Micomsoft SC-500N1 RGB Capture Card

[Fudoh]

Wouldn't that be Taiwan Dollar and closer to $200 ?

[GregI]

It will be yeah. No idea why I thought Yen. Never paid attention to the domain of the site.

Works out at about £128 so more than Startech but now we know the card is widely available under the chipset.

[fagin]

The Startech card works with the Micomsoft drivers and recognises 240p input!

Hale to the power that comes from these types of forums!

MD -> Sync Strike -> Startech

[GregI]

Nice update!

Question though. 240p is only workable on Micomsoft drivers? What happens with Startech (guessing not selectable or something)

[Fudoh]

Fagin, nice to see that you got one! You're eager to experiment, right ?

Would the Micomsoft (or Startech) card be usable for replacing a Holo or Silicon Optix setup for screen rotation ? I really don't have the time nor the nerves right now to try this on my own, but I would greatly appreciate it, if somebody else could try it.

The easy way would be, just through the capture app.

How fast is the active video overlay for 720p sources ?
Can Video Keeper set to fullscreen preview ?
Does it function with the graphics driver set to pivot mode ?

The professional way would be through AVISynth.

With the Startech registering as a Directshow device, one should be able (maybe with GraphEDIT) to pull up a video stream in VLC and apply a rotation filter within VLC. Or with AVISynth it should even be possible to apply a cropping and rotation filter in AVIsynth and display the video stream in any media player application. I would especially be interested in a 720p rotation WITHOUT rescaling. 1280x720 input, cropping to 960x720 and displaying natively 90° rotated on a 1080p output.

[fagin]

Would the Micomsoft (or Startech) card be usable for replacing a Holo or Silicon Optix setup for screen rotation ? The easy way would be, just through the capture app.

The capture app, as part of the Miscomsoft install, doesn't allow rotation.

How fast is the active video overlay for 720p sources ?

Not tried anything other than 240p input yet.

Can Video Keeper set to fullscreen preview ?

Yes

Does it function with the graphics driver set to pivot mode ?

It appears to work fine in conjunction with gfx control panel rotation.

[fagin]

Question though. 240p is only workable on Micomsoft drivers? What happens with Startech (guessing not selectable or something)

Reading back in this thread, the Startech drivers work fine on the Micomsoft card for 240p recog.

[blizzz]

How fast is the active video overlay for 720p sources ?

The overlay in Video Keeper is not useable for playing games on my machine (i3-2100t) as it drops a few frames. AmaRecTV is perfectly fine though with full fps and 3 frames lag (from what I've read about the card). AmaRec also supports rotation and cropping.

240p is only workable on Micomsoft drivers?

It works with both and I would recommend the StarTech driver as long as Micomsoft doesn't update theirs.

Edit: Would be nice if someone with could try out 1080p with the StarTech card. It doesn't say anything about fps on the website, but I guess it's just 24p and not able to record consoles.

[Fudoh]

AmaRecTV is perfectly fine though with full fps and 3 frames lag (from what I've read about the card). AmaRec also supports rotation and cropping.

thanks for the info! Would you mind comparing Amarec to VLC - in terms of how they "feel" in regard to lag ? VLC should be able to open and display any Directshow device directly.

[fagin]

VLC should be able to open and display any Directshow device directly.

Any ideas how this is done?

Lag through Video Keeper appears to be next to nothing from a quick play.

[blizzz]

AmaRecTV is perfectly fine though with full fps and 3 frames lag (from what I've read about the card). AmaRec also supports rotation and cropping.

thanks for the info! Would you mind comparing Amarec to VLC - in terms of how they "feel" in regard to lag ? VLC should be able to open and display any Directshow device directly.

Playback in VLC looks fine, but the lag feels like >60 frames. Totally unplayable. Do I have to disable buffering or something? Could also be the "slow" CPU.

Edit: Disabled caching. Should be 300ms faster now, but there's still strong lag.

[Fudoh]

Thanks! If I may ask you for one more, please: could you give it a try in iuVCR/VCS ? http://www.iulabs.com/iuvcs/
Just asking for this because I know how the BMDs perform in iuVCR....

[blizzz]

Thanks! If I may ask you for one more, please: could you give it a try in iuVCR/VCS ? http://www.iulabs.com/iuvcs/

It's similar to AmaRec. Low lag and smooth playback, perfectly playable.

[blizzz]

I read a bit in this blog today and found some interesting information. In one post he describes some sort of lag test with the result that AmaRecTV 2.20 has less than 1 frame video lag if you set it to EVR and disable desktop composition in Win7. The audio input seems to have a bit over 100ms input lag, that's also what I found with some recordings. Using line-in for audio should be more or less lag free. (EDIT: disabling Aero results in screen tearing on my machine.)

