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HD video capture - any simple solutions?

D

dock

Member
My current gaming setup has 95% of the consoles going through component, and I would really like something like a HDD recorder that I could plug the cable into and have output cables going into my TV. Does anything like this exist?

Mostly I want a box that I can 'press record' and it'll start recording what i'm doing on screen. It shouldn't have any lag, and it shouldn't effect the game at all, it should just capture what I'm doing to a big AVI file or whatever.

So, is video-capture this easy possible at all, or is this just a pipe-dream?
 
How much are you willing to spend?

There's a sweet little $350CAD/USD PC capture card by blackmagic called Intesity Pro (I think) - it has HDMI and Component (with passthrough) so you could connect to it and then go to the TV, but it means you need to have a pretty beefy computer to churn through the HD capture process... Also it's not as simple as just hitting record as you'd need to have your PC on. There's also the cheaper $250 Intesity (non-Pro), but it only has HDMI.

I'm pretty sure that's how BlimBlim and the GamerSyde guys do it, and their footage is always hot.
 
Well I'm not using an intensity pro card but something else that's quite difficult to obtain. The Intensity is excellent though.
There are three factors when it comes to HD capture:
- Price. Cards don't cost $50 like a PCI SD capture one, so be prepared to pay at least $250
- Storage. A 720p60 video captured as uncompressed takes 120 MB (as in bytes) per second. Needless to say you need at least a 3 hard drives raid0 array. The mjpg compression you can use with the Intensity was quite bad last I checked, so you might not be able to do anything but uncompressed capture for game footage
- Delay. That's the tricky one. If you capture and want to play in a good condition, you'll have to use a splitter so the signal is sent to both the TV and the PC at the same time. These aren't cheap. The intensity has a DVI out iirc, but I have no idea if it has a delay or not.
 
Blimblim said:
Well I'm not using an intensity pro card but something else that's quite difficult to obtain. The Intensity is excellent though.
There are three factors when it comes to HD capture:
- Price. Cards don't cost $50 like a PCI SD capture one, so be prepared to pay at least $250
- Storage. A 720p60 video captured as uncompressed takes 120 MB (as in bytes) per second. Needless to say you need at least a 3 hard drives raid0 array. The mjpg compression you can use with the Intensity was quite bad last I checked, so you might not be able to do anything but uncompressed capture for game footage
- Delay. That's the tricky one. If you capture and want to play in a good condition, you'll have to use a splitter so the signal is sent to both the TV and the PC at the same time. These aren't cheap. The intensity has a DVI out iirc, but I have no idea if it has a delay or not.
Click to expand...

Don't know about the pro-setups. But for the consumer range, I suppose you cannot avoid lag IMHO, everything is buffered then played.

I don't know for broadcast range products, but they are not in the hundreds US dollar range.

A splitter and a consumer grade recorder may be a more reasonable setup.
 
Blimblim said:
Well I'm not using an intensity pro card but something else that's quite difficult to obtain. The Intensity is excellent though.
There are three factors when it comes to HD capture:
- Price. Cards don't cost $50 like a PCI SD capture one, so be prepared to pay at least $250
- Storage. A 720p60 video captured as uncompressed takes 120 MB (as in bytes) per second. Needless to say you need at least a 3 hard drives raid0 array. The mjpg compression you can use with the Intensity was quite bad last I checked, so you might not be able to do anything but uncompressed capture for game footage
- Delay. That's the tricky one. If you capture and want to play in a good condition, you'll have to use a splitter so the signal is sent to both the TV and the PC at the same time. These aren't cheap. The intensity has a DVI out iirc, but I have no idea if it has a delay or not.
Click to expand...

I think it does have delay, but I don't know if it's bad enough to make the game unplayable. And, yeah, splitter is definitely the way to go, but as Blim said, that's just gonna add to the cost.

As for capture -- I know the Intensity Pro has some decent proprietary compression. So much so that you could get away with capturing to a single (non-RAIDed) SataII drive.... BUT when I used it, it was capturing at 1080p24 via HDMI and, again, the computer was pretty hefty in the processing/memory department (as evident by being able to capture and compress without dropping frames at 24f).

