Magewell Pro Capture HDMI

[lettuce]

Just curious, since there is mention of being able to capture down to 144p, how can such low resolutions be captured? It only looks to support HDMI, composite, s-video, and component. No indication of RGB.

Well it has a d-sub 9 connection on the year, if you had a sync strike device you could hook up a scart enabled system this way i should imagine.

But that clip i took above of Tomb Raider at 144p, was over the HDMI. The amount of resolution it give is quiet impressive.....

2048x1080
1920x1080
1680x1050
1440x900
1368x768
1280x1024
1280x960
1280x800
1280x720
1024x768
1024x576
960x540
856x480
800x600
768x576
720x576
720x480
640x480
640x360
512x384
384x288
352x288
352x240
320x240


i think my Xcapture-1 for example only game me down to 1280x720 over hdmi

[NightSprinter]

So possibly RGBs over the DE9.. The Analog Devices chip certainly can handle it (along with RGsB and RGBHV). Just curious if it is wired up in that manner.

[lettuce]

So possibly RGBs over the DE9.. The Analog Devices chip certainly can handle it (along with RGsB and RGBHV). Just curious if it is wired up in that manner.

Ill try and find my sync strike at some point and see if it works

[NightSprinter]

Look forward to hearing back regarding it. How much was the card again?

[Thrill]

Actually thought about this more. Have you tried the card in AmaRec at default sound values to see if the audio overpeaking is a problem with their software?

[lettuce]

Actually thought about this more. Have you tried the card in AmaRec at default sound values to see if the audio overpeaking is a problem with their software?

Yeah same issue when using AmaRec software. I have sent Magewell an email stating the issue

[Calle W]

I've been interested in how these Pro Capture Family cards actually perform for a while now. The AIO/DVI/HDMI versions in particular. Especially since the SC-512N1-L I'm currently has some bothersome color issues with most of its drivers.

I wouldn't be too bothered if the driver updates added some color space settings and didn't completely eradicate 240p support over RGB. I'm on the oldest Micomsoft drivers (108) right now, which requires me to route the audio via an external mixer to my computer. The audio is broken on the SC-512N1-L with these drivers, but picture quality is the same as that on the SC-500N1. I mainly use RGB as input.

The horizontal color shift is also a gripe. As far as I know, Amarec is the only software that can fix this on the fly. If one wants to use this card with streaming software such as OBS, this is pretty much a must have. Too bad you can't do much about the color space when using Amarec as a source in these programs. There are workarounds of course, but I feel like the issues have such a simple solution. It kinda sucks being stuck with really old drivers (which aren't even optimized for the device) because of all this.

I'm really interested in how this progresses. This family of capture cards is fairly new after all, and they seem to promise quite a lot. I'm always looking for ways to improve my current setup.

[Nrg]

So possibly RGBs over the DE9.. The Analog Devices chip certainly can handle it (along with RGsB and RGBHV). Just curious if it is wired up in that manner.

Ill try and find my sync strike at some point and see if it works

Did you manage to try the Magewell card with analog RGB signals?

[lettuce]

Ok, so earlier on this week i thought my multi-channel DAC unit was broken, as i was noticing i was getting strange audio from my captures (im using analog audio via a breakout cable supplied with the Magewell card). I captured 2 short video clips, one using the analog audio and the other using digital via the hdmi lead....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqwfevObvJ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1xyAZxjAi8

can you guys easily tell that the analog video sounds awful?

As i discovered that it wasn't in fact my DAC that was causing the issue but was Firmware and/or driver related as i had updated both of these a few days earlier and thats when the issue with the audio started. Anyways i contacted MageWell raising this issue with them and giving links to both videos above so they could hear the problem and they came back with that they couldn't hear any issues with either of the clips!!!....am i going completely mad here or is the person im dealing with via email from MageWell completely tone deaf??

[NJRoadfan]

Yes, heavy clipping on the analog audio like the source is too hot. Somewhere a level control (or variable) isn't set right.

[lettuce]

Yes, heavy clipping on the analog audio like the source is too hot. Somewhere a level control (or variable) isn't set right.

Yeah to be honest the level for the analog input has always been way too high and in the past I've turned the audio level for that device down to about 28 via the windows audio devices setting but now even at 28 it seems way too high.

I just can't understand the person at Magewell support couldn't notice it

[Elrinth]

Anyone got one of these beasts: http://www.magewell.com/pro-capture-hdmi-4k-plus ?

[Gered]

So I recently got myself one of these Pro Capture HDMI PCI-E cards. Remembered about this thread and figured I'd briefly add my two cents regarding it if not just because I was unable to find any posts anywhere else from someone using this card with my particular type of setup.

