Capturing PC Gameplay Videos with Hardware: Possible?

[darkarn]

Hi, I will like to try capturing PC gameplay videos with a hardware solution rather than a software solution eg FRAPS. The solution has to allow me to play the game while it is being recorded.

This is my computer:
CPU: i7-930 (2.8GHz)
Mobo: MSI X58 Pro-E
Graphics: Palit GTX260 Sonic Edition
RAM: 6GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600MHz RAM (8-8-8-24)
HDD: Seagate 320GB SATA 3.0GB/s 7200rpm
TV Card: Hauppauge WinTV PVR 150

I tried using a VGA Y-splitter cable so that one side can connect to a VGA to S-Video cable which will be connected to the TV card, but that did not work out as I was told that the VGA signal simply do not have what a S-Video/Composite signal have to work; will need something to convert that. This resulted in a screen full of static.

I also tried connecting from the DVI port of my graphics card to the TV card while my VGA port is connected to the monitor only. Thereafter, I used Nvidia Control Panel to clone the output, This also failed...

Hence, may I know what other alternatives do I have?

Also, is it wise for me to replace my TV card with an AverMedia AVerTV CaptureHD card, since I can just plug in a HDMI cable from my card to the TV card (digital signal to digital signal again) and clone the output with Nvidia Control Panel?

Thanks!

[darkarn]

I also received some advice about this (from this thread)

• Use a DVD recorder
• Use another PC to record the video
• Use Blackmagic Intensity instead of the Avermedia card
• Use a VCR

Any other ways available?

[darkarn]

I also got this reply from Avermedia about my proposed method:

Thank you for choosing AVerMedia.

For your information, recording via HDMI is not possible if the external device or content have HDCP protected. For instance, PS3 is know to always have HCDP protection turned on. Therefore, it is not possible to do recording via HDMI. However, as an alternative. you may use the component connection to connect your PS3 to the TV tuner to do recording.

Your question

Hi, I will like to know whether it can record the HDMI input from my computer like how it can record HDMI input from game consoles eg. PS3? I will use a HDMI wire to connect from my graphics card to the HDMI port on the AVerTV CaptureHD card. Thanks!

For instance, if you just plan to connect your computer via HDMI connection from your video card to the HDMI input of the TV tuner to do recording, then there shouldn't be any kind of problems.

But again, I was told that my graphics card transmit HDCP signals....

[EddyH]

*sees thing about HDCP, deletes long spiel about different possibilities, realising a total misread*

Welllll.... if your card is actually putting out a HDCP-protect signal, then you won't be able to record, I suppose. Maybe you can turn it off? If the protect/not protect signal is completely missing then the output becomes limited to 960x540, but that should still be ample for recording gameplay (really something like 640x360 or 864x480 would be enough in most cases).

Can I ask, when you appear to have one of the more powerful of all possible systems at the moment, why using FRAPS isn't an option? If much lower end PCs can handle recording with it (the util's been around for quite a time), yours shouldn't have much difficulty.

You could maybe pick up a cheap VGA-to-composite / SVideo converter box (or add-in card), probably cheaper than an HDMI capture card (which I wouldn't bet against putting as much strain on the system if you're going to use the SAME one for playing AND recording at the same time), and use that?

The problem with those splitter cables is - and the manufacturers will rarely tell you this because they probably make a fair bit of profit on mistaken sales - that they are made for PROJECTOR INPUT. Most video projectors will have a VGA port, composite, some sound sockets, maybe HDMI, and that's it. If you want to use a different video standard (component, svideo, SCART), you have to buy an adaptor that feeds into the VGA port, and set the appropriate input mode on the device.

SOME video cards CAN put out TV-spec video, but this tends to be through obvious built-in sockets of the appropriate type, or they take the route of using a chunky, proprietary output socket to which you have to connect a converter cable no matter what you want to put out (including VGA), but you do at least get that flexibility. Svideo/etc OUT through a VGA port is possible, but I wouldn't bet on it. Closest you may come is component RGB (which VGA already is a flavour of, but for the scan rate and how sync works)?

I don't suppose that Hauppage thing has TV output at all? (Most cheap PCTV and PVR cards I've seen are aerial-only, sadly)
Beware that oftentimes the lower cost capture solutions use your CPU as the encoder, so you get NO real benefit from looping back to the same PC (or if you have a slow machine, the device doesn't even work - as I found when buying a TV card for my laptop... its borderline even for showing a smooth picture at 1.73Ghz). You want an onboard MPG(1/2/4) encoder, that reduces the load pretty much to chucking a meg of data per second over the bus to the hard disk, it's going to cost.

