Micomsoft SC-500N1 RGB Capture Card

[blizzz]

How's the fan noise on your Brix? I've heard that the i7 version has heat problems and gets quite loud.

[Fudoh]

in normal use you won't hear it. With a benchmark test you can drive it up pretty load, but I didn't encounter anything like this during use so far. Haven't used it much though. Mostly for Model 3 emulation, a little for Crimzon Clover WI and now for Shovel Knight.

Supermodel + Logitech G25 + Pioneer 402 is pretty ace.

And I just recently learned that DisplayPort carries native analogue RGBHV, which was quite I surprise.

[BuckoA51]

The RGB modes use some weird internal scaling. Never use it, it doesn't work. Best disable it in the driver settings.

You're right it's utter gash, especially for 240p captures. Look at this colour test I captured from my Genesis with RGB mode enabled. Worse still it didn't matter if I chose RGB or YUY colour space in Amarec:-



I've gone back to older Micomsoft drivers. Maybe some of the fancier stuff doesn't work, but it doesn't seem to work particularly well in the new drivers anyway.

[Pasky]

Mind sharing that color bar rom for the Genesis? Thanks.

[blizzz]

Mind sharing that color bar rom for the Genesis? Thanks.

240p test suite for Dreamcast, Wii, Sega Genesis and Sega CD

Download for the Genesis version: sourceforge.net

[Pasky]

Thanks!

[NightSprinter]

BuckoA51: what driver revision from Micomsoft did you roll back to?

Fudoh: Do you have any Irem M72 boards to test to provide some confirmation about the problem with games like R-Type and Lode Runner not displaying via video capture?

[Fudoh]

No, sorry - no arcade boards at all around here...

[NightSprinter]

What is strange is that apparently Startech's latest drivers somewhat increased PCB compatibility. Viewing from my GroovyMAME box, Kung-Fu Master and Xexex worked fine, while R-Type 1 and 2 still did not.

[Edit] Apparently it seems that Startech's drivers are really not intended for capture of arcade boards. I successfully downgraded to the 1.1.0.124 drivers, and now my GroovyMAME box is view-able from the Startech card. The only problem is that games with a vertical resolution of 256 lines (Kung-Fu master and the first two R-Type games) are incorrectly seen as 720x240 (hence the mask problem that many have reported with Micomsoft's X-RGB 2). Are we just screwed when it comes to capturing resolutions that are between 240p and 288p?

[NightSprinter]

Nice, Startech's support got back with me this morning about the CPU utilization bug. I'm working with Fernando from Startech's support team to provide info from my system. If anyone who still owns an SC500-N1 or a PEXHDCAP is still using it, and wants to try to get one company to work on fixing that bug, hit Startech's support site, and address it to Fernando Ramirez to ensure he knows what's going on.

Also, strangely my card in VirtualDub WAS capturing 70Hz+ video (albeit jerky as hell).

[Thrill]

I wouldn't put any faith in them doing anything. I emailed them about it and all I got was something like "our engineers are too busy on other projects". Basically what they mean is they don't have the resources to do anything. All they have is a contract with KATO Vision?/Yuan to deliver updated drivers and they just slap a driver resign on it. They have way too many reseller products to do anything else.

What we actually need (and I think is a good idea) is to contact someone who can attempt to modify the driver files and fix the issue. I don't know how long this will take but I am sure someone passionate in both video capture and software programming will take it up. What we then do is a sort of donation/paid download for the person who fixes it. We donate maybe say $10 each to download the fixed drivers and hopefully that is enough to reimburse the person for spending their time fixing it. Judging by how popular these forums are and how many users of the card there is, this could easily be a couple hundred dollars for someone (plus the popularity obviously). Who knows it might just be a 2-3 hour fix plus testing time. We could also do a sort of bounty so people race each other.

I'd personally start the ball rolling with a $25 bounty.

[NightSprinter]

An even more awesome bounty would be getting a linux driver as well. But fixing the issues in Windows wioo be a good start. As well as fixing resolution/refresh issues. I am perplexed as to how capture in VirtualDub displayed a picture of input above 60Hz, when nothing else could.

[BuckoA51]

BuckoA51: what driver revision from Micomsoft did you roll back to?

Good question, my drivers are all over the place at the moment. What is the best one people have found?

Edit - 1.1.0.116 Micomsoft 30/08/12

[blizzz]

I had a quick look at the different drivers.

