Micomsoft SC-500N1 RGB Capture Card

[BuckoA51]

Media Player Classic instantly crashes when I try to play Lagarith too. Even tried in a VM with no other media software installed, instant crash.

Tried on a third machine, a Windows 7 32 bit system and it worked there, but Langarith is supposed to work on 32 and 64 bit right? Maybe I should ask on Zoom Player's forums.

[blizzz]

I'm using Win7 64bit on three machines and have no problems with Lagarith and MPC-HC. There must be something different about your files. Maybe you could try to change the Null Frame setting, that tends to make problems with some programs.

[BuckoA51]

I'll keep looking into the Lagarith and Zoom Player problem then.

How much noise do you guys see in the picture on your systems? I mean I'm used to a little on most consoles if you dial the brightness in too high and stare into a black background, but it seems too high on my card on systems that are pretty clean going into the XRGB3 or the mini. For instance zoom in on this picture snippet, you can see a lot of grey in amongst the black. This looks completely clean on the TV, is it just a case of brightness up too high? If so how can it be adjusted? I found settings in AmaRec under "Device Setting" but they didn't do anything.

[blizzz]

If so how can it be adjusted? I found settings in AmaRec under "Device Setting" but they didn't do anything.

Install the Startech driver, it's broken in the Micomsoft driver.

For instance zoom in on this picture snippet, you can see a lot of grey in amongst the black.

Looks really great to me, don't see any grey.

[dieKatze88]

That looks like you're playing Tempest 2000.

The only reason I recommend the CCCP is because it's the easy goddamn way to play everything. You install it and clicking on files works. It doesn't include Lagarith support by default though. (Lagarith is turned off)

So why do you have some random libavcodec installed?

[BuckoA51]

So why do you have some random libavcodec installed?

That's what Zoom Player installs for basic video playback. I suppose you could call it a codec pack in itself.

Install the Startech driver, it's broken in the Micomsoft driver.

Ah great and changes will persist if I go back to Micomsoft?

Looks really great to me, don't see any grey.

Have a look at this test recording if it's not too big https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1488717/cotton-2-test-run.avi Pause it when the screen goes to black you can see a lot of grey interference. I know games consoles aren't known for being videophile grade devices but just seems way more than on my TV in all cases. I might try the card in another PC see if that helps. Also yes that recording has the colour bleed, didn't know to turn on correction for that in AmaRec just then.

Maybe we need a Wiki page over at http://junkerhq.net/ for this card, what does everyone think? I'd be happy to contribute to it.

[dieKatze88]

The "easy" Solution is to go disable Lagarith in the codecs zoomplayer comes with.

[blizzz]

Install the Startech driver, it's broken in the Micomsoft driver.

Ah great and changes will persist if I go back to Micomsoft?

Nope, switching back reverts everything.

Have a look at this test recording if it's not too big https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1488717/cotton-2-test-run.avi Pause it when the screen goes to black you can see a lot of grey interference. I know games consoles aren't known for being videophile grade devices but just seems way more than on my TV in all cases.

What codec is that? The FourCC is AMM2, never seen it before. Can't watch it in anything I have.

[BuckoA51]

What codec is that? The FourCC is AMM2, never seen it before. Can't watch it in anything I have.

It's just the AMV Video codec that AmaRecTV uses by default. http://www.amarectv.com/english/download/amv300i_en.zip

Nope, switching back reverts everything.

I'll stick with Startech then, I need to turn the brightness down a couple notches otherwise I get noise in areas of the picture that should be black. I guess that's fairly normal, XRGB3 does it too, for instance, if I turn black level up too high.

The "easy" Solution is to go disable Lagarith in the codecs zoomplayer comes with.

Doesn't come with any Lagarith codecs. I've asked on ZP forums see if there's a workaround.

Edit - my bad, it DOES include something that plays Lagarith, upgrading to the latest LAVFilters (0.51.1) fixed the problem http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191

[BuckoA51]

A little question about colour spaces, when setting up Amarec, I see things like this:-

*w=1280, h=720, fps=59.94, fcc=YUY2, bit=16

So we have YUY2 colourspace at 16 bits? For consoles I assume this is fine, is there any reason to ever go RGB instead of YUY2? Someone suggested on another forum I should be capturing in RGB instead, though I don't really see why.

[Fudoh]

If you record in 4:2:2, the resolution of the color channels is cut into half. If you have a 320x240 RGB source and you record in YUV422 you lose a lot of color detail. On the other hand, most of the end formats are just 4:2:0 (half resolution for first color channel and quarter resolution for the second color channel), so most of the times any advantage of recording in RGB is eventually lost in the encoding.

You could record 320x240 in RGB, then upscale to 640x480 and then encode in 4:2:0. This way you have full luminance detail and full color detail for both channels (320x480 and 320x240). The tricky part though is to do the uspcaling in RGB without losing detail there since most processing happens in YUV422.