Blim: Yeah, I knew that the rig you guys use is much better than the Intensity (which is entry-level), but for some reason I thought you were using a Blackmagic product (a higher-end one)...
 
I use one of these little dudes to split the Component source:

pRS1C-3849554w345.jpg


$50 at Radioshack.

Solves the lag issue fairly well. Playing in a little capture window with even a small amount of delay is a pretty tough task.
 
I was looking at the blackmagic intensity pro mainly for the uncompressed stuff. But I simply will not break bank on at least 3 new drives. It was the blackmagic or the Hauppauge HD PVR. The problem I had with the HD PVR was that it always compressed the data with H.264. So you couldn't change what it was encoded in unless you wanted to compress it a second time with another compression technique. Also, you couldn't get at the data uncompressed. I was able to get some people to get me some caps and videos from both and I could barely tell the difference between the uncompressed shot (off of a ps3) and the h.264 compression (off of a 360). So I went with the Hauppauge.
 
copybeaver said:
I was looking at the blackmagic intensity pro mainly for the uncompressed stuff. But I simply will not break bank on at least 3 new drives. It was the blackmagic or the Hauppauge HD PVR. The problem I had with the HD PVR was that it always compressed the data with H.264. So you couldn't change what it was encoded in unless you wanted to compress it a second time with another compression technique. Also, you couldn't get at the data uncompressed. I was able to get some people to get me some caps and videos from both and I could barely tell the difference between the uncompressed shot (off of a ps3) and the h.264 compression (off of a 360). So I went with the Hauppauge.
Click to expand...

How much is the Hauppauge?

I need uncompressed for (non-gaming) video capture, but if the Hauppage is cheap enough and you're saying it does H.264 @ 60fps without much compression loss it may be a viable secondary option for me. I keep half-heartedly dipping into video-based videogame coverage, but if I spent the money I would probably be a little more commited to it.
 
-Rogue5- said:
Blim: Yeah, I knew that the rig you guys use is much better than the Intensity (which is entry-level), but for some reason I thought you were using a Blackmagic product (a higher-end one)...
Click to expand...
I used an blackmagic multibridge pci express when I started doing 720p captures, but the component input was blurry as hell. Horrible. Basically it was like capturing at 480p and then scaling to 720p. Urg.
The intensity is much better.
As for what I use, I'd date to say it's even more consumer level than the intensity, only much more "ghetto" :D
 
urk said:
I use one of these little dudes to split the Component source:

pRS1C-3849554w345.jpg


$50 at Radioshack.

Solves the lag issue fairly well. Playing in a little capture window with even a small amount of delay is a pretty tough task.
Click to expand...
A link to RadioShack's product pages would have been of great help...
 
I capture uncompressed 720p video with Intensity Pro to 3 x WD RAID edition SATA II drives.

The problem with Intensity Pro is its max. 4:2:2 YUV capture which the red will be downscaled and cause problem when upscaled again (with many 4:2:2 to 4:4:4 converter).
 
dock UK said:
Mostly I want a box that I can 'press record' and it'll start recording what i'm doing on screen. It shouldn't have any lag, and it shouldn't effect the game at all, it should just capture what I'm doing to a big AVI file or whatever.
Click to expand...

Just because this bugs the crap out of me, saving to "a big AVI file" means nothing. AVI is a container, and that's all it is. So what you want to care about is what codec you're saving out to, because that is going to be important depending on what you'll be using the video for later.
 
urk said:
Well aren't you Mr. Fancy! ;)
Click to expand...
Well, this is one essential part of the system when you want to do good quality captures and still be able to play the game as you would normally do.
shidoshi said:
Just because this bugs the crap out of me, saving to "a big AVI file" means nothing. AVI is a container, and that's all it is. So what you want to care about is what codec you're saving out to, because that is going to be important depending on what you'll be using the video for later.
Click to expand...
Just because you are in a nitpick mood, .avi can actually be two kinds of containers. Either it's the real avi (audio video interleave) container, or the OpenDML one. Both use the .avi extension, but they are quite different.
 