Anyway, I posted on the previous page about my experiences with the XI100DUSB-HDMI USB3 dongle that Magewell also sells which I bought last year and overall it's a pretty good device. However I was unable to completely remove some video stuttering that was starting to annoy me. I could only ever lessen it. Plus something I didn't notice right away when I got it as it happens only occasionally was that there was an ongoing issue with crackling audio that I could never get rid of despite lots and lots of time spent trying different things. After a year of putting up with these problems I decided I wanted to look at alternatives.

My primary computer is an iMac so there aren't many alternatives that I can use (I tried a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle at some point without much success.... ugh). After noticing that Magewell was now advertising OS X compatibility for their PCI-E cards on their website, I decided I wanted to give one of them a try. To do so I had to also grab a Thunderbolt PCI-E enclosure (note that they do not mention anything about this on their website, and none of the Thunderbolt enclosure manufacturers mention Magewell cards in their compatibility lists). I ended up going with a Sonnet Echo Express SE I. My iMac is a late 2013 with Thunderbolt 1 ports, but this enclosure works just fine even though it's advertised as a Thunderbolt 2 device. I also tried it on a late 2014 Macbook Pro which has Thunderbolt 2 ports also and as expected, works fine there too.

Had to install Magewell's "Pro Family Capture Driver" for Mac which can be downloaded from their website. But after that, new "00 Pro Capture HDMI" camera and audio devices are recognized and just works with OBS and VLC (all I've tried so far).

I've hardly gone through a full battery of tests trying every video hardware/software configuration I can think of yet, but here are my observations for right now:

• HDMI seems to work best... by far. All of my HDMI tests so far have been with a Framemeister. In OBS I found it's best to not use the preset options for Video Capture Device settings. This could just be a problem with OBS itself though.
• S-Video and Component also work fine (used a CSY2100 clone with an RGB SCART cable to test Component). OBS (and VLC) has problems detecting the aspect ratio though. Re-opening OBS with a previously working/good configuration would somehow get reverted to an incorrect aspect ratio (going into the video capture device settings in OBS and toggling the video resolution would magically fix the problem).
• Have not tried Composite video, though I'd expect similar results to S-Video.
• 240p with S-Video and Component is not that good unfortunately. Tried a variety of settings in OBS and VLC, but could only improve things marginally, but perhaps there is some better settings I haven't tried yet. Looks like the card itself might be trying to deinterlace 240p and is only half-ish successful (Magewell's tech specs page for this card does list deinterlacing as a feature of the card). With 240p Component for example, half the screen (top half) was bobbing, while the bottom was perfectly stable. Switched to 480i and everything looked good. I don't know if Windows users get software to further tweak settings on the card itself, but on Mac there is nothing to do this.
• The slight stuttering and audio crackling issues I had with the USB3 dongle are gone. Even was able to enable video buffering in OBS to get super silky-smooth video. With the USB dongle if I did that the audio would lag by varying amounts which made it an instant no-go solution to the stuttering problem.

Important to note: all of these observations are from usage on a Mac. Magewell only added a Mac driver for this card earlier this year (as a beta). Some of these issues could potentially be driver-related and/or might not be issues on Windows/Linux?

Ultimately for my recording setup I was hoping that this card would let me be able to go RGB->Component->Magewell card and take the Framemeister out of the equation but that won't be happening unfortunately.

[Hagure]

Hi Gered! Thanks for all of your info on the Magewell devices + MacOS. I'm in a similar situation, and went in on a Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. Have only used it for testing with my MacBookPro 2017 so far—no real world usage, but so far it's running alright with HDMI sources.

I've been curious about using a Magewell PCI card + enclosure though, has it gotten better for you at all? I've noticed that the mac driver still hasn't been updated since your post, but was wondering if you've found any other workflows that have improved your experience.

Thanks again, & hope all is well!

[Gered]

@Hagure

My setup remains basically unchanged from my last post in this thread, but it is still working just fine. I might have further tweaked some minor settings on my OBS setup a bit, but nothing major that I can remember. I'm still using the same software (OBS) to record with (I tend to not "rock the boat" with that type of stuff once I have it working, heh ). It is unfortunate that Magewell hasn't released any updated Mac drivers still, but that being said, the drivers do work fine. I guess I should also note that I also tend to be slow when it comes to Mac OS updates... I'm not on the latest release yet.

Given that you're also looking to use this with a Mac, I would suggest not taking the plunge on one of these cards + a PCI-E enclosure if you were looking to record composite/S-video/component 240p video sources primarily. Maybe there is some magic combination of settings that makes the issues that I had go away, but I was not able to find them (full disclosure: I am by no means an expert in this area... I'd classify myself as an amateur at best). If you feel like taking that gamble, then by all means. However I think the quality of HDMI capture is superb, so if that would be your primary use case (and if you're unhappy with the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle), then I can definitely recommend it.