He talks about 240p colour shift for PS2 input in another post. I don't have any 240p games for PS2, but this might be interesting for anyone who does.

[Fudoh]

Very interesting tests on his blog! Thanks for the link!

240p/PS2: That's not a chroma shift, that's a CUE (chroma upsampling error) from component sources. He compares the standard settings to a RGB source. He seems to be able to fix it by adjusting the YUV/RGB conversion settings.

[dieKatze88]

Has anyone done a DVI/HDMI capture at 720p with these? I don't imagine the results would be bad at all. Just curious. This thing has serious potential to remove my Avermedia card from my machine, and possibly put a second card near my arcade machine.

[Ed Oscuro]

(EDIT: disabling Aero results in screen tearing on my machine.)

That sounds like you're disabling VSync...and for speed purposes, that's a good thing.

[dieKatze88]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6815158317

For people in the USA.

[fagin]

Just in the process of doing a YT video on this Startech card and upon my initial "testing" it appears the Micomsoft capture SW is better. The Startech capture SW has a blurry image (compared to the Micomsoft SW) when monitoring the capture and *appears* to be laggier. I haven't done any back to back on the captured results from both though. Also the Micomsoft SW and Startech Driver don't appear to be compatible. You get no sound (assuming analgue audio input) on the Micomsoft SW using the Startech driver.... as soon as you use the Micomsoft driver all is good.

[blizzz]

I would recommend AmRecTV 2.20c for capturing / display with the StarTech driver. The developer of that program uses a SC-500N1 himself (the guy from the blog). The only difference I've found is that the StarTech driver displays Wii correctly while the Micomsoft driver is too bright with too high contrast on component Wii.

[SunJammer]

i ran a few playthroughs through the card (youtube link) and so far i've gotten the best results in terms of quality/size-wise from AmaRecTV using the x264vfw codec from sourceforge. I haven't tried the Micomsoft native app, I'll give that a shot next

[blizzz]

i ran a few playthroughs through the card (youtube link) and so far i've gotten the best results in terms of quality/size-wise from AmaRecTV using the x264vfw codec from sourceforge.

If you want to edit the video after recording I recommend Lagarith (or HuffYUV), but for Youtube purposes it doesn't really matter.

I also made some 480p component input comparison shots with the different drivers and a zoomed in version. There are two variants of the picture with chroma slightly to the left or right which happen at random when tuning in, but I don't think that it gets any better with component. The Micomsoft driver has more vibrant colours and is a tiny bit sharper, but for Wii you really need the 1.1.0.114 driver. Installing the other driver takes only ~5s, so no problem switching between versions.

HDMI (Xbox360 720p) looks absolutely fine to me too.

Edit: Oh, and one thing I haven't posted on this forum yet: Component 288p with inverted red/blue (fixed version, RGB version). It's a weird bug, but you can switch the cables or fix it after recording.
Edit2: If there's an active signal on the HDMI port the quality of component goes down quite a bit.

[GregI]

The Micomsoft driver has more vibrant colours and is a tiny bit sharper

Even the general background looks completely different. We are confident the Micomsoft is accurately representing the digital screenshot you took awhile ago?

[blizzz]

The Micomsoft driver has more vibrant colours and is a tiny bit sharper

Even the general background looks completely different. We are confident the Micomsoft is accurately representing the digital screenshot you took awhile ago?

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/132306 (I lowered the contrast on the captured image a bit to match the digital screenshot). I don't think that it gets any better with component.

[Fudoh]

indeed. Looks amazing. Did you do any chroma shift correction in the post processing?

[blizzz]

indeed. Looks amazing. Did you do any chroma shift correction in the post processing?

I lowered the contrast by 10% and did some tiny boosting of white pixels but no advanced filtering.

[fagin]

So.... what's the preferred settings in AmRecTV?

Why does everything other than the Micomsoft capture SW appear softer in the monitor screen?

[blizzz]

I don't think I changed any settings and AmaRec looks sharper than the Micomsoft software to me.

[fagin]

I don't think I changed any settings and AmaRec looks sharper than the Micomsoft software to me.

So your settings on AmaRec are as is post installation?

On playback or monitor of capture? Monitor of capture is shedloads sharper on my set-up with the MS capture SW.

[blizzz]

AmaRecTV 480 1200
VideoKeeper 480 1200

AmaRec has the right aspect ratio and the noise is much more visible. VideoKeeper just looks a bit blurred and the framerate isn't perfect.