The intensity pro comes with a component pass through, its the same adapter as the component in. HDMI has In and Out. The only game where it is slightly noticeable (the lag) is Rock Band or Guitar hero, both of which are easily fixed, and may only be a result of the games being set up for my projector, not my LCD.
 
Blimblim said:
Just because you are in a nitpick mood, .avi can actually be two kinds of containers. Either it's the real avi (audio video interleave) container, or the OpenDML one. Both use the .avi extension, but they are quite different.
Click to expand...

Right, but my point was, saying "I want to end up with an AVI file" isn't the mindset you want to have. The importance is what your end goal with the video is, and making sure that whatever codec you put into whatever container you use is going to do the job you need it to do.
 
I use the Radio Shack distribution amp as well, to simultaneously send to my PC and TV.

On the PC, I'm using a Grass Valley Pegasus capture card. It works beautifully--one click and I am indeed capturing to "a big AVI file" with no effect on my game. It's not as big as most cards produce, though--it compresses (lossless, at least to the naked eye) in hardware, no codec required. It keeps the required PC specs down: you don't even need a 16x PCI-Express port, just a normal one, and a single SATA II drive instead of a RAID setup. Editing programs still read it as a raw AVI file. But it's really pricey--$900 when I bought it at the beginning of the year.
 
-Rogue5- said:
How much is the Hauppauge?

I need uncompressed for (non-gaming) video capture, but if the Hauppage is cheap enough and you're saying it does H.264 @ 60fps without much compression loss it may be a viable secondary option for me. I keep half-heartedly dipping into video-based videogame coverage, but if I spent the money I would probably be a little more commited to it.
Click to expand...


Give me a bit (I'm doing some gaming at the moment) and I can give you the two captures I mentioned in my original post.

Blim: You mention the blurriness from one of the blackmagic cards. The capture I looked at from ratchet was through the intensity pro using the breakout cable converting component to DVI (that's what it looked like). I noticed the uncompressed shot I was given, seemed blurry. Do you use the breakout cable for your capturing or do you have debug kits so you can use the hdmi?

Also, if anyone is thinking about buying the blackmagic intensity. You can use the 25% cashback on ebay. People are selling them for about retail price and under.
 
I'm not using an intensity card, I actually never even saw one ;)
I do all my captures with component, since it's the only way to be fair with both consoles.
 
Alrighty, here are the two shots.

GTA4 - Hauppauge

Ratchet - Blackmagic

So at first I thought the blackmagic was hands down better... but that's just because ratchet looks better than GTA. The screen cap from GTA looks exactly like how I played it... pretty ugly in my opinion. So then I looked for patches of compression to "like" colors and couldn't really find them. I actually have the video (it's fresh from the capture card... in other words it wasn't reencoded to wmv/mp4. It's just the TS file that is spit out when capturing) the gta4 screen was capped from and couldn't really see much compression. If you want it, i can post a link (if I can find where I got it from).

Anyways, aliasing was my friend here. You can see the aliasing along the edges of the roads. To me, that's a good sign as it looks like it preserves the input data well. The ratchet one is harder to judge because it's just overall fuzzy. So since it was really hard to distinguish between the two, I just went with the Hauppauge.

I also saw an NCAA 08(07?) 720p capture from the PS3. lt was reencoded to wmv and I could see the compression take effect then. Even then, it was still really good considering it was encoded twice.

The Hauppauge is 250 bucks and is on backorder until mid-july (at least that's what they just told me yesterday). So I haven't gotten mine yet. Peeps on avs are saying that 720p is 60 fps.

EDIT: I did see some really nice uncompressed 1080 shots from the blackmagic. My guess is the difference between using the hdmi against the breakout cable. Using the hdmi, there's no conversion (at least I think) since it's digital->digital. Using the breakout cable, you put component cables that are then converted to dvi (i think dvi). So there might be some quality loss through that process. Though I'd guess if you're using the hauppauge, you're converting that analog signal from component to digital before the compression. So I dunno...
 