Micomsoft v1.1.0.108

• Sharpest picture
• Doesn't support 60.10 fps on the HDMI input (frame drops)

Startech v1.1.0.114

• Component is blurrier than 108

Micomsoft v1.1.0.116

• Doesn't support 60.10 fps on the HDMI input (frame drops)
• Slight chroma bleed on HDMI

Micomsoft v1.1.0.122

• Doesn't support 60.10 fps on the HDMI input (frame drops)
• Slight chroma bleed on HDMI

Micomsoft v1.1.0.124

• Supports 60.10 fps on the HDMI input
• Colors are wrong

Startech v1.1.0.126

• Supports 60.10 fps on the HDMI input
• Slight chroma bleed on HDMI

Of course this is no extensive analysis of the drivers. I'll keep using v1.1.0.108 for now. v1.1.0.126 might be the best choice if you want to record from the Framemeister with unlocked Framerate. But there's very little use for videos that are not 59.94 or 60.00 fps.

[BuckoA51]

Thanks for that Blizzz, no doubt that was somewhat tedious to do.

[dieKatze88]

Has anyone found an alternate vendor for the 512 yet?

[blizzz]

Another find that was very surprising for me. I have always said that the SC-500N1 can handle full range and limited range RGB, but that is not true with the recent drivers. On the v1.1.0.126 driver you will get black crush with full range input. I think they might have optimized it for limited range.

On the old driver (v1.1.0.108) you get pretty much spot on quality for full range input. Limited range input is saved as 16-235 and not expanded by the driver. Once you expand the color space to 0-255 yourself (in VirtualDub for example) it is also excellent.

Edit: The newer drivers can record full range content correctly. In the driver setting there is a switch between 0-255, 16-235 and Enhanced. 0-255 expands 16-235 content to 0-255 and 16-235 just saves it as it is. I don't know what Enhanced does yet...
So in summary: Select 0-255 in the driver settings for limited range (16-235) content and select 16-235 for full range (0-255) content.

[Soeuni]

I'm willing to connect SNES(NTSC) to my PEDHDCAP with SCART cable.
I have a question: in this situation, does a sync stripper(like XSync-1 or Sync Strike) must need? I read a post like this:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=45917

Composite sync goes to the horizontal sync pin and you can just ground the vertical sync. I initally read that you needed to split the composite sync into horizontal sync and vertical sync. This is not needed

So, I'm planning to purchase just SCART to RGB15 cable like below instread of buying Xsync-1.


Is this will work?

[NightSprinter]

As far as I've tested so far, yes. It needs raw CSync on the Horizontal Sync line to get a signal for older systems. You may need a stripping unit to remove composite video from the signal.

Also, given the recent driver revisions have added "Auto Resolution Scaling", how helpful would that be for games from PS2 era and earlier that switch between 240p/480i a lot? I'm concerned because of how it would look for recording games that have 240p gameplay at 60fps.

[Sixfortyfive]

Also, given the recent driver revisions have added "Auto Resolution Scaling", how helpful would that be for games from PS2 era and earlier that switch between 240p/480i a lot? I'm concerned because of how it would look for recording games that have 240p gameplay at 60fps.

It's pretty much needed for those games. Turn it on and set capture to 720x480. For games that never switch resolution, though, it's best to turn it off.

The main drawback of the auto-scaling feature is that it tends to cause extra screen-tearing when recording a game that is running at a different resolution than what you've chosen in the capture card's settings. I noticed it a lot when recording a 720p game at 1080p and vice versa. Fortunately, however, I haven't really noticed it happening when recording 240p games at 480p, so it might not be an issue for 240p/480i sources. All of my experience with this is on an XCAPTURE-1, but I assume it's similar for these other cards.

There's one other drawback, and how much of a nuisance it is depends on your recording program. Whenever there's a resolution change, the video feed drops out for a brief moment as the card adjusts to the new resolution. It's pretty quick and not really bothersome in and of itself, but the problem is that it causes the audio to go out of sync because the audio capture is active the whole time, while the video capture pauses momentarily during the switch. Some programs handle this better than others. VideoKeeper2 just aborts the capture altogether if it detects a res change. VirtualDub keeps recording but suffers from audio desync. OBS and XSplit can handle the switches without losing sync.

[Soeuni]

As far as I've tested so far, yes. It needs raw CSync on the Horizontal Sync line to get a signal for older systems. You may need a stripping unit to remove composite video from the signal.

Thanks for your advice. Retro consoles output Sync on composite video, so I'll require sync separator unit to convert pure sync..

I am considering to use this unit for this purpose.


http://forums.shockslayer.com/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=119

[blizzz]

Commonly you would use the LM1881 to create composite sync from composite video. With some consoles you can get composite sync directly from the console. This is also the case with most NTSC SNES consoles. Only the 1CHIP-03 (and maybe the SNES mini?) don't have c-sync on the MultiAV out.