[darkarn]

Hi, sorry for my late reply...

*sees thing about HDCP, deletes long spiel about different possibilities, realising a total misread*

Welllll.... if your card is actually putting out a HDCP-protect signal, then you won't be able to record, I suppose. Maybe you can turn it off? If the protect/not protect signal is completely missing then the output becomes limited to 960x540, but that should still be ample for recording gameplay (really something like 640x360 or 864x480 would be enough in most cases).

But again, the very idea of video cards transmitting HDCP signals sounds a little far-fetched; current research done by me yielded no such cases... I think there is someone here who have successfully used his Blackmagic Intensity to do what I am planning to do...

Can I ask, when you appear to have one of the more powerful of all possible systems at the moment, why using FRAPS isn't an option? If much lower end PCs can handle recording with it (the util's been around for quite a time), yours shouldn't have much difficulty.

Actually, I am planning to do a benchmark about this issue. I heard people saying that FRAPS eats up much CPU resources, leading to laggy gameplay videos. The aim of this benchmark is to show how true this is.

You could maybe pick up a cheap VGA-to-composite / SVideo converter box (or add-in card), probably cheaper than an HDMI capture card (which I wouldn't bet against putting as much strain on the system if you're going to use the SAME one for playing AND recording at the same time), and use that?

Well, I am thinking of getting them, but that will be after getting the HDMI part set up.

The problem with those splitter cables is - and the manufacturers will rarely tell you this because they probably make a fair bit of profit on mistaken sales - that they are made for PROJECTOR INPUT. Most video projectors will have a VGA port, composite, some sound sockets, maybe HDMI, and that's it. If you want to use a different video standard (component, svideo, SCART), you have to buy an adaptor that feeds into the VGA port, and set the appropriate input mode on the device.

Hmm... Are you referring to my VGA Y-splitter or to my VGA to S-Video cable?

SOME video cards CAN put out TV-spec video, but this tends to be through obvious built-in sockets of the appropriate type, or they take the route of using a chunky, proprietary output socket to which you have to connect a converter cable no matter what you want to put out (including VGA), but you do at least get that flexibility. Svideo/etc OUT through a VGA port is possible, but I wouldn't bet on it. Closest you may come is component RGB (which VGA already is a flavour of, but for the scan rate and how sync works)?

I don't think my card is one of them... =(

I don't suppose that Hauppage thing has TV output at all? (Most cheap PCTV and PVR cards I've seen are aerial-only, sadly)

My Hauppage card works fine with my VCR, so I guess it has TV output?

Beware that oftentimes the lower cost capture solutions use your CPU as the encoder, so you get NO real benefit from looping back to the same PC (or if you have a slow machine, the device doesn't even work - as I found when buying a TV card for my laptop... its borderline even for showing a smooth picture at 1.73Ghz). You want an onboard MPG(1/2/4) encoder, that reduces the load pretty much to chucking a meg of data per second over the bus to the hard disk, it's going to cost.

Agreed, thanks for pointing that out!

[EddyH]

ARGH BLUE TEXT THING HURTING MIND....

Ahem. Sorry. It's just a bit hard to reply to --- quote tags are your friends. Anyway, I'll do this in notepad first with some brutal editing (at least by my own standards), it'll be OK.

Right... first, largely skipping the HDCP issue. Just don't know enough about it I'm afraid. My experiences with actual video connections are almost exclusively analogue so far, I only know some of the theory. It could be that the device receiving may simply refuse to record if there's no valid HDCP, particularly an oldskool one, but last I saw of the spec was that an *up to date* one should simply limit you to 960x540 (presumably downsampling all >ED resolutions by 2x, so 720p = 640x360, 1440 wide = 720x540, and 1080i/p = 960x540).

For the FRAPS thing, well, OK. I'll admit to thinking this was a noob query at first but that appears to be a stupid assumption to have made!
In this case, can you not run a benchmark just so as to record the performance without FRAPS, then with it? Particularly if it's also possible to run it such as to register how much CPU/RAM/disk is being used by each major process. Then try running the game with some kind of dummy video capture going in the background. Even if you can't make the full thing work in practice, this should give you a good idea if the theory is sound. Again, although I don't really have direct experience, I've done some stuff with live screencapture for other reasons, and it's an idea that's been around for donkey's years. So long as your settings aren't ludicrous (like the people here who tried catching an entire SXGA screen... at 200fps with uncompressed CD sound - arrgh!) the real-world impact on your gameplay shouldn't be noticable. We've got guys who have apparently used it for second life, even, and been happy with the result... and our PCs can barely RUN SL in the first place. I don't think they're capturing at full resolution however, as it's not really necessary in that case. Doubling each pixel axis means you've got 4x as much data to handle after all.

As regards getting the HDMI thing working before the SD capture, the words "running before you can walk" come to mind but if you genuinely want/need HD content to come out the other end, it makes sense to not waste time on SD as anything but a fallback. Games should look about as good in a video at DVD rez unless you want all the tiny text.

The cable I was referring to was the VGA-SVideo one. Seen people make that mistake before, so unless you know your video card can put out SVid through its VGA socket (unlikely but by no means impossible) it's a red herring. Can't advise on it because I don't know which ones can/can't do it - last time I tried something like that was with a Trident ISA SVGA card, and the last one I saw that I suspect of having the ability was a PCI Matrox Millenium or something in an old Pentium. Modern 3D ones, no idea.
And particularly, mating it to a VGA splitter isn't going to work, because any lines in the VGA plug that aren't usually required (and so could be commandeered for an out-of-standard video signal) probably won't be connected in the splitter. For the y-cable itself, be aware that it will, of course, split the voltage level of the signal, so if you find some way of using that you may get a dim picture - or the drop on the non-image signal lines (particularly sync and DCC) may mean you get an unstable or even completely missing picture too.

When you say the Hauppage works with your VCR, how exactly do you mean? There are PCs here at work which were meant for some abandoned digital signage-with-PiP-TV project that have cheap tuner cards in... with two coax sockets. I believe it's so you can send the aerial signal back out to a PVR/VCR/TV/etc, as per various devices. Whether this means it can either play back recorded programs on that port or even display the PC's desktop I don't know, but I'd be very dubious of the prospect. These things often appear very strictly built down to a price and that would definitely be an "extra" that requires more than just an extra socket soldering on and a couple more traces drawn on the PCB to link it to the input socket.

Having said that about the CPU needing to do the decoding/encoding legwork, I think I momentarily forgot you had a Core i7 ... apparently a C2 Duo is sufficient for encoding full-motion WVGA *AND* low-fps (say, about 5-6?) fullscreen capture at the same time, based on a demo of some recording solution I saw recently. And you can carry on using the PC as "normal" at the same time (well, so long as you're happy enough using Powerpoint, or web browsing up to about the level of Google Street View). With how high I've seen i7s benchmark vs the C2D-based machine that I'm typing on right now, the performance drop may only be a few percent. Which, typical gamer obsession for every last frame/sec aside, won't really impact your game unless you're already borderline for playable smoothness.
You may, however, end up wanting a larger/faster hard disk...

EDIT: Wargh! Forget what I said about brutal editing. That's what I get for typing in notepad without word wrap (and being interrupted several times on the phone and walkie talkie)

[darkarn]

ARGH BLUE TEXT THING HURTING MIND....

Ahem. Sorry. It's just a bit hard to reply to --- quote tags are your friends. Anyway, I'll do this in notepad first with some brutal editing (at least by my own standards), it'll be OK.

Sorry, I should'nt have tried in the first place; I don't usually do that...

Right... first, largely skipping the HDCP issue. Just don't know enough about it I'm afraid. My experiences with actual video connections are almost exclusively analogue so far, I only know some of the theory. It could be that the device receiving may simply refuse to record if there's no valid HDCP, particularly an oldskool one, but last I saw of the spec was that an *up to date* one should simply limit you to 960x540 (presumably downsampling all >ED resolutions by 2x, so 720p = 640x360, 1440 wide = 720x540, and 1080i/p = 960x540).

Well, looks like someone has to test it out...

For the FRAPS thing, well, OK. I'll admit to thinking this was a noob query at first but that appears to be a stupid assumption to have made!
In this case, can you not run a benchmark just so as to record the performance without FRAPS, then with it? Particularly if it's also possible to run it such as to register how much CPU/RAM/disk is being used by each major process. Then try running the game with some kind of dummy video capture going in the background. Even if you can't make the full thing work in practice, this should give you a good idea if the theory is sound. Again, although I don't really have direct experience, I've done some stuff with live screencapture for other reasons, and it's an idea that's been around for donkey's years. So long as your settings aren't ludicrous (like the people here who tried catching an entire SXGA screen... at 200fps with uncompressed CD sound - arrgh!) the real-world impact on your gameplay shouldn't be noticable. We've got guys who have apparently used it for second life, even, and been happy with the result... and our PCs can barely RUN SL in the first place. I don't think they're capturing at full resolution however, as it's not really necessary in that case. Doubling each pixel axis means you've got 4x as much data to handle after all.

Wow, the part about how much CPU/RAM/disk is being used will be a tough one to do... I was planning to have a FRAPS vs. hardware vs. no recording kind of benchmark though. My tests will be done at different ingame detail levels too eg. CnC4 in Ultra/High/Low settings...

As regards getting the HDMI thing working before the SD capture, the words "running before you can walk" come to mind but if you genuinely want/need HD content to come out the other end, it makes sense to not waste time on SD as anything but a fallback. Games should look about as good in a video at DVD rez unless you want all the tiny text.

I thought that a HD capture device can also do SD capture, that's why I focused on getting the HDMI part working first.

The cable I was referring to was the VGA-SVideo one. Seen people make that mistake before, so unless you know your video card can put out SVid through its VGA socket (unlikely but by no means impossible) it's a red herring. Can't advise on it because I don't know which ones can/can't do it - last time I tried something like that was with a Trident ISA SVGA card, and the last one I saw that I suspect of having the ability was a PCI Matrox Millenium or something in an old Pentium. Modern 3D ones, no idea.
And particularly, mating it to a VGA splitter isn't going to work, because any lines in the VGA plug that aren't usually required (and so could be commandeered for an out-of-standard video signal) probably won't be connected in the splitter. For the y-cable itself, be aware that it will, of course, split the voltage level of the signal, so if you find some way of using that you may get a dim picture - or the drop on the non-image signal lines (particularly sync and DCC) may mean you get an unstable or even completely missing picture too.

I see... Thanks for teaching me about such cables! But why are they still being sold?

When you say the Hauppage works with your VCR, how exactly do you mean? There are PCs here at work which were meant for some abandoned digital signage-with-PiP-TV project that have cheap tuner cards in... with two coax sockets. I believe it's so you can send the aerial signal back out to a PVR/VCR/TV/etc, as per various devices. Whether this means it can either play back recorded programs on that port or even display the PC's desktop I don't know, but I'd be very dubious of the prospect. These things often appear very strictly built down to a price and that would definitely be an "extra" that requires more than just an extra socket soldering on and a couple more traces drawn on the PCB to link it to the input socket.

I meant that the Hauppage was able to show what was playing on the VCR....

Having said that about the CPU needing to do the decoding/encoding legwork, I think I momentarily forgot you had a Core i7 ... apparently a C2 Duo is sufficient for encoding full-motion WVGA *AND* low-fps (say, about 5-6?) fullscreen capture at the same time, based on a demo of some recording solution I saw recently. And you can carry on using the PC as "normal" at the same time (well, so long as you're happy enough using Powerpoint, or web browsing up to about the level of Google Street View). With how high I've seen i7s benchmark vs the C2D-based machine that I'm typing on right now, the performance drop may only be a few percent. Which, typical gamer obsession for every last frame/sec aside, won't really impact your game unless you're already borderline for playable smoothness.
You may, however, end up wanting a larger/faster hard disk...

Did they say anything about high-fps fullscreen capture? And about the hard disk issue, I guess it's time for me to get Western Digital Caviar Black or Samsung F3 then.

EDIT: Wargh! Forget what I said about brutal editing. That's what I get for typing in notepad without word wrap (and being interrupted several times on the phone and walkie talkie)

No worries...

[jagabo]

If your computer has dual output ability with mirroring (same thing on both displays) and one of the outputs is capable of a standard TV video (composite, s-video, SD component, HD component) you can use a hardware encoder card like the Hauppauge HD PVR or PVR-250 to capture on the same computer you are playing on. You just have to disable the display of the video in the capture application. I've done that in the past with the PVR-250.

By the way, with mirroring there will be no HDCP because the rules don't allow two displays of an HDCP protected signal. Of course, that means you won't be playing Blu-ray discs with officially sanctioned software.

[darkarn]

If your computer has dual output ability with mirroring (same thing on both displays) and one of the outputs is capable of a standard TV video (composite, s-video, SD component, HD component) you can use a hardware encoder card like the Hauppauge HD PVR or PVR-250 to capture on the same computer you are playing on. You just have to disable the display of the video in the capture application. I've done that in the past with the PVR-250.

Thankfully, my card can do this! I may also want to get a HDMI splitter box though, just to show whether using the splitter box instead of mirroring/cloning will affect the recording.

By the way, with mirroring there will be no HDCP because the rules don't allow two displays of an HDCP protected signal. Of course, that means you won't be playing Blu-ray discs with officially sanctioned software.

Oh, I didn't know that... Thanks!

[darkarn]

Hmm... Speaking of hardware encoders, I think I better ask Avermedia about a crucial question... Stay tuned!

[EddyH]

ARGH BLUE TEXT THING HURTING MIND....

Sorry, I should'nt have tried in the first place; I don't usually do that...

Not a problem - it's a kind of e-mailey way of doing it, so I can see why you did it. My head was just in a bit of a fragile state (as it still is and has been since about 5 weeks ago - feeling like Johnny Mnemonic right now).

Right... first, largely skipping the HDCP issue. Just don't know enough about it I'm afraid.

Well, looks like someone has to test it out...

Yeah... sorry :/ Sometimes you're the doctorate student ... sometimes you're the white mouse.

Wow, the part about how much CPU/RAM/disk is being used will be a tough one to do...

I dunno, man - there's plenty of live-system-benchmark / -monitor type programs about, and if all else fails, you can try to include the "processes" (or "performance" - or do two runs, one each?) screen of Task Manager as part of the capture somehow? (Or go multimonitor and just have someone keeping an eye on the typical and peak figures?). For a start, I think if Notebook Hardware Control can be convinced to run on your system in any way, it can do system stat logging to a file as an optional extra of it's onscreen displays.

I was planning to have a FRAPS vs. hardware vs. no recording kind of benchmark though. My tests will be done at different ingame detail levels too eg. CnC4 in Ultra/High/Low settings...

BTW do we still have "timedemo" type stuff (showing my age? ), i.e. the game replays a particular demonstration run for benchmarking purposes, along with an onscreen FPS readout? That would solve at least two issues (framerate determination and reproducibility) if you weren't already going down that route. And you could at least note the FPS at various points on a bit of paper if you couldn't get a capture solution to work other than in dummy mode (and use a 60fps camera pointed at the screen for the actual capturing XD)

As regards getting the HDMI thing working before the SD capture,

I thought that a HD capture device can also do SD capture, that's why I focused on getting the HDMI part working first.

Good point, well made. Didn't think of that

The cable I was referring to was the VGA-SVideo one. Seen people make that mistake before, so unless you know your video card can put out SVid through its VGA socket (unlikely but by no means impossible) it's a red herring. (bla bla bla bla)

I see... Thanks for teaching me about such cables! But why are they still being sold?

Weeeeeeell - the VGA-Svideo ones, because there are still many low end projectors about that skimp on that socket and provide the capability through the VGA port, and it's far cheaper to get an otherwise overpriced $25 adaptor than buy a whole new, higher price tier projector. And lots of naive folks (...some of whom I work with, bafflingly) who think it will magically make a PC put out TV-spec video.

The VGA splitters, because it's not a sure thing that the picture will be unusable. Particularly a lot of monitors and projectors accept the signal just fine, just with the output not quite as bright or stable as it could be (plus you can get boosters, or may be using it with one monitor at a time and not wanting to unplug - could be that it doesn't work electrically as a splitter unless the receiving device is on and therefore making the full signal -> ground loop). Not so sure about capture cards...

When you say the Hauppage works with your VCR, how exactly do you mean?

I meant that the Hauppage was able to show what was playing on the VCR....

Ah ... so, you play a tape and it appears on the PC? Aw well. For a moment there was a glimmer that you might have been able to pipe the PC image - in a very fuzzy fashion - down the aerial output to, say, a DVD recorder's tuner. RF isn't really a good choice for transmitting clear computer images though; the poor resolution (something like half DVD typically) is only the start of it.

Having said that about the CPU needing to do the decoding/encoding legwork, I think I momentarily forgot you had a Core i7 ... apparently a C2 Duo is sufficient for encoding full-motion WVGA *AND* low-fps (say, about 5-6?) fullscreen capture at the same time, based on a demo of some recording solution I saw recently.

Did they say anything about high-fps fullscreen capture? And about the hard disk issue, I guess it's time for me to get Western Digital Caviar Black or Samsung F3 then.

No, but it is a professional lecture-capture system that isn't really intended for anything like what you want to do. I was just taking that known-quantity example and extrapolating from it. Like, if that's able to comfortably record 384x288x30 plus 1024x768x6 (= 8036352 pixels/sec, or 720p at 8-9fps), plus sound, and without the machine slowing down noticably, on a poor-ass C2D that benchmarks around "950 points" on a random chip indexing site I found, and the i7s start somewhere in the 5000s and easily go up to 5 figures, then 1280x720x30 shouldn't be too difficult for it, and 1280x720x60 (or 1366x768 even) may well be possible. Yes, there will be a performance hit, but given how much is offloaded to the GPU these days it may not make so much difference if you have a good graphics card.
The hard disk thrash would definitely be more significant if it's not compressing - or at least, not very hard. They didn't say how much it used on the host machine per hour though (the idea is you capture your thing using a PC that's already in the room, then it throws it at a central server for encoding and storage). I'd think it probably uses a variant of DV that later gets changed to MP4 (as serving DV is an option, probably requiring no recoding BUT massive bandwidth), so at least 10x compression (for 10-21mb/s at that quality and 720p/30-60Hz/32bit, 12-24mb/s WXGA... probably less in practice but it WILL slow down loading, so you'll want a f***ton of RAM and to pre-load the game). It may not be necessary to change it, just be mindful of how much space you'll need for the clips you wish to record, and how fast your disk is. Something like Lagarith or HuffYUV probably won't be as hard on the CPU as even (simplistic) DV is, but they'll hit the storage harder - I think they tend to compress around 2-4x at best? (the payoff is better quality)

[darkarn]

Not a problem - it's a kind of e-mailey way of doing it, so I can see why you did it. My head was just in a bit of a fragile state (as it still is and has been since about 5 weeks ago - feeling like Johnny Mnemonic right now).

Lol, must be using too much email at work...

Yeah... sorry :/ Sometimes you're the doctorate student ... sometimes you're the white mouse.

I'm ok with that if there is not too much risk...

I dunno, man - there's plenty of live-system-benchmark / -monitor type programs about, and if all else fails, you can try to include the "processes" (or "performance" - or do two runs, one each?) screen of Task Manager as part of the capture somehow? (Or go multimonitor and just have someone keeping an eye on the typical and peak figures?). For a start, I think if Notebook Hardware Control can be convinced to run on your system in any way, it can do system stat logging to a file as an optional extra of it's onscreen displays.

I think I will stick to something simple first...

BTW do we still have "timedemo" type stuff (showing my age? ), i.e. the game replays a particular demonstration run for benchmarking purposes, along with an onscreen FPS readout? That would solve at least two issues (framerate determination and reproducibility) if you weren't already going down that route. And you could at least note the FPS at various points on a bit of paper if you couldn't get a capture solution to work other than in dummy mode (and use a 60fps camera pointed at the screen for the actual capturing XD)

Hehe, games with timedemos are a little hard to find nowadays...

Good point, well made. Didn't think of that

Thanks!

Weeeeeeell - the VGA-Svideo ones, because there are still many low end projectors about that skimp on that socket and provide the capability through the VGA port, and it's far cheaper to get an otherwise overpriced $25 adaptor than buy a whole new, higher price tier projector. And lots of naive folks (...some of whom I work with, bafflingly) who think it will magically make a PC put out TV-spec video.

The VGA splitters, because it's not a sure thing that the picture will be unusable. Particularly a lot of monitors and projectors accept the signal just fine, just with the output not quite as bright or stable as it could be (plus you can get boosters, or may be using it with one monitor at a time and not wanting to unplug - could be that it doesn't work electrically as a splitter unless the receiving device is on and therefore making the full signal -> ground loop). Not so sure about capture cards...

I guess I am one of the naive folks then...

Ah ... so, you play a tape and it appears on the PC? Aw well. For a moment there was a glimmer that you might have been able to pipe the PC image - in a very fuzzy fashion - down the aerial output to, say, a DVD recorder's tuner. RF isn't really a good choice for transmitting clear computer images though; the poor resolution (something like half DVD typically) is only the start of it.

Nah, that is too counter-productive I am afraid...

No, but it is a professional lecture-capture system that isn't really intended for anything like what you want to do. I was just taking that known-quantity example and extrapolating from it. Like, if that's able to comfortably record 384x288x30 plus 1024x768x6 (= 8036352 pixels/sec, or 720p at 8-9fps), plus sound, and without the machine slowing down noticably, on a poor-ass C2D that benchmarks around "950 points" on a random chip indexing site I found, and the i7s start somewhere in the 5000s and easily go up to 5 figures, then 1280x720x30 shouldn't be too difficult for it, and 1280x720x60 (or 1366x768 even) may well be possible. Yes, there will be a performance hit, but given how much is offloaded to the GPU these days it may not make so much difference if you have a good graphics card.

Whoa, I may have to factor that in for benchmarks...

The hard disk thrash would definitely be more significant if it's not compressing - or at least, not very hard. They didn't say how much it used on the host machine per hour though (the idea is you capture your thing using a PC that's already in the room, then it throws it at a central server for encoding and storage). I'd think it probably uses a variant of DV that later gets changed to MP4 (as serving DV is an option, probably requiring no recoding BUT massive bandwidth), so at least 10x compression (for 10-21mb/s at that quality and 720p/30-60Hz/32bit, 12-24mb/s WXGA... probably less in practice but it WILL slow down loading, so you'll want a f***ton of RAM and to pre-load the game). It may not be necessary to change it, just be mindful of how much space you'll need for the clips you wish to record, and how fast your disk is. Something like Lagarith or HuffYUV probably won't be as hard on the CPU as even (simplistic) DV is, but they'll hit the storage harder - I think they tend to compress around 2-4x at best? (the payoff is better quality)

Hmm... Will think about this...

[darkarn]

Hmm... Speaking of hardware encoders, I think I better ask Avermedia about a crucial question... Stay tuned!

Oh yes, I got a reply from AverMedia and it looks like I am back to square one!

Your question

Hi, may I know what hardware encoders are there in this card? Thanks!

Thank you for choosing AVerMedia. Unfortunately, this device does not support hardware enconding. This device only uses software encoding techniques.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to let us know.

[darkarn]

Hmm... I am now thinking of getting my hands on a Compro E900F/E850F... What do you think?

[EddyH]

Yeah... sorry :/ Sometimes you're the doctorate student ... sometimes you're the white mouse.

I'm ok with that if there is not too much risk...

So long as all your stuff's backed up, I can't see anything...

For a start, I think if Notebook Hardware Control can be convinced to run on your system in any way, it can do system stat logging to a file as an optional extra of it's onscreen displays.

I think I will stick to something simple first...

NHC is quite simple... if it works. I think the main system log stuff is still available on most PCs anyway, as it just takes it from windows. Install, set a logfile location, press go.
And of course, there's windows' built-in performance monitor (perfmon.exe) which will log pretty much any stat that you want it to, so long as the system has a counter for it. I would be surprised if it can't log to file, and it uses basically no system resources as 99% of what it does is always ticking away in the background anyway. Wish I'd remembered about that sooner in fact!

Weeeeeeell - the VGA-Svideo ones, because there are still many low end projectors about that skimp on that socket and provide the capability through the VGA port, and it's far cheaper to get an otherwise overpriced $25 adaptor than buy a whole new, higher price tier projector. And lots of naive folks (...some of whom I work with, bafflingly) who think it will magically make a PC put out TV-spec video.

I guess I am one of the naive folks then...

Eh, naivete isn't necessarily a bad thing - it just shows that you came into a situation expecting an entirely different reality to the true one, either on past experience that isn't applicable here, or assumptions from insufficient knowledge, and the worst part is you may not realise at first that you need to learn new stuff or change your behaviour. It's not the same as stupidity or even ignorance, as it can be recovered from (and more quickly than the lattermost condition)

Like how naive I was at how long it takes to put a pro video together based on doing far less critical and complex ones. It appears to be exponential. Besides, there was a point where I had to learn about those things too. Previous experience with stuff not always being as it seemed had taught me by that point to pre-check whether the cables I was buying WOULD actually work - and I was prewarned by having started to work with projectors. Besides, as I said originally - the manufacturers and retailers don't go to great pains to warn you not to buy them, because they're probably making half their revenue by selling them to people who want to hook their PC into their TV then turning around and saying "sorry, no refunds unless it's faulty".

*numbers numbers numbers*

Whoa, I may have to factor that in for benchmarks...

Ahhhhh the point I was -trying- to make was that it SHOULDN'T be as bad as you might expect.
However, wasn't the entire thrust behind your project to find out how much of an impact this all makes anyway?
If you're needing to exclude the video capture for the point of making an article from the figures, you could just make sure it's running every time you need to take a measurement, then you can see how much of an effect the additional load you're testing makes. If you want to be really scientific, also do a set of identical runs just with the capture turned off, and record the numbers on paper, to see if the difference is any more or less in proportion. But once again - that's a very powerful seeming system, just going by the stats. I wouldn't be surprised to see it make little impact.

The hard disk thrash would definitely be more significant if it's not compressing bla bla

Hmm... Will think about this...

All you can do is test, really. But then isn't that the whole idea anyway? Certainly don't buy any extra hardware other than what you absolutely need to make it work, at first. THEN if the performance is unacceptable, upgrade.

Good luck

[darkarn]

So long as all your stuff's backed up, I can't see anything...

Lol, true...

NHC is quite simple... if it works. I think the main system log stuff is still available on most PCs anyway, as it just takes it from windows. Install, set a logfile location, press go.
And of course, there's windows' built-in performance monitor (perfmon.exe) which will log pretty much any stat that you want it to, so long as the system has a counter for it. I would be surprised if it can't log to file, and it uses basically no system resources as 99% of what it does is always ticking away in the background anyway. Wish I'd remembered about that sooner in fact!

Let's see if I can find anything that cab do that...

Eh, naivete isn't necessarily a bad thing - it just shows that you came into a situation expecting an entirely different reality to the true one, either on past experience that isn't applicable here, or assumptions from insufficient knowledge, and the worst part is you may not realise at first that you need to learn new stuff or change your behaviour. It's not the same as stupidity or even ignorance, as it can be recovered from (and more quickly than the lattermost condition)

Like how naive I was at how long it takes to put a pro video together based on doing far less critical and complex ones. It appears to be exponential. Besides, there was a point where I had to learn about those things too. Previous experience with stuff not always being as it seemed had taught me by that point to pre-check whether the cables I was buying WOULD actually work - and I was prewarned by having started to work with projectors. Besides, as I said originally - the manufacturers and retailers don't go to great pains to warn you not to buy them, because they're probably making half their revenue by selling them to people who want to hook their PC into their TV then turning around and saying "sorry, no refunds unless it's faulty".

Glad that I am just naive...

Ahhhhh the point I was -trying- to make was that it SHOULDN'T be as bad as you might expect.
However, wasn't the entire thrust behind your project to find out how much of an impact this all makes anyway?
If you're needing to exclude the video capture for the point of making an article from the figures, you could just make sure it's running every time you need to take a measurement, then you can see how much of an effect the additional load you're testing makes. If you want to be really scientific, also do a set of identical runs just with the capture turned off, and record the numbers on paper, to see if the difference is any more or less in proportion. But once again - that's a very powerful seeming system, just going by the stats. I wouldn't be surprised to see it make little impact.

Oh ya, what was I thinking when I was replying to you?

All you can do is test, really. But then isn't that the whole idea anyway? Certainly don't buy any extra hardware other than what you absolutely need to make it work, at first. THEN if the performance is unacceptable, upgrade.

Good luck

Thanks, based on this advice, I need to start looking for a VGA splitter then... Or at least, something that can convert VGA to S-Video signal... Any recommendations?

[darkarn]

Hmm, back from window shopping... I saw some Kworld "PC to TV" converters... What do you think?

[jagabo]

Hmm, back from window shopping... I saw some Kworld "PC to TV" converters... What do you think?

Low resolution (fuzzy ~640x480 interlaced) composite or s-video output.

[darkarn]

But I saw this model: Kworld UD165. It can go up to 1920x1600 and even produces HDMI output. Will these specs still cause the low resolution?

[jagabo]

The UD165 is a USB display device. You won't be playing any 3d games on it.

[darkarn]

Do you mean I cannot capture any output from Nvidia's 3D Vision thingy?

[jagabo]

Do you mean I cannot capture any output from Nvidia's 3D Vision thingy?

I'm not aware of any capture devices that support 120 Hz sources.

[darkarn]

True, thankfully I am not planning to work with 3D! I can get really dizzy after seeing 3D images for too long...