XBox 360/youtube/capture card- any advice would be welcome!

[Battlesmurf]

Alrighty- I generally consider myself to be okay with tech stuff. That being said- my experience with capture cards ends just outside the bnc/isa/pci era- even dabbled in a USB deal a few years later. I'm hoping someone can give me a good modern day setup?

I have- a 360 attached to the same monitor that my PC (desktop) is attached to. I also have a laptop. Both run on windows 7, the laptop is a dual core penitum (it has hdmi/vga out). The PC should have the horsepower needed as well. My goal- to record 360 gameplay in good quality and upload to youtube and possibly add commentary.

Before anybody asks why I'm asking for your help doing this and not doing it myself- I'm hoping to get some tried and true methods before bumbling it up myself. I've not had much luck with this type of stuff. Thanks in advance!

[Fudoh]

Cheapest: any TV card with composite- and/or S-Video input (480i only) ~ $30
Medium: PMS Sweetspot RGBs/YUV capture card (480i only) ~ $100 2nd hand
Best: Blackmagic Intensity HDMI capture card (480i/720p/1080i) ~ $200 new

Any up-to-date PC can capture 720p in MJPEG codec (~ 10MB/sec). To capture uncompressed (definitely not needed for Youtube) you need a raid array with brutto rates of 300MB/sec (110MB/sec is the actual recording rate).

[RGB32E]

[RGB32E]

Any up-to-date PC can capture 720p in MJPEG codec (~ 10MB/sec). To capture uncompressed (definitely not needed for Youtube) you need a raid array with brutto rates of 300MB/sec (110MB/sec is the actual recording rate).

Hmm... I always assumed from BMD's specs that you have to have a Core 2 Duo or above with a RAID config.... Wow... didn't realize the barrier for PC specs was that low. Does their HDMI take the bulk of the processing overhead for MJPEG encoding?

Real Time Effects
Apple Final Cut Pro™ internal effects on Mac OS X™.
Adobe® Premiere Pro® internal effects in DV, DVCPRO HD, MJPEG and uncompressed edit formats.

[Fudoh]

Wow... didn't realize the barrier for PC specs was that low

It is ! And you should see the bunchload of video resolutions actually supported by BMD's SDK and driver. They're just not enabled on the software side. BMDs interface is also extremely fast with zero-delay overlay in windows. Actually already thought about building a dedicated VP using the BMDs as the input interface......

[Battlesmurf]

Wow... didn't realize the barrier for PC specs was that low

It is ! And you should see the bunchload of video resolutions actually supported by BMD's SDK and driver. They're just not enabled on the software side. BMDs interface is also extremely fast with zero-delay overlay in windows. Actually already thought about building a dedicated VP using the BMDs as the input interface......

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

Looks like a wonderful piece of kit!

That being said- I'm also assuming there's little to no input lag created with this thing (you've never steered me wrong in the past mr Fudoh : )

I appreciate your help!

[dave_wellington]

For those who can't afford a new PC/raid array or whatever's required for the blackmagic, check out the Hauppauge HDPVR. It has hardware encoding, meaning your computer doesn't have to be grunty to capture. It doesn't support HDMI however.

[system11]

The Blacklmagic will cause input lag, so I use an HDMI splitter with mine - you can see the TV is slightly ahead of the capture preview.

Also capturing uncompressed is well worth it with Youtube. YT quality is poor, so the better source you can give them the better. You do need RAID to capture uncompressed though.

[Fudoh]

The Blacklmagic will cause input lag, so I use an HDMI splitter with mine - you can see the TV is slightly ahead of the capture preview.

That card itself does not produce input lag. Any lag is caused by the combination of interlaced input, the preview app used and the LCD in use on the PC. With 720p input, iuVCR as the capture/preview app and a 100% lag-free LCD or CRT, the preview is completely in sync with the passthrough output

Also capturing uncompressed is well worth it with Youtube

how is that ? Do you want to upload a 100GB clip to Youtube ? The MJPEG codec provided by BMD is better than most other codecs at standard bitrates (MPEG-2/4, Xvid, even h.264 at low/medium rates)..,

[RGB32E]

Yeah... I think I need to call my local BMD reseller in a few hours.... Only 2 miles away from instant gratification!

UPDATE:

I'm now the owner of a BMD Intensity Pro

The place I picked it up at has the pro broadcast JVC and Panasonic monitors... and they have 15kHz RGB inputs. I will return with old game consoles to test and take pictures....

HD videos on youtube later tonight!

[Ed Oscuro]

pro broadcast JVC and Panasonic monitors...

How recent are the models? And congrats on the purchase

[StarCreator]

Can I ask how much you got it for? I've been eyeing them via online pricing for a while and I'm wondering if having a dealer nearby makes it that much less expensive...

[RGB32E]

Can I ask how much you got it for? I've been eyeing them via online pricing for a while and I'm wondering if having a dealer nearby makes it that much less expensive...

The place sold it to me for retail - $199. Reputable eTailers sell it for $189. Supposedly the wholesale cost is around $160... So, I suppose I could have saved around $10-$20 had I ordered online, not paid any sales tax, and got free shipping. Ordering from amazon would only give me the free shipping. I wanted to go the cash and carry route... so, all the same to me in the end.

I just got it up and running, but need to figure out how to use the preview functionality using the media creator program...

[system11]

The Blacklmagic will cause input lag, so I use an HDMI splitter with mine - you can see the TV is slightly ahead of the capture preview.

