Any Advice on Choosing a Capture Card?

[Maj]

Yay 2GB combo videos! I can't wait until the most common compression method is rar'd uncompressed avi!

... i miss the 500kbps 320x240 30fps MPEG-1 days.

[Magnetro]

Hahah yeah. I'm gonna tell him about x264. ... X264 @ 2k should look REALLY good...more so cause its VGA-quality marvel.

but what im thinking about is, this crazy splurge was so he can re-record all his (300?) combos for his DVD he's been working on. A DVD is 29.97i nothing else. I don't know if he will somehow be able to capture at 29.97i or if it's just 60fps. I'D IMAGINE FOR 1 THOUSAND DOLLARS, YOU'D BE ABLE TO CAPTURE AT 29.97 THO.

[Magnetro]

Here's the USA equiv of HDRECS: http://desktop.grassvalley.com/products ... /index.php

Still about $900. IF you want cheaper go with Monster-X capture cards that are really hard to find.

[Magnetro]

SH/F member laugh showed me this capture card that came out recently: http://www.skydigital.co.kr/product.php?code=561

it's supposed to do 480p through component. hopefully i'll be able to capture 480p component marvel using that and the VGA-Component box I got from newegg

[Maj]

Oh yeah? Well i'm saving up cash for an electron microscope to hook up to my capture card so i can record CvSPro at 768^768q which is a hundred times better than p! (double logarithmic scale)

[Magnetro]

ok

[Maj]

Aw, at least give me an "lol ok." I was totally impressed by your fancy alphanumerics. Honest!

(Man i am really good at making non-sarcastic sentiments sound resoundingly sarcastic. Online only though. Must be the lag.)

[Maj]

What do you guys think of this Hauppauge HD PVR thing?

A friend of mine was thinking about buying one to make a new combovid. If it's crap, i should probably warn him.

[ShinjiGohan]

there was a thread on that in SRK IIRC. But you still need a computer hooked up to it since it saves the videos directly onto your harddrive. Basically its like a HD Dazzle cept with wifi on some models.

if he doesn't have the space for an PCIe card like intensity pro or pegasus then that might do fine. but no I haven't had any first hand experience with it.

[fullmetalross]

thats what I bought.. It worked for liek 2 sec until it overheated and broke ahah. I guess that happens with some of them. It recorded pretty good video at 720p but it looked a bit dark??? I really need to send that in to get repaired. ahah.

Lots of people in the community use them to record match videos though. so im sure its cool. I just had really bad luck and they said that I could return it, ive just been really bad about mailing it off.

[Persona]

Okay guys, long story short, I borrowed my friend's Wii and decided to start capturing combos but I'm not sure if my capture card is good enough these days. Either I stick to the one I currently have (since 2003) or buy a new one (which I would rather use the money to buy a PS3 :/). But since I have like no knowledge to capture cards, I would like to know if mine is any good. Here are the specifics to it:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,396259,00.asp

http://www.esbuy.com/snaziiiusspe.html

Here's some additional info:

Video Specifications

Video Format: MPEG-2, MPEG-1 Digital (MPG,MPV)

Capture Resolution: NTSC-160*112, 160*240, 160*240, 160*480, 320*112, 326*240, 480*480, 544*480, 640*480, 720*480.
PAL-160*144, 320*144, 352*144, 160*288, 320*288, 352*288, 160*576, 320*576, 352*576, 480*576, 544*576, 640*546, 720*576

Frame Rate: 30 fps-NTSC, 25 fps-PAL

Controls: Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, Hue


Video Bit rate:

MPEG-1: 64Kbps to 5Mbps

MPEG-2: 2Mbps to 10Mbps

Audio Format: MPEG Digital and PCM (MPA, WAV)
Sampling Frequency: 32Kbps, 44.1Kbps, 48Kbps
Modes: Mono, Stereo
Input/Output: Mini Stereo Jack
Controls: Volume and Input gain

I don't really care about editing software, I just want the best quality I can get for videos. I know component cables would help quality a ton but unfortunately this card only has composite and S video. Would S video be good enough? Since I have no knowledge on this stuff at all, I don't even know if Wii uses S cable or not. And for some odd reason, SDA doesn't accept my vids because they say the quality is too poor, when IMO, the card may not be great, but I doubt it's bad.

[Maj]

My capture card maxes out at 720x480 and you've seen the quality of my videos. The Evo Ryu vid MKV looks almost exactly like the uncompressed deinterlaced clip on my computer. It's not crazy sharp HD, but i dunno, i'm pretty happy with the quality overall.

You should definitely get an S-Video cable though. It makes a big, big difference over Composite cables.

The biggest question is how long can you capture without any artifacts appearing? Cuz i don't think i've ever seen artifacts while recording with my current capture card, but my first one couldn't go 8 seconds without all kinds of stupid crap appearing. I used to have to record every combo five times to get it clean once. If you have similar problems, then it's absolutely worth the money to save yourself the time and headache. If you don't, then i'd just buy that S-Video cable and go with the PS3.

