Micomsoft SC-500N1 RGB Capture Card

[akumajo]

[NightSprinter]

I sadly have to report that not all is well in the RGB end of things with these drivers. While component 240p works fine, RGB at 15KHz is an entirely different story (as the YUAN drivers do not seem to properly support it). amarec(20150906-204458) by Seth Arkada, on Flickr

[blizzz]

Oh man, is there no driver that doesn't break stuff? At least version 124 works pretty well.

[NightSprinter]

What's worse is that the new driver from YUAN detects a 240p RGB signal as 480i.

I just wish we could get a driver that also worked decently with arcade boards and was a little faster in resolution switching.

[andy251203]

Has anyone figured out a foolproof way to resolve the 100% CPU bug with the PEXHDCAP card? I have two machines that have had this capture card installed at one point. I have since removed the card and uninstalled the drivers but the 100% CPU issue is still there. These are Windows 8 machines. I suppose a reformat will fix the problem but I'd like to avoid that if possible.

I'm building an older XP box for this capture card so I won't have to deal with these issues again, or at least the issue will be on a computer that I don't really care about.

[trap15]

Micomsoft put up a new driver that's supposed to fix that.

[andy251203]

Yes, but I don't want to upgrade drivers. I want to completely remove it as I am not going to be using the capture card in these PCs anymore. I've completely deleted all traces of the SA7160 driver files and the problem is still there. If I boot into safe mode the problem goes away. So obviously something somewhere is still being loaded that causes the issue. Just wish I could figure it out.

[Thrill]

Kind of bad suggestion but only thing I can think of to help.

Have you actually reset the power plan (or tried a new one e.g. power saver), just once more after driver uninstall? The effect is probably still there since the power plan never got changed back or something similar to that effect.

[andy251203]

Nah, I already wiped and formatted both PCs. Not a huge deal to me. The only things on the PCs were steam games.

[Thrill]

Later

[NightSprinter]

I can already say that the VMix drivers really should never be used if one cares about stuff that runs between 160p-288p at smooth framerates. Let me reboot and try the VidBlaster ones.

[Edit] No reboot needed, VidBlaster is the same abysmal situation. I appreciate what you're trying, Thrill, but at least for the PCIe cards one seriously needs to stay away from YUAN's own drivers if they care about retro capture at native resolution/framerate.

[Thrill]

Yeah I don't have a card to check so that's why I asked someone here to test, I'm not psychic. Can anyone else check themselves to make sure this is broken? Not that I don't trust you, just want to make 100% sure this is the issue for others as well.

[NightSprinter]

Understood. Might want to throw this out tothe SC512 owners as well. I can talk to a streamer who owns one (he is an affiliate with Solaris), and see if he has additional issues.

[NightSprinter]

I know I'm bringing this back from the dead, but I just have a request for owners of the actual Micomsoft card. Could someone take a photo of the back of their SC-500N1 and tell me if there's an Altera MAX-II chip on the back? I noticed the StarTech card conspicuously lacks the Altera chip on its back.

[blizzz]

My SC-500N1 Rev 3.2 has the Max II on its back.

[NightSprinter]

Thanks for the info, blizz. I'm wondering why StarTech listed their version as Linux compatible when it lacks the Max-II? Not that it'd matter anyway, as I got the SAA-716x drivers to compile last night and had no success in getting a V4L2 device created.

[Thrill]

Very strange. Micomsoft just released drivers and they are the same revision as the ones NightSprinter said were broken. Can you recheck from their source? http://micomsoft.co.jp/sc-512n1.htm

If they somehow work, it must mean that Micomsoft inhouse develop 240p support. No other explanation.

Edit: Or here if you need a faster download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B77Wil ... sp=sharing

[NightSprinter]

Now that I am back on Windows 7 (do NOT upgrade to 10 right now if you use OBS or OBS-MP, they lock Win10 up in seconds), I'll have a look this evening when I get home. Just hearing that worries me.

