

Thanks for the impressions! I noticed this card a few months back, but nobody around ever gave it a try. Good to know that it does it's job.

its MPEG2 and its pretty close to uncompressed

that's a statement you should reconsider MPEG2 HD might be good enough in your eyes (and most people's eyes as well), but it's far from uncompressed. 8GB/h on the other hand is a good argument, 2.3 MB/s doesn't stress the HDDs, so you don't need a Raid array.

I general I found it amazing how Avermedia pulled off this price tag. While I wouldn't call a BMD Intensity expensive at 200 Euro, it's still twice the price. On the other hand, the BMD has more capture options, is lagfree on interlaced input as well and has analogue and digital output which allows an easier setup for gaming and capturing at the same time without the need for an additional splitter.

Oh yeah, those files are HUGE

(BMD: 750 GB/h for uncompressed 10-bit YUV in 720p60)

Yeah these files are WAY bigger than 2.3mb/s, even if you're talking bytes. I compress them to about twice that in H.264 (I set Mediacoder to about 6mbps H.264 and then go do something, video encodes at about .33x on my machine for 720p, so a 10 minute video takes a half an hour). They literally chose the lowest compression they could on MPEG2 and went with that, which is a shame because MPEG2 is like, really easy for modern CPUs to do.

Remember that MPEG2 is a pretty broad spectrum of codec settings and capabilities, and its pretty easy to get either "Damn close to lossless" at the expense of burning your I/O controller off your motherboard and requiring a 6 disk Raid 0 of SATA III SSDs to keep up with the I/O Demands or a craptastic video thats 3 hours long, 480i and fits on a DVD that can be read at 0.5x without a buffer on a scratched disc and still show every frame without delay.

My I/O problems when recording video suggest a capture rate close to 50mbps. I would have to specifically test though. I probably should.

The pricetag reflects the product though, the Hauppauge HD DVR is twice as expensive and has onboard H.264 encoding, so you can do with a lot less computer, but this is still a really good device if you have the computer for it.

Wow... this is pretty intriguing.

Can this card be used as a capture device in, say, VirtualDub? Or are you locked into using their software?

And if you're locked into their software, can you at least choose what compression you'd like? I typically capture using lossless compression.

Also, can it capture in 480p? I've heard the BM Intensity Pro can't for some reason...

I haven't tested in Virtualdub, but It wouldn't sync for me in uStream, I'm not sure if this is a bigger issue or not, If I didn't have things to do before school today I would test that.

You can't change the compression in the software they provide, as stated in the first post.

When testing uStream in EveryResolutionEver(tm) I tested both 480i and 480p and they both work in the capture software that shipped with the card. True story. I did not record anything or take any screenshots of 480p (Why bother, I have 720p and 1080i) but you will get a picture. I also hooked up my original Xbox which is hacked, so I could update the homebrew on it. This was done at 480i. My PS3 came up by default at 480i, and it worked. 480i definitely works, I've used 480p for all of 10 minutes but it did work, you should have no problems capturing an image with 480 lines of vertical resolution.

[Jockel]

What about that one? Doesn't seem to be THAT terrible, and for the price i can see past a few problems...
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11267

edit: oh fuck that, i just bit the bullet.
Will report back if it's decent.

[Chi_Ryu]

The EasyCap is ok (I've got one), but it's S-Video at best, and only works with 15kHz PAL/NTSC signals. If you want to capture anything above 15kHz, it's not going to work.

[dieKatze88]

Bad news. It doesn't support RGB in.

However... I did find this a while ago... Time to share.

http://elm-chan.org/works/yuv2rgb/report.html

This guy is apparently Japanese (or tries really hard to be!) and knows some shit about video signals. On the bottom of that page there's a version that turns RGB into YPbPr, Which is what we need. There's also circuits on that page for YPbPr to RGB... which gets consoles into cabs. This is just a good page for us. He also has composite to everything pages.

[njiska]

Just order one last night and it's due to arrive today. Hopefully it will work flawlessly. Still need to figure out what I'm going to use for actual editing. Thinking about throwing the files over to my linux partition and using Cinelerra. Any advice or software reccomendations?

[dieKatze88]

Just order one last night and it's due to arrive today. Hopefully it will work flawlessly. Still need to figure out what I'm going to use for actual editing. Thinking about throwing the files over to my linux partition and using Cinelerra. Any advice or software reccomendations?

It has a "Record on demand" button, so I just record the part I want, stop when I want to stop. I'm doing most of my work on Otomedius, so it handles recording replays, then I start the replay and start recording it, then I walk away. When I want to get just one stage I go grab that one stage, etc. So I can't really help you there.

The files are ginormous though.

[njiska]

Just order one last night and it's due to arrive today. Hopefully it will work flawlessly. Still need to figure out what I'm going to use for actual editing. Thinking about throwing the files over to my linux partition and using Cinelerra. Any advice or software reccomendations?

It has a "Record on demand" button, so I just record the part I want, stop when I want to stop. I'm doing most of my work on Otomedius, so it handles recording replays, then I start the replay and start recording it, then I walk away. When I want to get just one stage I go grab that one stage, etc. So I can't really help you there.

The files are ginormous though.

I'm not too worried about the size as I have a TB drive just for the video. The card actually arrived this afternoon so I'm going to install it and do some recording tonight.

EDIT: Connected the Xbox 360 via HDMI but it won't completes the start up process. Hangs at the same spot it would if there was no video cable connected. Did you have any problems like this?

[dieKatze88]

Just order one last night and it's due to arrive today. Hopefully it will work flawlessly. Still need to figure out what I'm going to use for actual editing. Thinking about throwing the files over to my linux partition and using Cinelerra. Any advice or software reccomendations?

It has a "Record on demand" button, so I just record the part I want, stop when I want to stop. I'm doing most of my work on Otomedius, so it handles recording replays, then I start the replay and start recording it, then I walk away. When I want to get just one stage I go grab that one stage, etc. So I can't really help you there.

The files are ginormous though.

I'm not too worried about the size as I have a TB drive just for the video. The card actually arrived this afternoon so I'm going to install it and do some recording tonight.

EDIT: Connected the Xbox 360 via HDMI but it won't completes the start up process. Hangs at the same spot it would if there was no video cable connected. Did you have any problems like this?

Don;t have HDMI Xbox... sorry