[Persona]

Hmm what do you mean by artifacts appearing?

Also I have another question. My external card allows S and composite cables to be plugged into it. If I say, plug in an S cable to my card, would I also need an S cable for my console in order to get the S cable quality? And the other options like S cable from console but capturing from composite and composite from console but S from card.

[Maj]

My old Dazzle DVC capture device would cause artifacts to appear all the time, especially in games where things were flickering every frame. Example.

If you want to record in S-Video quality from a Wii, you'll need one of these.

[Doopliss]

I can't take this anymore! Fraps+Vegas is not a good combination, I have to get me one of these. Which one should I get If I'm poor, but with a 42' LCD TV? I think it plays in 1080i.

[Dark_Chaotix]

To rec off tv?

[Maj]

I can't take this anymore! Fraps+Vegas is not a good combination, I have to get me one of these. Which one should I get If I'm poor, but with a 42' LCD TV? I think it plays in 1080i.

Well, you're probably going to hook it up to your computer which takes the TV out of the equation. Otherwise what you can do is get a splitter so you have one cord running to your TV and another running into your capture card. That way you can play on the TV while you record on your computer.

Most capture cards have output jacks too, but there's almost always lag so that's not really an option for recording combos.

[Doopliss]

I can't take this anymore! Fraps+Vegas is not a good combination, I have to get me one of these. Which one should I get If I'm poor, but with a 42' LCD TV? I think it plays in 1080i.

Well, you're probably going to hook it up to your computer which takes the TV out of the equation. Otherwise what you can do is get a splitter so you have one cord running to your TV and another running into your capture card. That way you can play on the TV while you record on your computer.

Most capture cards have output jacks too, but there's almost always lag so that's not really an option for recording combos.

Ok. Well, getting video from my 360 to the computer is my main goal XD

[Doopliss]

There, now I got my capture card, and I can record both aoudio and video. The next challenge is to find a good codec to use. Is mkv the preffered format to record to?

This is how it looks now btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqAPitaoejk

[error1]

Is mkv the preffered format to record to?

I like it, but container isn't nearly as important as your codec. Mkv can have some compatibility issues, but you get that with any container

[Dark_Chaotix]

For my vids i use mp4 container with h.264 codec.

[Doopliss]

Well, codecs and that stuff is extremely confusing to me, so my main concern is making it widescreen. I realized that I'm happy with how the quality is right now, so I don't feel like I need to mess around with that stuff too much. Besides, the software feels quite unstable, I think it has some compability problems with Windows 7 64-bit. Sound disappears easily, and I have to turn the computer off, then on (not restart) to make it work again. and sometimes the video just goes haywire, and forces me to restart. The current format is .mpg, and it seems to work just fine with YT and Vegas 8.

EDIT: Now the sound started to sound ear-rapey for some reason. I guess I could need some help with codecs and that stuff. I use the software I got with the card, WinFast PVR2, should I use something else? In virtualdub, it looks like this: http://www.filefront.com/15933077/Virtu ... -23-25.mp4

EDIT2: For some reason, they sounded less ear-rapey when I lowered the volume on my PC; and turned the folume on my headset up. Weird. What I said in edit 1 still stands though.

[Dark_Chaotix]

Definately muck around with it because im sure you will find a combination of low file size with near lossless capture. Experimentation is the key. It took me a month to get the vids the way I want to and they are decent in file size too.

Does yours do 60fps or 30fps?

[Doopliss]

Thing is, I have no idea. And I don't dare playing around with the settings randomly, i'm afraid :/ I think it might record in 60 fps, at least I didn't se any lost frames in the banjo kazooie clip, but I could clearly see it while playing it.

[Magnetro]

Ideally, you want to run SF4 @ 720P which is 1280x720 @ 60fps. If you can do that, then you just have to encode it into H264 or whatever codec you want.

[Doopliss]

I can't record HD, max size seems to be 720x480. And I have no idea what H264 is.

[Dark_Chaotix]

Well youtube has translated the vid so that you can watch it in 720p which is weird if you only captured in 480...

What i meant is with by experimenting is that you would have to play around and test standards out. What you have shown is good (well i think) but i dont think it is in 60fps. It still doesnt look fluent enough to be at that rate. You mind sending me a 20sec capture in raw format and ill see if i can edit it and see what differences I get? Cos if i can, i can send you the program i have which is the one i gave to cps2 aswell.

[Doopliss]

For the video on youtube, I used my HD MP4 codec in Vegas, so that's why you could choose 720p. I can send you a little clip, I guess: http://www.filefront.com/15937017/Video ... ENT%29.mpg

[Doopliss]

Gah, just noticed that it's like 5 frames of input delay on the capture card, there must be a way to get rid of it, right?

[Maj]

If you're playing on PC, probably not. Just gotta play with settings and hope for the best. Maybe try different (less CPU-intensive) software.

If you're playing on a separate monitor, you can just split the console output cable - run one into the capture card and the other directly into your TV.