That card itself does not produce input lag. Any lag is caused by the combination of interlaced input, the preview app used and the LCD in use on the PC. With 720p input, iuVCR as the capture/preview app and a 100% lag-free LCD or CRT, the preview is completely in sync with the passthrough output

I don't care where the lag is, the captured version is lagged by about quarter of a second, making playing with a capture window impossible. There is no interlaced input when you're capturing 720P, the preview apps I've used are Sony Video Capture, and the bundled BM software (MediaExpress), both old and new versions. All three exhibit identical delay. Playing games on the same machine shows no / undetectable delay, so it's unlikely to be the monitor.

Also capturing uncompressed is well worth it with Youtube

how is that ? Do you want to upload a 100GB clip to Youtube ? The MJPEG codec provided by BMD is better than most other codecs at standard bitrates (MPEG-2/4, Xvid, even h.264 at low/medium rates)..,

I like to edit my videos, I need to trim the start, sometimes I need to cut sections out, sometimes add text or fades. Working in an editor with the uncompressed (lossless) output is the ideal way to do this, or you put your upload source through two lossy stages. Additionally, Youtube is much better at converting some formats and sizes than others. Doing the initial compression yourself in the most YT friendly format possible is therefore optimal. Youtube destroys quality, so it's best to give them the absolute best you can.

There's an annoying bug in the Blackmagic software/firmware which I'm trying to get them to fix. If you capture at 720P 60hz, the audio and video drift out of step over time. Reason being the audio captures at 60hz, and the video at 59.94hz. If you capture at 59.94hz it's fine. I've been unable to find out if the 360 is 59.94 or genuinely 60. They're not the exact same thing. On May 25th their support told me they've replicated the problem and are 'investigating'.

It's still the best option IMO for high quality capture of the 360.

[StarCreator]

I would think most editing software could go directly from source to final stage without an intermediate encode. Typically, I'll only use intermediate encoding stages when I have a filter job that takes hours and hours and need multiple passes for the final encode. Lately I've taken a liking to doing all my editing work as AviSynth scripts, but I'm crazy like that...

Back when Flash video was the primary format YouTube stored, you could upload your own FLV encode and YouTube would present it as-is if it met their specifications. Is the same true for H.264 now?

Depending on what the software you're using supports, lossless compression is also an option if you don't have fast enough storage to keep up with an uncompressed stream. When I did analog video captures, I always used HuffYUV (in YUY2 mode) compression for the actual capture.

[Fudoh]

I've been unable to find out if the 360 is 59.94 or genuinely 60

59.94. If I set the BMD to true 60Hz input, the card won't even sync to the input. Recently captured about 3 hours of 360 gameplay (at 59.94Hz). Not a single frame of delay.

Working in an editor with the uncompressed (lossless) output is the ideal way to do this,

100% right, but it didn't exactly sounded like Battlesmurf had these ambitions.

[system11]

I've been unable to find out if the 360 is 59.94 or genuinely 60

59.94. If I set the BMD to true 60Hz input, the card won't even sync to the input. Recently captured about 3 hours of 360 gameplay (at 59.94Hz). Not a single frame of delay.

Ah - now that is very useful, thanks. Perhaps this is the problem - the video stream is hitting it at 59.94 so it's still capturing at that despite my asking for 60, but the audio has no such constraint. Really it should switch the audio down to suit I guess. I wonder why I'm not just getting a sync failure as described above. Are you using HDMI or the component inputs?

[Fudoh]

For all my recent captures I used HDMI, but I did use component before as well (from a 360). The XBox keeps to the usual broadcast HD standards and that's clearly 59.94 for "NTSC" systems (or HD systems from ex-NTSC countries). I have a hard time thinking about real 720p60 sources. Another PC maybe which isn't properly set to 59.94Hz.

This said, I can't really say if it's a bug of the BMD card that audio and video drift apart in your constellation. Possibly 720p60 recordinng works fine if used on a real 720p60 source ?

[Ed Oscuro]

I have a hard time thinking about real 720p60 sources.

The Canon EOS 5D Mark II was a "real" 720p60 source, prior to a firmware update which corrected it to 59.94. Since then new releases have all used 59.94Hz for the video rate (1080p still being locked at 23.97Hz). I don't know of any other cameras that had this - though some had "real" 720p @30 (instead of 23.97Hz) video.

I don't know how common it is to find 720p @60 or 720p @30 sources on computers, though that's what was usually said to be the common place to find it. Youtube supposedly did @30 a year ago, dunno about now still. Nothing that should make a difference if you play 23.97Hz on it.

[RGB32E]

I got mine working finally... I also upgraded my PC to a X58/Core i7 930, since my nForce4 mobo was failing... literally.

Here's a screen grab from SSFIV on the 360 (HDMI):


I need to free up some space and defrag my HDD for better video captures. I'm uploading a 11 second 900MB un compressed video to youtube... edit this post later!

[Ed Oscuro]

11 second 900MB

Oye.

But for what it's worth I'm interested in the rumors of DSLRs with RAW video, so...

[RGB32E]

11 second 900MB

Oye.

But for what it's worth I'm interested in the rumors of DSLRs with RAW video, so...

Yeah... it failed, as YouTube cannot handle the awesomeness of the Intensity Pro... whoa! I think I need to encode the raw output to a compatible format before uploading (obvious). I wonder why YouTube needed the whole 1GB uploaded to determine that it can't handle it! lol...

My Nikon S8000 has mini HDMI out... so I'll be trying it out with the BMDIP once I've ordered a cable from monoprice (mini HDMI to HDMI cable). While my camera isn't a DSLR, it should do just fine as a dumb cam!

[Specineff]

A vote for the Hauppage 1212 HD PVR. Up to 1080i. Even captures at 480 P look fantastic, and work great for the Tube.