[dieKatze88]

I know that my Avermedia card only captures in 4:2:2, if you select RGB and have an RGB signal coming into the HDMI port, it actually spits out 4:2:2 to the PCIe bus, then upsamples in software, which is of course useless since you can really do that math whenever you want. Does this card capture in real honest to god straight RGB?

[blizzz]

Does this card capture in real honest to god straight RGB?

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't, there are only options for YUY2 in the driver.

[fagin]

Maybe we need a Wiki page over at http://junkerhq.net/ for this card, what does everyone think? I'd be happy to contribute to it.

AGREED 100%

We all want to know the best SW, drivers and settings required to get the best out of this card!

[GregI]

We all want to know the best SW, drivers and settings required to get the best out of this card!

Without going too far with this card as of yet, can we all agree on this?

SW - Has to be Amarec over vdub for the reason the author of Amarec has one and obviously has done thorough testing to ensure correct operation.
Drivers - Unless I am missing something the latest StarTech is the best. It does exactly what the Micomsoft does but clears up Component issues that blizzz was experiencing earlier.
Settings - No idea as of yet. Still no clue as to why they let you configure this. Every card I have tried has been at 1.0000 default: http://i.imgur.com/myudo.png

Also I discovered why I could not select HD resolution earlier. You must have an active source displaying that resolution connected to the card in order to be activated inside Amarec or anything else before it is selectable.

[BuckoA51]

Settings - No idea as of yet. Still no clue as to why they let you configure this. Every card I have tried has been at 1.0000 default

In Amarec you should always set colour horizontal adjust to type C, at least with 240p sources. If not, blue seems to be slightly shifted. It still looks fairly decent (didn't spot it myself until someone pointed it out) but might as well get it right, see here for a comparison:-

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/135561

I've also found the default brightness to be too high too which shows up some noise in black areas of the image that should be clipped. Could just be my Model2 Saturn has noisy RGB out, but then so do lots of consoles.

[fagin]

All of this is good, but imo we need to understand why things are being suggested. I don't like to be told, I like to understand why.

For instance.... I appear to see a better quality "monitor" image, when I use the MS driver and MS capture SW. Hence really why I want to understand the benefit of changing to another set-up and whether or not my current opinion is based on my lack of correct "set-up" using another method.

Some of the screen caps on the Japanese blog appear to be pin sharp with Amarec.... I certainly havent been able to replicate that quality.



Fudoh - have you got hold of your card yet?

[GregI]

This is understandable. Maybe Bucko knows about the settings to achieve this?

I looked back at the thread here to find the blog and read this from blizzz.

"The audio input seems to have a bit over 100ms input lag, that's also what I found with some recordings"

Abit confused. So the audio is off synch when played back in a media player?

The blog is linked here to save people searching back pages: http://amalabo.blog35.fc2.com/blog-category-20.html

I also see his amarec window has lots of available resolutions which I cannot get.

[Fudoh]

not yet. Likely next week, but I first need to get the other components for a dedicated setup. I don't want the card in my workstation, so likely another 2 or even 3 weeks till I have it running.

[BuckoA51]

I prefer the Startech drivers simply because they let me tweak the brightness. As stated above if the image isn't sharp in Amarec make sure you've got horizontal adjust set to type C.

[GregI]

Trying to capture some 480p Wii and keep getting this in Amarec: http://i.imgur.com/uvCoY.png

Edit - Nevermind. Forgot to change video standard to NTSC. Working now.

[BuckoA51]

Close Amarec, open Video Keeper, get a picture there if you can then try again.

[fagin]

I appear to be getting a stretched 4:3 recording (on playback) from Amarectv??

[BuckoA51]

Most players seem to get the aspect ratio wrong for all my 240p captures, I'm not sure why, just manually override it to 4:3.

[fagin]

Most players seem to get the aspect ratio wrong for all my 240p captures, I'm not sure why, just manually override it to 4:3.

You sure it's a player issue. The Micomsoft captures are fine in the same player used..... just from Amarec.

It's no use imo without resolving this.

[BuckoA51]

I would very much like to solve it myself, I just tried uploading a capture to Youtube directly and it had the weird aspect ratio too.

[SunJammer]

when recording in Amarec i keep the Filter Processing turned off (the option in the Recording pane) which keeps the file size down when recording longer captures. I then take that 720x240 (non-linedoubled) file and run it through VirtualDub to fix the aspect ratio/crop out the overscan area/do some light noise reduction. imho this gives the best results

finished product looks like this: (forgive youtube's crappiness) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwSTTEfvxiY

[BuckoA51]

Looks good, what codecs do you capture with then recode with in Virtualdub?

[SunJammer]

Looks good, what codecs do you capture with then recode with in Virtualdub?

I capture using Lagarith, then recode from virtualdub using x264vfw (be sure to enable 'Virtualdub Hack' in the driver's options pane)

[fagin]

Personally I don't think that capture is that great. What's with the aspect ratio as well?

The capture I did using the MS app is much cleaner IMO and you don't have any aspect ratio issues. In my experience the MS app also gives the least amount of lag.