StarCreator wrote:Huh, this thread died...
So around the beginning of August I started messing with capture finally. I confirmed the HDCP exploit in specific versions of the Avermedia AverTV driver works as described, as I've been capturing content from the PS3's HDMI output all month.
Also, on Fudoh's recommendation I installed iuVCR, but noted that development of the program seems to have stopped in 2007 and I'm a little wary about registering it knowing that I am unlikely to receive any sort of support if it stops working in the future... it seems to work with the AverTV though it exhibits some odd behavior (like sometimes it won't actually start recording properly when commanded unless the live preview window is open first). Given all this, I'm inclined to look for alternatives... any suggestions?
I apologize, I totally used that exploit a few weeks ago and forgot to mention it. >_<
I think now that we have a good sense on the hardware side of things, we need to all start talking about software setups that we're using and get down to what's the best option for that.
Personally I'm still capturing with Virtualdub with Lagarith, which has some serious drawbacks, but it works and doesn't drop frames all that often (I did an hour of video and dropped 1? That's not bad) Occasionally I capture with AverTV direct to H.264, but the quality is horrid even at 15mbps for 720p. 720p video at 60fps should be about 2/3 that and look fine, so I'm a bit disappointed there.
I have started using amarectv for previewing, It's lagless (Well, OK, One frame if I enable deinterlacing, but that's expected) to preview with on my Hauppauge HVR-1600 which is something none of my other programs can say, except virtualdub, but I'm not playing a game in a tiny little window. (For those who might ask why I would use such a device: I enjoy my American Football in HD, and my SNES does not get along very well with my AverMedia card)
It also resizes video and retimes video to be spit out to FME, which is useful in reducing the bandwidth used when streaming from the AverMedia card which just is a straight capture device with no processing. You can use this function to reduce your frame rate being streamed, which can halve your bandwidth usage.
I'm doing my transcoding with MediaCoder, and Intel QuickSync on the Sandy Bridge platform does a pretty good job of making quality passable H.264 frames. Especially if you're uploading to YouTube (which is just going to wreck your quality anyway) but the quality isn't as high as x264 obviously, but it's about 3 times faster than x264 with 10% CPU usage versus 100% CPU usage at 720p. At 480p, x264 can't keep up, the lower the resolution, the faster QuickSync is, so if you're working with Arcade output, you'll probably want to set the quality to "Best" in Intel's encoder and just let it rip through your files at 30x speed. (Disclaimer: I have a 2600k which thanks to my gigantic copper cooler, reliably overclocks it's self to about 5ghz, and I have 16gbyte of ram. Your mileage may vary depending on your chip and configuration, even inside the Sandy Bridge platform.) I have noticed however, that Intel QuickSync doesn't do well with Android devices, even when you set the bit rate, level and mode correctly. Still have to use x264 there, but you can actually cheat there and use Intel first, and reload that file under x264 which will treat it as a second pass and clean up the file. No idea which program is outputting incorrect behavior (Oh I'm pretty sure it's Intel though) but this configuration is more than enough to get files onto my cell phone within minutes instead of hours.
Anyone else have some tips?