For most people it's easier to get a pre built sync stripper like the Sync Strike or XSYNC-1 though.

[blizzz]

The main drawback of the auto-scaling feature is that it tends to cause extra screen-tearing when recording a game that is running at a different resolution than what you've chosen in the capture card's settings. I noticed it a lot when recording a 720p game at 1080p and vice versa. Fortunately, however, I haven't really noticed it happening when recording 240p games at 480p, so it might not be an issue for 240p/480i sources. All of my experience with this is on an XCAPTURE-1, but I assume it's similar for these other cards.

Another huge drawback of the auto-scaling function is that it's just blurry. Looks like they're using bilinear filtering. The best way I've found so far to record games that switch resolution on the SC-500N1 is to select 720x480 59.94 in AmarecTV. In post processing you will have to crop the picture for 240p parts and linedouble them. For the 480i parts you have to discard half of the frames and then deinterlace them. It's a major pain.

[NightSprinter]

That's a damned shame, to be honest. I was thinking about this, as I run my videos through AVISynth to add scanlines in post production for some friends of mine as recording tests. I will have to check this out further with DDR on the PS1 over the weekend.

[TechReverso]

Hey everyone, I just got the card, it's very awesome, been playing a bit on GameKeeper.
I was just wondering, however, as to why the card is always drawing 100% of my CPU even if I change the power plan when I'm using it.

Thoughts?

This has precedence as I've been able to find this exact issue on a forum 'round the interwebs, any help would be greatly appreciated.

T.R.

In the long run, this would probably fry one's cpu.

Example:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showth ... p=24613387

[blizzz]

It won't fry your CPU, even with disabled C1E state it shouldn't get too hot. It doesn't use your CPU at 100% like a benchmark or a video encoder would, it just makes it active 100% of the time. If you're using the stock cooler you should upgrade to a real CPU cooler.

To temporarily fix it you have to reset the power plan, but it will go back to 100% when the card gets activated the next time. If you're using Skype it will be active all the time.

[TechReverso]

It won't fry your CPU, even with disabled C1E state it shouldn't get too hot. It doesn't use your CPU at 100% like a benchmark or a video encoder would, it just makes it active 100% of the time. If you're using the stock cooler you should upgrade to a real CPU cooler.

To temporarily fix it you have to reset the power plan, but it will go back to 100% when the card gets activated the next time. If you're using Skype it will be active all the time.

Cool Blizz, that makes me feel a bit better, I already have a cooler master on this baby, i7 975. Hmm, I wonder if I could exchange it as well, maybe try different drivers, how come the coding team is still too silly to fix this problem?

How come other people don't have this problem, some of them show 0%?

PROBLEM SOLVED:

http://support.advantech.com.tw/Support ... e=Download


iNSTALL THE DRIVER FROM THE PRIMARY SOURCE!!!!

[blizzz]

It depends on how you measure the CPU utilization. In the Windows 8 taskmanager and RealTemp it is measured as the percentage of time the CPU is active. Hence, 100%. In the Windows 7 taskmanager it is calculated differently and 100% load would actually mean that the CPU is calculating stuff.

Sadly I don't think that the people behind the driver see it as a problem. Startech also replied to a request to fix this that it is not important enough.

Btw, what temps do you get? It shouldn't go too high, but also remember that Intel CPUs can operate at 90°C+ for a long time. Though ofc you should keep the temps a bit lower.

[TechReverso]

It depends on how you measure the CPU utilization. In the Windows 8 taskmanager and RealTemp it is measured as the percentage of time the CPU is active. Hence, 100%. In the Windows 7 taskmanager it is calculated differently and 100% load would actually mean that the CPU is calculating stuff.

Sadly I don't think that the people behind the driver see it as a problem. Startech also replied to a request to fix this that it is not important enough.

Btw, what temps do you get? It shouldn't go too high, but also remember that Intel CPUs can operate at 90°C+ for a long time. Though ofc you should keep the temps a bit lower.

PROBLEM SOLVED:

http://support.advantech.com.tw/Support ... e=Download


iNSTALL THE DRIVER FROM THE PRIMARY SOURCE!!!!


All 4 of my cores are hovering around 30-30celcius Blizz, and I overclocked the HD 4890 to max on all areas with no problem (mind you it's XFX).

BTW PROBLEM SOLVED, INSTALL THIS DRIVER HERE:

http://support.advantech.com.tw/Support ... e=Download
My load was usually 0% before the PCI-EXPRESS MICOMSOFT card, now it's 1% after these drivers.

[Fudoh]

Links not working.