For me, the Pro Capture HDMI PCI-E card was a big step up over the quality of the Magewell USB dongle I was using previously. Solved all of the issues I had with that thing. And since I have a Framemeister to convert all my non-HDMI video sources to HDMI, I have to say that a year later, I am overall pleased with this card in the setup that I have it in.

EDIT: I guess there is some firmware updates available for this card too from what I can see (dated 2017/9/8, file timestamp for the Pro Capture HDMI file in the download is 2017/7/14). I've no way to apply this update though as it's a Windows tool and I do not have a PC running Windows which I can plug the card into right now to run it.

[Hagure]

@Hagure

My setup remains basically unchanged from my last post in this thread, but it is still working just fine. I might have further tweaked some minor settings on my OBS setup a bit, but nothing major that I can remember. I'm still using the same software (OBS) to record with (I tend to not "rock the boat" with that type of stuff once I have it working, heh ). It is unfortunate that Magewell hasn't released any updated Mac drivers still, but that being said, the drivers do work fine. I guess I should also note that I also tend to be slow when it comes to Mac OS updates... I'm not on the latest release yet.

Given that you're also looking to use this with a Mac, I would suggest not taking the plunge on one of these cards + a PCI-E enclosure if you were looking to record composite/S-video/component 240p video sources primarily. Maybe there is some magic combination of settings that makes the issues that I had go away, but I was not able to find them (full disclosure: I am by no means an expert in this area... I'd classify myself as an amateur at best). If you feel like taking that gamble, then by all means. However I think the quality of HDMI capture is superb, so if that would be your primary use case (and if you're unhappy with the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle), then I can definitely recommend it.

For me, the Pro Capture HDMI PCI-E card was a big step up over the quality of the Magewell USB dongle I was using previously. Solved all of the issues I had with that thing. And since I have a Framemeister to convert all my non-HDMI video sources to HDMI, I have to say that a year later, I am overall pleased with this card in the setup that I have it in.

EDIT: I guess there is some firmware updates available for this card too from what I can see (dated 2017/9/8, file timestamp for the Pro Capture HDMI file in the download is 2017/7/14). I've no way to apply this update though as it's a Windows tool and I do not have a PC running Windows which I can plug the card into right now to run it.

Thanks for your reply again. I'm waiting for parts to build myself a SuperGun for some CPS2 action, and am crossing my fingers that the BMIS will work for it or at least with an OSSC (I've heard the shuttle & OSSC don't like each other). Glad to hear that things are staying stable though (I'm also leary of updating MacOS as well!), and am truly grateful to see reports from other mac users.

[Fudoh]

A Blackmagic unit certainly won't work with 240p from a supergun, nor with doubled 240p from a OSSC. The signals are too far from perfect NTSC specs and the Blackmagic units are extremely picky about that.

[Hagure]

A Blackmagic unit certainly won't work with 240p from a supergun, nor with doubled 240p from a OSSC. The signals are too far from perfect NTSC specs and the Blackmagic units are extremely picky about that.

Yup, that definitely seems to be the case. Can't get this chain to work…while it passes the HDMI through to the TV, nothing is being captured on the computer.

PS2 > Component > OSSC > Blackmagic BMIS > MacBook Pro + HDMI>TV

Hope I can still return it & save up for the magewell…

[Fudoh]

PS2 via component directly in the Intensity works as long as your games do output in 480i or 480p instead of 240p (so 99% of the PS2 titles will, but hardly any PS1 games).

I *THINK* the Shuttle requires YCbCr HDMI signals to start with, while the OSSC outputs in RGB only.

If you like the Shuttle, keep it and get a video processor in between to convert those signals for you. Any kind of DVDO maybe. Once you have the signals converted to something the Intensity accepts, it's a solid setup.

[zakk]

I have a magewell pro in my hackintosh, just tried an experiment.

Output from my cab -> extron SC210 sync processor (sync on green enabled) -> RGB outputs connected to the component in of the mage well.

This is what it looks like in my capture program.

Spoiler

Here's a short video. I encoded it with prores and uploaded it to youtube. No additional modifications/processing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsPteBL ... e=youtu.be


I also tried Raiden DX, but that doesn't work at all. Probably due to the weird refresh rate of that game.

[Gandi]

I recently (read: a few months ago) acquired a Magewell Pro Capture HDMI card as well.
The reason is a bit silly, but I just wanted an easy way to play old PS2 games on my PC screen when the TV was occupied. And why not have something that is able to capture.. most anything I was planning to throw at it if I ever started streaming?

Anyhow, what I was able to test so far was: HDMI, YPbPr, RGsB (sadly the only way it accepts RGB), and CVBS.