Anyone know of an easy-ish way (cost not so much a concern) to get 720p60fps AND 5.1 audio out of the 360 + PS3? Currently using an Intensity Pro to get the 720p60fps, but I'd love to also love to get 5.1 with it.
 
Don't forget about the HDMI HDCP copy-protection.

I use an Intensity card, but it will not capture from retail kits. 360 and PS3 retail units do not let you disable the HDCP, thus you won't get anything thru an HDMI connection.

EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY!
 
DKo5 said:
Anyone know of an easy-ish way (cost not so much a concern) to get 720p60fps AND 5.1 audio out of the 360 + PS3? Currently using an Intensity Pro to get the 720p60fps, but I'd love to also love to get 5.1 with it.
Click to expand...

Are you using Component? Or are you getting around the copy-protection another way?
 
Blimblim said:
I'm not using an intensity card, I actually never even saw one ;)
I do all my captures with component, since it's the only way to be fair with both consoles.
Click to expand...
Nitpicking but wouldn't fair be using each consoles best?
 
Do any of these cards work at all in Linux? As Video4Linux devices even?
I'm interested in that Hauppauge HD thing, but I can't find it listed anywhere yet, not here.
 
bcn-ron said:
Do any of these cards work at all in Linux? As Video4Linux devices even?
I'm interested in that Hauppauge HD thing, but I can't find it listed anywhere yet, not here.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how compatible the hauppauge is with Linux. But by "not here," where do you mean? The hauppauge webstore has it. So does Dell. If you search for it on froogle you can get some stores. But they're all backordered right now.
 
Team Klimt said:
Don't forget about the HDMI HDCP copy-protection.

I use an Intensity card, but it will not capture from retail kits. 360 and PS3 retail units do not let you disable the HDCP, thus you won't get anything thru an HDMI connection.

EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY!
Click to expand...

I think the 360 outputs games over HDMI w/o HDCP. I'm curious what Eurogamer uses and how they get around the PS3's restrictive HDMI output.
 
copybeaver said:
I'm not sure how compatible the hauppauge is with Linux. But by "not here," where do you mean? The hauppauge webstore has it. So does Dell. If you search for it on froogle you can get some stores. But they're all backordered right now.
Click to expand...
Europe. It's not even on my local version of Hauppauge's website. Backordered status would be an improvement, seeing as I don't have any place to order it from at all.
 
bcn-ron said:
Europe. It's not even on my local version of Hauppauge's website. Backordered status would be an improvement, seeing as I don't have any place to order it from at all.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about the NTSC/PAL stuff, but would you have a problem if you imported it from the US? I don't know if dell ships outside of the US... there are a couple other merchants around too.
 
DKo5 said:
Dev/test kits don't have HDCP.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the only way. Seems like this whole thing is for naught if you really want uncompressed HD video and you don't have access to a Test unit. Sorry OP.
 
Team Klimt said:
Yeah, that's the only way. Seems like this whole thing is for naught if you really want uncompressed HD video and you don't have access to a Test unit. Sorry OP.
Click to expand...

I don't think the OP said he/she specifically wanted uncompressed. Also, the OP stated he/she is using component cables. So HDCP shouldn't matter. In either case, the blackmagic and hauppauge have been laid out for you (OP). I guess I should have addressed your lag question. I asked on avsforum as I'm concerned about the lag as well. Through the preview screen (i.e. running your capture program through your monitor), there's a half second lag at max which is bad enough to screw you up. However, using the component passthrough in the device, there's minimal lag (sounds "good enough" the way I read it). The people here that own blackmagics can tell you about lag. I'd suspect none since there's no encoding on chip like there is on the hauppauge.
 
copybeaver said:
I don't know anything about the NTSC/PAL stuff, but would you have a problem if you imported it from the US? I don't know if dell ships outside of the US... there are a couple other merchants around too.
Click to expand...
PAL vs NTSC is a non-issue for component and HDMI signals. They are the same anywhere in the world.
But I really don't want to import 250$ worth of hardware from the US only to find out it doesn't work with my software setup. Returning it would be an enormous hassle. I need to have certain features, and I don't want to rely on bundled software to provide them. The stuff they threw in with the ImpactVCB (which is awesome btw, but SD only) was certainly not usable for what I'm trying to do. That one works nicely as a V4L device though, which allows me to use tvtime + my own modifications.
 
copybeaver said:
Alrighty, here are the two shots.

