Need a CC with PAL60 capability for the UK

[usernameinvalid]

Since all XBOX360 games are now PAL60 only (GoW and Halo3 namely), i would like something i can use to record gameplay in PAL60.

My current PC came with a Hauppauge WinTV PCI card, but Hauppauge cannot be bothered to support PAL60 (quite literally). I have tried everything to get PAL60 to work with no luck, also i wouldn't want to use WinTV as when recording it adds a 2 second delay, making it unusable for what i want.

I would like to split the signal between my monitor (VGA) and the CC, so i can play without fear of the delay and to improve my experience. I have the standard XBOX360 cable, the VGA cable and the SVideo cable, so connecting to the CC shouldn't be a problem.

Price shouldn't be a problem as i will be asking to get it for my birthday, in a couple of weeks time, but hopefully something that costs £50 or less. Ideally someone could recommend a long list of CC's with feedback on which is best based on value for money and quality of the output (i did check the CC list, but there is not a "PAL60" filter option, and i don't have time to go through pages of details.)

I am in the UK so links to websites which sell to the UK would also be appreciated.

Thanks, Jamie .

EDIT: I don't mind either Internal or External devices, what ever is best, but i would need a low-profile PCI card for internal.

[RedFarmer]

You have the btwincap drivers which lets you capture PAL60, but for your delay problem i do not know.

[themaster1]

To begin with, if your card can play pal & ntsc it therefore can play "pal 60 hertz"
Secondly did you try to use the software "Dscaler" (freeware) to see what you could get as a result ?

Pal60 is not a "standard color system format" hence i don't see any good reason to output a xbox360 's video signal in pal60.

My belief is that your xbox360 was originally made for the US market (ntsc)

The thing to remember is that pal60 is not pal this is ntsc hence you must watch in ntsc mode(720x480 or 320x240) for the preview window and record it the same way.

My card does it (meaning plays pal,ntsc and secam) "terratec cynergy 250 pci" (product discontinued i believe) but try her childs go to the terratec's website and see what they've got for you.

[usernameinvalid]

Thanks for the replies.

I have tried DScaler before, but it would not recognise my CC properly (same as VDub).

My XBOX360 is a launch UK model, so it runs PAL. But all new games which are coming out seem to be PAL60 only, Halo 3 and Gears of War are the ones i play at the moment. I personally don't know why it is PAL60 only, but i guess there must be a good reason or laziness behind it. I understand that PAL60 is effectively PAL50 modified to be NTSC (with a few minor differences), and the Japanese developed it.

Also in reply to themaster1, PAL60 and NTSC are different. One system cannot run the other, although like i said they are very similar. If i output as NTSC_Japan in WinTV i get a very grainy black and white picture with lots of lines (forgotten their name).

I will try the drivers which RedFarmer linked, but from the looks of it they are for a different brand of cards. I will edit/post later once i have had a chance to try them later.

[themaster1]

I've read some microsoft documentation and apparently you have the choice the pick normal pal or pal 60.

Try with normal pal (50hertz)

in:
PAL settings

[jman98]

You're new so I will cut you a little slack, but you could easily have done some research yourself on the internet about this. I got curious and poked around a little. This link might be of some use to you as it appears to suggest some cards that can do PAL 60
http://haloforum.net/capture-card-recommendations-t2872.html?s=64751a9881272d084c91502...a4&p=10405

Yes, it appears that the Hauppauge card cannot capture PAL 60 video. My reading indicates that few cards support PAL 60. Note that most of us here want to record TV shows, old VHS tapes and DVDs. We're not really interested in recording ourselves playing video games. I really don't understand the attraction in doing this, but that's your business, not mine. Yes, Hauppauge records everthing with a 2 second delay. This isn't a problem for those of us who aren't recording videogame play. Hauppauge does this you can pause watching something - it will actually continue to record while you "pause" it and you can resume watching it later, hence the 2 second delay.

I read that some games do output PAL 60. It's some kind of weird PAL and NTSC hybrid. The color space is wrong for NTSC, hence NTSC TVs can't display it correctly. Most recent European TVs are said to support it.