It can even capture 1080p60 with 4:4:4 chroma through HDMI! But I could seemingly only get it to run without stutters using amarectv, not sure what's up with that.
4:2:2 on the other hand seems to work flawlessly, even in OBS.
Two quick lossless RGB24 screencaps I took off Mario Kart 8:
https://abload.de/img/mariokart444-1bvshr.png
https://abload.de/img/mariokart444-2efsj2.png

I seem to have gotten 240p running pretty well through YPbPr with a bit of fiddling around. I only have a PS2 available for testing right now, so things might look different once I'm able to test more sources. There still seems to be a bit of colour bleed, which is probably a side effect of the scaling?

This is Mega Man X (Collection) with the aforementioned.. amount of fiddling, running through Component and CVBS respectively:



I had to find (pretty annoying) and enter the correct video resolution in OBS to set for the capture device, since it just defaulted to 720x240p. The picture still looked pretty good at first glance, but I soon realised that something was off with the AR and horizontal scaling.
Here's a picture with the default resolution:


So what I had to enter as capture resolution was 288x240. I thought it was supposed to be 320x240? Or maybe it's something to do with the fact I'm running a NTSC game on a PAL PS2, so I'd be glad if someone has any information on this.

Oh and sidenote on CVBS: The card recognises it as 480i. Which I _think_ I still got working properly by setting the capture resolution to 288x480, disabling the built-in deinterlacer (set to weave), enabling the "Retro" deinterlacing in OBS, and transforming the source back to 288x240p. I don't have the 240p test suite available right now, so I'm not completely sure if that all adds up to _proper_ 240p.

Now for the problem I'm currently facing - regular 480i games via component.
Some games look good:

Spoiler

And others look... well, see for yourself:

Spoiler

It looks okay via CVBS though:

Spoiler

And I was bored, so I plugged the CVBS line into the Luma connector and got this result:

Spoiler

Now with the help of PCSX2 I was able to figure out when exactly I get the ugly banding artefacts: As soon as games switch to an internal resolution of 512x448.
I've since read up a bit about pixel aspect ratio vs. display aspect ratio and I'm assuming I may need to find the correct capture settings (resolution, input AR, output AR,..) but so far I didn't come up with anything that looks good. I'm also contemplating contacting the Magewell support for this issue.
Or maybe I'm wrong and it's a limitation of the 12 bit ADC on the card? Would really appreciate some insight on this!
Especially since one of the reasons I got the card was to play/stream RE Outbreak, which sadly uses that 512x448 resolution and can't be set to progressive scan.

Oh and with this card (or a magewell in general) you can set default capture settings easily via registry. Pretty useful to enable things like Low Latency on a permanent basis.
It's located at:
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ProCapture\Pro Capture HDMI

Here would be my current settings: (all REG_DWORD)
VideoCapturePresetDeinterlaceMode 0
VideoCapturePresetLowLatency 1
VideoPreviewPresetDeinterlaceMode 0
VideoPreviewPresetLowLatency 1

You have to reboot or disable/enable the card in the device manager to load the new settings.
And in case there's someone here with the card who would like to capture PS3 HDMI.. send me a PM! There's a certain feature I discovered that I'd like to share with you fine people but don't want to get too public, for fear of it getting patched out.

This post got a bit too long.. thanks for reading, and I'd appreciate any help with my 480i issues and other questions.

[Keiyuu]

And in case there's someone here with the card who would like to capture PS3 HDMI.. send me a PM! There's a certain feature I discovered that I'd like to share with you fine people but don't want to get too public, for fear of it getting patched out.

Hi, unfortunately I can't send you a PM but I'm desperately trying to find out the correct registry setting to capture PS3 over HDMI. I know it is a HDCP issue and I already tried modifying different values in the registry but I just can't find out which one corresponds the HDCP. And the fact that I have to restart my PC after each change, makes the testing quite tedious as well.
I would really appreciate it if you could send me a PM or maybe just post the solution here...

[RuffNEC]

How does this capture card compete with the Datapath's RGB Vision series?! Would SNES via OSSC 5x work? how about some off spec PCB Signals?!

[NoAffinity]

I cant offer an opinion on the comparison but can confirm it works with any ossc 5x. My snes is dejitter modded, for transparency. Iirc, the issue prior to dejitter modding was the ossc not syncing properly with the wonky snes signal, that signal loss/jumpiness would just carry through to the magewell card but not the fault of the magewell card.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

[RuffNEC]

I cant offer an opinion on the comparison but can confirm it works with any ossc 5x. My snes is dejitter modded, for transparency. Iirc, the issue prior to dejitter modding was the ossc not syncing properly with the wonky snes signal, that signal loss/jumpiness would just carry through to the magewell card but not the fault of the magewell card.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

well a dejitter mod would help a lot , I'm asking with a stock super famicom and OSSC 5x so that wouldn't work?

[NoAffinity]

As said, at least for me and my setup, the ossc had issues with the unmodded snes signal. Doesnt matter what was after it in the chain because the ossc was tripping up and desyncing regularly.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk