Guide: Capture SDA Acceptable Video (includes live streaming)

nate

2013-03-03 10:21:21 pm

maybe look for an ac97 driver.

JohnMcClane

2013-03-04 07:41:26 pm

AKA breakyoumegama n

I'm not certain I can use AC97 on this motherboard. It has the Realtek ALC892 Audio chipset on it.

Anyways there's not much of anything I can find on the internet about this issue. There's some video on youtube but it's incorrect from my experience.

I thought I might be able to do the video through the USB stick and the audio through the Black Magic Intensity Pro that I have, but for some reason, the BMIP does not pick up the console's sounds when I try to get sound from it. Funny, because it works just fine with my PS3. Not sure what to do.

I've tried installing the Windows 7 drivers in compatibility mode but that doesn't seem to work either.

nate

2013-03-04 07:48:49 pm

for clarity, the knockoff easycaps with high quality audio are ac97 codecs in my experience. certainly all the ones that i gave out were. the driver should be included with the os. it is in windows 7. if they decided not to include it in windows 8 then they are douchebags but you should still be able to install it off realtek or whoever's site. or even microsoft's if you can use the driver search function or whatever it is.

Anemptybox

2013-03-10 07:55:50 am

I own an official EzCAP and something I've noticed is that the screen is noticeable darker when playing NTSC (PS2 in this case). Anyone have a clue if it's the EzCAP or something I might be doing wrong? Thanks.

Anemptybox

2013-03-23 01:13:52 pm

For my question above: Here's two short (raw files) videos, one NTSC and the other PAL, showing how much worse NTSC looks for me (lightning/darkness). I'm playing TimeSplitters 2:

NTSC

PAL

I have brightness set on almost 170 for NTSC and only around 150 for PAL.

nate

2013-03-23 01:42:08 pm

just throwing this out there: are you using an unpowered splitter?

Anemptybox

Edit history:

Anemptybox: 2013-03-23 03:46:40 pm

Anemptybox: 2013-03-23 03:46:08 pm

Anemptybox: 2013-03-23 03:45:34 pm

2013-03-23 03:45:13 pm

I'm using these but I don't think they're the problem because when I recorded those two short videos, the cable went directly to the EzCAP and it was the official Sony s-video cable. The same thing happens with another composite + s-video cable I have. When using the cheap cable, the s-video doesn't go through a splitter.

The picture looks good on my TV. I'm playing on a PAL PS2 if that makes any difference.

EDIT: Sorry if anyone saw the looooong link I accidently posted for the RCA splitters.

TheThrillness

2013-03-23 07:40:42 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

How are you running the NTSC game on a PAL PS2?

I looked at the clips and I see what you mean. My only guess is that maybe the PAL PS2 is still outputting PAL color characteristics which is messing with the NTSC signal.

Is this the same for all games or just TS 2?

Anemptybox

2013-03-24 03:47:45 am

My PS2 has a chip in it so I can play all games.

Well, I guess the only other game I've tried is TS1. Maybe I should try an entirely different game too, just to make sure.

TheThrillness

Edit history:

TheThrillness: 2013-03-24 04:47:54 pm

2013-03-24 04:47:11 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Again I'm no expert but maybe the PAL PS2 when chipped for PS2 it is actually sending PAL 60 color format and not the original NTSC format. You'd need someone with an actual NTSC PS2 and the game to verify though.

See if you get a good color picture by selecting PAL 60 with the NTSC game.

Anemptybox

2013-03-24 06:20:38 pm

When I select PAL 60 I don't get colour and I can't figure out if it's possible. The bad lightning/darkness effect seem to still be the same, though.

Is the quality good enough on the NTSC clip I posted? As long as the quality is good enough, I guess it's still OK.

TheThrillness

2013-03-24 06:21:58 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

You'll need to post if using a modded PS2 is accepted by SDA since it might fall under "hardware modification".

Anemptybox

Edit history:

Anemptybox: 2013-03-24 06:34:40 pm

2013-03-24 06:34:16 pm

On this page it says this at the "Hardware modification" section:

"Players may not modify their consoles, with a few exceptions. The only extra or modified hardware allowed are mod chips and boot disks used for playing imports, audio/video mods to allow old systems to output in higher quality, and official add-ons, such as the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak . . ."

It seems to be legal.