GTA4 - Hauppauge

Ratchet - Blackmagic

So at first I thought the blackmagic was hands down better... but that's just because ratchet looks better than GTA. The screen cap from GTA looks exactly like how I played it... pretty ugly in my opinion. So then I looked for patches of compression to "like" colors and couldn't really find them. I actually have the video (it's fresh from the capture card... in other words it wasn't reencoded to wmv/mp4. It's just the TS file that is spit out when capturing) the gta4 screen was capped from and couldn't really see much compression. If you want it, i can post a link (if I can find where I got it from).

Anyways, aliasing was my friend here. You can see the aliasing along the edges of the roads. To me, that's a good sign as it looks like it preserves the input data well. The ratchet one is harder to judge because it's just overall fuzzy. So since it was really hard to distinguish between the two, I just went with the Hauppauge.

I also saw an NCAA 08(07?) 720p capture from the PS3. lt was reencoded to wmv and I could see the compression take effect then. Even then, it was still really good considering it was encoded twice.

The Hauppauge is 250 bucks and is on backorder until mid-july (at least that's what they just told me yesterday). So I haven't gotten mine yet. Peeps on avs are saying that 720p is 60 fps.

EDIT: I did see some really nice uncompressed 1080 shots from the blackmagic. My guess is the difference between using the hdmi against the breakout cable. Using the hdmi, there's no conversion (at least I think) since it's digital->digital. Using the breakout cable, you put component cables that are then converted to dvi (i think dvi). So there might be some quality loss through that process. Though I'd guess if you're using the hauppauge, you're converting that analog signal from component to digital before the compression. So I dunno...
Click to expand...

I was looking at all this a while back, got some advice from BlimBlim. Haven't yet bought a card, but your post is making me lean towards the Hauppauge. Definitely looks decent enough! And I got a beefy computer so I don't believe dropped frames is going to be a problem.

Edit: Only benefit with the Intensity as I see it, is that it has HDMI as well as Component... the Hauppauge only seems to support Component.
 
To get rid of lag just buy a component splitter as was mentioned earlier in the thread. It'll save you tons of headaches.
 
Thunderbear said:
I was looking at all this a while back, got some advice from BlimBlim. Haven't yet bought a card, but your post is making me lean towards the Hauppauge. Definitely looks decent enough! And I got a beefy computer so I don't believe dropped frames is going to be a problem.
Click to expand...

Dropped frames can always be a problem when you're doing HD @ 60fps. Be ready to drop some coin on drives to stripe.
 
bcn-ron said:
PAL vs NTSC is a non-issue for component and HDMI signals. They are the same anywhere in the world.
But I really don't want to import 250$ worth of hardware from the US only to find out it doesn't work with my software setup. Returning it would be an enormous hassle. I need to have certain features, and I don't want to rely on bundled software to provide them. The stuff they threw in with the ImpactVCB (which is awesome btw, but SD only) was certainly not usable for what I'm trying to do. That one works nicely as a V4L device though, which allows me to use tvtime + my own modifications.
Click to expand...

Understood. Hopefully you can order it somewhere over there some time in the near future.

Thunderbear said:
I was looking at all this a while back, got some advice from BlimBlim. Haven't yet bought a card, but your post is making me lean towards the Hauppauge. Definitely looks decent enough! And I got a beefy computer so I don't believe dropped frames is going to be a problem.

Edit: Only benefit with the Intensity as I see it, is that it has HDMI as well as Component... the Hauppauge only seems to support Component.
Click to expand...

Yeah when I first saw the blackmagic, I REALLY wanted it due to the HDMI. However, I quickly realized it was useless for me because I want to archive TV broadcasts and record gameplay off my 360/ps3. So hdmi wouldn't work in either of those situations (no debug units and damn HDCP!). Like I said though, I saw some AMAZING uncompressed HDMI shots from cameras off the blackmagic. Though, that's the main purpose of the blackmagic... video editing. They really push the "get uncompressed video off of your camcorder". So if you can use the HDMI, then it might be worth it to take over the Hauppauge.

Another thing that put me over on the Hauppauge is that I don't need a massive raid nor massively pimp computer. My 2 year old desktop satisfies all the reqs. And I hate upgrading my desktop :(.
 
DKo5 said:
Dropped frames can always be a problem when you're doing HD @ 60fps. Be ready to drop some coin on drives to stripe.
Click to expand...

I got about 1.4tb, all pretty recent and speedy drives. That should be alright, no? 60fps would be nice, but I'm happy with 30fps.

We'll see though, I am probably going to hold off for a little while.
 
copybeaver said:
Understood. Hopefully you can order it somewhere over there some time in the near future.



Yeah when I first saw the blackmagic, I REALLY wanted it due to the HDMI. However, I quickly realized it was useless for me because I want to archive TV broadcasts and record gameplay off my 360/ps3. So hdmi wouldn't work in either of those situations (no debug units and damn HDCP!). Like I said though, I saw some AMAZING uncompressed HDMI shots from cameras off the blackmagic. Though, that's the main purpose of the blackmagic... video editing. They really push the "get uncompressed video off of your camcorder". So if you can use the HDMI, then it might be worth it to take over the Hauppauge.

Another thing that put me over on the Hauppauge is that I don't need a massive raid nor massively pimp computer. My 2 year old desktop satisfies all the reqs. And I hate upgrading my desktop :(.
Click to expand...

Ivanovic <3! Damn she's fine.

Anyway, so I can't capture PS3 game footage or Bluray footage because of HDCP? So HDMI is useless for PS3? Did you get a component cable for the PS3?
 
Thunderbear said:
Ivanovic <3! Damn she's fine.

Anyway, so I can't capture PS3 game footage or Bluray footage because of HDCP? So HDMI is useless for PS3? Did you get a component cable for the PS3?
Click to expand...

HDCP screws you over yeah. I ordered the official sony component cables (20 bucks) off amazon. I don't mind their piss slow free shipping times as I won't get my Hauppauge until mid july anyways.
 
For people who wants the Intensity, if you capture uncompressed, be prepared to get a fast RAID 0 disk array. Here is the BlackMagic speed test of my setup.

bm-hdd-sp.png


I use 2 disk RAID 0 before, but it will drop frame from time to time with uncompressed.

Or you can use the bundled MJPEG compressor to save bandwidth, but I am not very happy with the quality when you want to capture stills from the stream.
 
Just as a note, the 360 has better component out then the PS3 seems to.

You can change the codec to just about whatever you want, at least on OSX, using Final Cut and an Intensity Pro. Ive got some video up on my site using the Intensity Pro (http://ptoponline.com), just note by the time it gets up to my site, its usually been compressed 2 or 3 times. If watching from Vimeo, create an account and download the original HD file. Anyone with questions about the intensity, PM me!
 
maskrider said:
For people who wants the Intensity, if you capture uncompressed, be prepared to get a fast RAID 0 disk array. Here is the BlackMagic speed test of my setup.

bm-hdd-sp.png


I use 2 disk RAID 0 before, but it will drop frame from time to time with uncompressed.

Or you can use the bundled MJPEG compressor to save bandwidth, but I am not very happy with the quality when you want to capture stills from the stream.
Click to expand...

That's insane! But so worth it for uncompressed!
 
maskrider said:
For people who wants the Intensity, if you capture uncompressed, be prepared to get a fast RAID 0 disk array. Here is the BlackMagic speed test of my setup.

I use 2 disk RAID 0 before, but it will drop frame from time to time with uncompressed.

Or you can use the bundled MJPEG compressor to save bandwidth, but I am not very happy with the quality when you want to capture stills from the stream.
Click to expand...

Is that just three 250GB drives striped?
 
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