[Edit] Hmm? Judging by Google Translate, it makes a mention of the 70Hz refresh used by the BIOS screens (and conversely MS-DOS in general). I'll need to bring out the old Compaq Armada laptop to test this! If this is what I think it is, we have a way outside DOSbox to record Tyrian gameplay!

[NightSprinter]

Yup, it's as I feared: anything below 480p doesn't work on my SC500. My card was just showing the output from my SNES as 480i with garbled graphics. MS-DOS isn't functional for capture, either. What is odd is that testing over component with my PS2 (fired up Namco Museum Vol. 2), is that 240p capture is untouched over component.

I don't have an SC512 for testing, so I can't comment on how it affects that card.

[Update] Why the hell do I need that broken 160 driver now for 70Hz capture? In the "Video Decoder" tab for the card's settings, go to the option "Unknown". After that, I just set resolution in capture program, and all's good.

[NightSprinter]

I think both the PCIe and USB3 users are pretty much screwed at this point. It seems we are at the mercy of YUAN for the drivers, as Micomsoft and Startech just seem to republish them.

It looks like the only capture card that is comparable in features and price, is the Timeleak HD100P. I'd say for $450, it has far more features (3D comb filter for composite and s-video, chips with established V4L2 support for the Linux crowd, and refresh rates up to 85Hz). Looks like that is probably the best option, unless YUAN miraculously restores low-res RGB input in the next driver.

[Fudoh]

Where did you read that the Timeleak HD100P supports native 15khz capture ? Even the spec sheet on timeleak's website states 30fps max for sub ED formats, which would imply forced deinterlacing for analogue interlaced formats.

[NightSprinter]

They only officially say that for their site, much like how StarTech does not claim to suppprt 240p60/288p50. I actually looked up the main chip used is the Analog Devices ADV7441A (which is related to the AD9982 used in cards from Datapath and Epiphan). I looked at the datasheet, and it supports many of the features the 9982 would like 170MHz bandwidth for RGB input. It has far more analog bandwidth to work with.

(Note: I hate touchscreen keyboards.)

[Thrill]

Yeah but just because the chip supports it doesn't mean the drivers will.

Case in point, the Intensity Shuttle is capable of 1080p60 but it's not actually supported.

[blizzz]

Hi All,

I have a Micomsoft sc-512n1-l/dvi capture card and I'm trying to use the "CUSTOM H.ACTIVE" feature to increase the horizontal sampling for 288P content.

But no matter what I do, horizontal sampling stays locked at 720 pixels. See the screenshot below, where I've set the number of horizontal pixels to 1280 with no effect:



Has anyone else come across this? It'd be great to tweak this sampling rate up so I can capture unusually wide content properly - like Atari ST medium resolution (640x200 pixels).

Since nobody replied in his other thread, I'll just quote him here. Has anyone tested if "Custom H.Active" works and what it actually does?

[NightSprinter]

I'll give it a shot tonight on my PEXHDCAP and see what it does.

[NightSprinter]

The Custom H. Active and VBI Lines stuff doesn't seem to do anything. I'm confused myself.

Also, on the TimeLeak card: looking at the driver INI file reveals it to be the same card as the Magewell XI100XE Pro (and someone in this subforum has a thread on another Magewell card already). Given Magewell's product page mentions capture of irregular resolutions..

[blizzz]

Thanks for verifying that. It's a shame. A customizable horizontal resolution would be awesome to get a sharper image without an expensive upscaler.

[NightSprinter]

I might not be doing something right, but dunno. I agree it would have helped, given the various console resolutions. Even some compilations run ports at different resolutions (MegaMan X Collection running X1-3 at 256x224 in-game).

[Vixtro]

I'm running the .126 driver from Startechs support page, is it normal to get an instant BSOD when changing any of the deinterlace settings shown below?

[NightSprinter]

No, but the driver-based deinterlacing doesn't produce 50/60fps video.