TheThrillness

Edit history:

TheThrillness: 2013-03-24 07:00:10 pm

2013-03-24 06:59:26 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Yeah that's gonna be fine. I hadn't read it in awhile so I was unsure.

Do try another game to verify the issue.

Anemptybox

2013-03-26 02:40:29 pm

Here's a test for 007 Nightfire:

NTSC

PAL

NTSC brightness was set to 165 and PAL about 150.

Same problem as TS in my eyes. Still, do you think the NTSC video is good enough quality? Thanks for all the help.

Sush

2013-04-05 04:43:27 am

So I bought an official EzGamer and have it all set up. It works fine with my PAL ps2 but the picture is blurry as Hell when I connect it to my new NTSC ps2.

I'm in a pal region (uk) and have the capture set to NTSC 442 (or similar numbers can't remeber currently). The funny thing is even if I connect the console straight to my laptop, and avoid the tv, or of I connect it straight to the tv with no ezcap connected the image is still screwed.

Anyone know a reason for this? I tried different resolution settings on the tv and the ps2 but still no changes.

nate

2013-04-05 08:15:12 am

screenshots?

would be so funny if it's just normal ntsc composite picture and someone from pal-land doesn't realize how bad we had it ...

Sush

2013-04-05 02:54:49 pm

Quote from nate:

screenshots?

would be so funny if it's just normal ntsc composite picture and someone from pal-land doesn't realize how bad we had it ...

If this is how bad you had it god damn. These are screenshots at (or near) the resolution that I captured them in from a HQ Anri encode.

http://postimg.org/image/awe1jhmz1/
http://postimg.org/image/fjk3l9abx/
http://postimg.org/image/3kd6rou4t/
http://postimg.org/image/4b5wxgwi5/
http://postimg.org/image/uysbfv2j1/
http://postimg.org/image/onn3zg1al/

I had a chance to compare it to a NTSC run on twitch and the quality on that still looked better than mine. Most noticable around the 1999 on the FF8 logo and around Squalls head. Thoughts? Have I just played the high-res retextures on the PC port for too long?

TheThrillness

Edit history:

TheThrillness: 2013-04-05 03:05:10 pm

TheThrillness: 2013-04-05 03:04:04 pm

2013-04-05 03:03:43 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Looks like you are just suffering from dot crawl due to composite capture as nate mentioned above. You are pretty much stuck with this unless you want to go the S-Video route but it will cost more to get an S-Video distribution amplifier.

Sush

2013-04-05 03:32:05 pm

Forgive me for I know not what I say but is there anychance a deinterlace filter for Virtualdub could improve the quality? Had to look up what dot crawling was and this seemed to be the only response to other peoples problems.

I'll give this quality another go and maybe record a full segment before commiting to another piece of hardware.

TheThrillness

2013-04-05 04:09:04 pm

thethrillness.blogspot.com

Nate should answer this. I'm just like..... what you would call an average video user. Tongue

While on the subject.... Nate, any plans to work de dot crawling into yua using DeDot?

nate

2013-04-05 04:15:47 pm

yeah, that's dot crawl. just use s-video and it will go away.

and i don't think i should be encouraging people to use substandard capture methods. s-video cables are so cheap. no one should be capturing ntsc with composite unless it's nes or something where there's no s-video cable for it.

honorableJay

2013-04-05 04:30:06 pm

The Dork Knight himself.

Sush: you don't need to use a deinterlace filter for vdub since Anri will handle that for you. As Nate said, just get a s-video cable and a distribution amp with s-video and the image will clear up. Dot crawling is pretty common when using composite for recording.

Sush

2013-04-10 07:44:31 am

I got an S-video cable for my PS2 but don't have a splitter to connect it to my tv and laptop simultaneously.

I was playing around with just connecting it to my laptop and it all seems fine, the video is much sharper and the dot crawling has disappeared. The only downside I can see is that the audio lags slightly through virtualdub but is synced in the final video.

My question is apart from the initial audio lag and the ability to play on a tv rather than the virtualdub window what other benefits are there to getting a splitter? Does the quality get effected in anyway?

TheThrillness

2013-04-10 08:02:57 am

thethrillness.blogspot.com

You might want to look into Amarec to eliminate the audio lagging. It's far superior to VirtualDub for capturing.

The quality won't be affected if you use a powered splitter. The only advantage is the preview lag on pc. If you can cope with it you don't really need a splitter.