[usernameinvalid]

I've read some microsoft documentation and apparently you have the choice the pick normal pal or pal 60.

Try with normal pal (50hertz)

in:
PAL settings

I know how to change the PAL Settings, and i would run on PAL50 if i could. But as i have said the newer games are PAL60 only.

@jman98:

Thanks for the link, i will look into the brands mentioned there.

I want to be able to record my gaming for messing around with the game (i.e. glitches), something that adds replay once you have completed it. Weird for you i guess, but i am not alone.

[spin]

To begin with, if your card can play pal & ntsc it therefore can play "pal 60 hertz"

This is sadly not the case. They may 'play' it but not necessarily as a clear full colour image like it would at pal 50 hertz or NTSC with matching inputs.

I have also been trying to do the same thing the OP has. It's not a widely covered topic and after a lot of searching this forum seems to be the best place to get an answer. I bought an ADS Videoxpress USB device (£40) but see this thread for the results - https://forum.videohelp.com/topic333539.html So close, but not quite.

It is supposed to work with PAL 60 as that is an option in the settings, and some people seem to have had it working. I'm currently in a lengthy interchange with their support to try and get it working properly but it's slow going. If I do get success I'll let you know.

The 360 (like the original xbox) is annoying in that it outputs in a way that is so obscure there's been little incentive to support it for capture cards, but now there is a growing demand so hopefully we'll have more choice of cards in the future.

[themaster1]

While this is the most common occurrence, some Xbox and Xbox 360 games are region-free encoded, since Microsoft's policy is for publishers to decide. Nintendo handhelds are region-free, but their consoles are not
source : wikipedia


During the mid-90s the practice of modifying consoles such as the SNES and Mega Drive to allow 60 Hz operation became somewhat common among PAL gamers, due to the rise in NTSC/60 Hz capable PAL TVs and the relatively simple nature of the modifications.[1] Beginning with the fifth generation of consoles, which introduced more powerful hardware and 3D graphics, developers had the ability to output at full PAL resolution without borders or stretching, although games still typically ran slower and all ran at 50 Hz. Beginning with the Dreamcast and continuing through the sixth generation of consoles, developers began including PAL60 modes in their games. Games that run at PAL60 are produced with the same colour encoding system as 50 Hz PAL signals, but with the NTSC resolution and field rate of 60 Hz, providing an identical gaming experience to their NTSC counterparts.

source: wikipedia


Pal60 = 720x480 / 29.970 fps or 30 fps that's the way y'all must record through your card and again, my card (terratec cynergy 250 pci as most of the recent cards) support pal 60.I use this mode everyday since two good months....

[jman98]

I want to be able to record my gaming for messing around with the game (i.e. glitches), something that adds replay once you have completed it. Weird for you i guess, but i am not alone.

Thanks for trying to explain but nothing you said makes any sense to me. Why do you call "messing around with the game" glitches? To me a glitch is a mistake. Why would you want to record mistakes? What the hell does "adds replay once you have completed it" mean? I am no closer to understanding why this interests you than I was with my first post. Your explanation might as well have been in Greek for all the good it did me.

[spin]

I want to be able to record my gaming for messing around with the game (i.e. glitches), something that adds replay once you have completed it. Weird for you i guess, but i am not alone.

Thanks for trying to explain but nothing you said makes any sense to me. Why do you call "messing around with the game" glitches? To me a glitch is a mistake. Why would you want to record mistakes? What the hell does "adds replay once you have completed it" mean? I am no closer to understanding why this interests you than I was with my first post. Your explanation might as well have been in Greek for all the good it did me.

I'll try from my point of view.

Recording games is useful for improving your performance. If you're playing a shooting game or a driving game and you record your performance you can watch it back and see what things you did well and what things you didn't and make corrections. Or if somebody else comes up with a really good strategy for beating one part of the game or some really fast lines around the track they can share those using videos.

Glitches in videogames are usually unplanned/unusual things that happen when the AI gets confused or the physics in the world behave oddly or you manage to get to places where you weren't supposed to. There is usually some technique for making the glitch happen or getting to it that can be very hard to explain in words and so recording a video of it as a tutorial for others is by far the best solution.

