HDMI Capture Card that can successfully record Dolby Digital audio?

[ArianK]

Just like the title says, is there an HDMI card on the market right now (or even discontinued) that at the very least can record in 1080p, 30fps, and accept the raw feed of Dolby Digital audio? I’m at my wit’s end here.

First I was using an Inogeni 4K2USB3 card, but that apparently was upsampling the audio feed, and therefore rendering it unusable.

Then I went back to my old AVerMedia Extremecap U3 from back in the day, but that was only a patchwork fix and not a permanent solution as eventually the drivers’ HDCP detector went haywire and all I get now is a black screen, no matter what I try to record with that.

So I said, okay. This time, I’m going to take a chance on the Elgato HD60 S unit, since it allows for 3rd-party support on recording software, you’re not obliged to use their 1st-party application and hardware encode what you’re recording. Then I learn, after the fact, of course, that it doesn’t record Dolby Digital audio at all. You try and all you get is silence as opposed to the white noise you’d normally get. Why they enabled a capture device to so specifically inconvenience their paying customers, I’ll never understand.

Then, just today, I splurged again on a cheap Mirabox capture card. The video looked like total crap, but I was half expecting that and I didn't mind too much since the audio is my top priority. And unlike the Elgato, it didn't block out the raw Dolby Digital static noise, but just like the Inogeni, as soon as you feed the audio to BeSplit, it can't do anything with it; This time because the bitrate is extremely low for PCM, so yet again, another cheap upsampling job.

So, I come to you with a simple question. Are there any capture cards that are not Inogeni, AVerMedia, Elgato, or Mirabox that can simply record in 1080p with DD audio at the helm?

Thank you kindly.

[october262]

see this thread - https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/392907-Is-there-a-lossless-video-capture-card-that...ures-5-1-audio

[nogginvid]

Just like the title says, is there an HDMI card on the market right now (or even discontinued) that at the very least can record in 1080p, 30fps, and accept the raw feed of Dolby Digital audio? I’m at my wit’s end here.

First I was using an Inogeni 4K2USB3 card, but that apparently was upsampling the audio feed, and therefore rendering it unusable.

Then I went back to my old AVerMedia Extremecap U3 from back in the day, but that was only a patchwork fix and not a permanent solution as eventually the drivers’ HDCP detector went haywire and all I get now is a black screen, no matter what I try to record with that.

So I said, okay. This time, I’m going to take a chance on the Elgato HD60 S unit, since it allows for 3rd-party support on recording software, you’re not obliged to use their 1st-party application and hardware encode what you’re recording. Then I learn, after the fact, of course, that it doesn’t record Dolby Digital audio at all. You try and all you get is silence as opposed to the white noise you’d normally get. Why they enabled a capture device to so specifically inconvenience their paying customers, I’ll never understand.

Then, just today, I splurged again on a cheap Mirabox capture card. The video looked like total crap, but I was half expecting that and I didn't mind too much since the audio is my top priority. And unlike the Elgato, it didn't block out the raw Dolby Digital static noise, but just like the Inogeni, as soon as you feed the audio to BeSplit, it can't do anything with it; This time because the bitrate is extremely low for PCM, so yet again, another cheap upsampling job.

So, I come to you with a simple question. Are there any capture cards that are not Inogeni, AVerMedia, Elgato, or Mirabox that can simply record in 1080p with DD audio at the helm?

Thank you kindly.

So far I've found two routes :

1. Sky HD PCI-E capture card made in Korea - obsolete and no longer available - and tricky software to use for DD capture (only the Sky Digital software allowed for DD capture - other DirectShow stuff couldn't access it AIUI). This allowed an HDMI 1080i interlaced HDMI source with 5.1 Dolby Digital (not 5.1 PCM) audio to be captured. It allowed lossless video capture if your hard drive/SSD could keep up. The audio remained as a DD stream.

2. Hauppauge HD PVR 2 Game - still available I believe. This captured HDMI 1080i video and DD audio either via Toslink or HDMI embedded and kept it as DD audio. The downside is that it uses a hardware h264 encoder - so you can't capture HDMI video losslessly. (I helped update the Linux drivers to at least support MBAFF h.264 encoding.)

Neither are perfect.

There are reports of other routes working - but they are not 'off the shelf' solutions and all quite 'hacky'.

[nogginvid]

Just to add - I've had initial success using EDID override (to signal AC3 support for a BlackMagic capture solution that only advertises PCM support) and ffmpeg's -f spdif format decoder to extract AC3 frames from the PCM 2.0 captured 'SPDIF-style over HDMI' AC3.

Details here : https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/392907-Is-there-a-lossless-video-capture-card-that...e3#post2625176