Some treat it like an explorer would uncharted lands, and recording it is proof that you've actually found or seen something weird. Most games will include easter eggs of some kind and people will post videos if they find them.

Imagine if you were driving along a track and suddenly you somehow slid off beyond the normal track boundaries and were driving around in the scenery. Its clearly a mistake as far as the game developers are concerned but it can be fun for the gamer to see behind the scenes. Particularly once you've had a game for a long time, playing with glitches can extend the game's lifetime and 'add replay value', which is what I think usernameinvalid meant.

Don't get me wrong I still buy games to play them, but the glitches can be like DVD extras.

[spin]

Games that run at PAL60 are produced with the same colour encoding system as 50 Hz PAL signals, but with the NTSC resolution and field rate of 60 Hz, providing an identical gaming experience to their NTSC counterparts.

source: wikipedia


Pal60 = 720x480 / 29.970 fps or 30 fps that's the way y'all must record through your card and again, my card (terratec cynergy 250 pci as most of the recent cards) support pal 60.I use this mode everyday since two good months....

I have tried several cards over the years and they haven't played PAL 60 despite the fact that they would play PAL and NTSC. So I was warning the OP that simply buying a card that supported those wouldn't guarantee it would play PAL 60. It seems he already has one such card himself.

The gaming experience is fine as the TV handles the signal with no problem. The recording experience is the issue here and simply choosing PAL and changing the fps is not good enough as not all cards/software let you specify that. If your card does and records PAL 60 from an xbox with no problem then that is great and I'll look into it. What would you define as recent? The last 12 months? 24 months? Can you list a few others as the OP and myself I'm sure would be grateful.

[jman98]

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain this, spin. Now I finally understand.

[usernameinvalid]

Thanks for the updates.

I have continued to look for compatible CCs but quite simply it is never stated as PAL60 compatible, so you really have no way of knowing without finding someone who has managed to get it to work using that specific CC.

[themaster1]

Like i say, if your card can play pal & ntsc, chances it can play pal 60 are 99.9%

Recents cards = let's say since the last 12 months... if not earlier.

My 2 cents on this pal60 issue

edit:

Terratec cynergy 250 pci Card available here (34,85 €)

[usernameinvalid]

Like i say, if your card can play pal & ntsc, chances it can play pal 60 are 99.9%

Recents cards = let's say since the last 12 months... if not earlier.

My 2 cents on this pal60 issue

edit:

Terratec cynergy 250 pci Card available here (34,85 €)

That is not a low-profile card .

[lordsmurf]

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain this, spin. Now I finally understand.

It's nice for the rest of us who don't play games. I get a kick out of watching the 5-minute Super Mario Bros video, or a person whipping through and beating the game. Amazing.

[themaster1]

That is not a low-profile card .

I'm not sure of what you mean ... low-profile?

[RabidDog]

Low profile means it has to fit in a very small case, possibly a laptop or one of those shuttle cases.
UNI Why not go the old-tech route? and use a video tape recorder, cheap and virtually free?

[themaster1]

Well if you got a laptop i guess the usb cards might be the best for you althought it's well known these cards are not that good..compared to pci cards that's for certain.

[usernameinvalid]

Sorry for the late reply, i have been unable to check this thread.

Low-profile is used for multimedia PCs predominantly, which is what mine is. It means the base unit is much narrower, so a smaller and tidier PC.

[Torquelo]

I think I may have a solution to your issues.
I'm assuming along the way you may have encountered a Kworld or Easycap external capture card, if you have that is good news for you.

They are both capable of supporting PAL 60.

All that is necessary is to acquire a copy of most decent video recording softwares, many which may have came as a box set with your CC. You will then have to go to the recording settings where you can change the sound, device etc.
Somewhere around there should be something like TV setup or output settings, originally set to PAL-I or PAL-60.
You may be thinking "Why doesn't this work in the first place?"
The answer is, I don't know, maybe they were drunk or just underpaid. The only thing is that you have to find the NTSC-433 setting. Find this, and your capture card WILL work. It is capable of PAL 60, and have fun making machinima =)