Problems with composite to hdmi, strange aspect ratio and quality

[A lego man]

I'm using the elgato hd capture card to record old consoles with composite cables, which means it's converting composite to hdmi. This is making the quality look pixelly and the aspect ratio stretched. I've tried it with 6 different consoles and they pretty much do the same thing, the ps1 being the worst, I can barely read the text on the t.v. Here's a couple of snapshots

[Skiller]

What do you mean by it converts Composite to HDMI? The capture seems to be upscaled, so you probably just have to change to capture settings to SD (480i).

The TV is best connected to the console via a Composite splitter rather than the Elgatos HDMI out.

[A lego man]

What do you mean by it converts Composite to HDMI? The capture seems to be upscaled, so you probably just have to change to capture settings to SD (480i).

The TV is best connected to the console via a Composite splitter rather than the Elgatos HDMI out.

There is no option to change the ratio settings, not that I can see, and I meant composite goes into the elgato then hdmi to the TV. I will have to try splitters

[jagabo]

What do you get when you run composite straight to the TV?

[A lego man]

What do you get when you run composite straight to the TV?

Perfection

[A lego man]

[QUOTE=A lego man;2367154]

What do you get when you run composite straight to the TV?

I've tried it on 3 different TV's
Capturing doesn't work on goodmans hd ready TV besides HD consoles.
Only the n64's picture goes on and off on the sony full hd tv but not the capture card.
I tried a Toshiba tv and the ps1's picture seems to go on and off.

Overall the HD capturing is perfect except recording from composite which has moving pixellations and stretched aspect ratios, I would have to upload a video to explain the pixellations, there is some when playing without a capture card, but there is a lot when capturing(probably to do with the aspect ratio).

[jagabo]

I wasn't talking about capturing. I asked what you got when you connected the game console directly to the TV with a composite cable. Does the TV stretch the picture to 16:9 or does it letterbox the picture? PAL composite can signal to the TV whether the picture is 16:9 or 4:3. My guess is the game console is telling the ElGato that the picture is widescreen so that's how the device saves it.

[A lego man]

I wasn't talking about capturing. I asked what you got when you connected the game console directly to the TV with a composite cable. Does the TV stretch the picture to 16:9 or does it letterbox the picture? PAL composite can signal to the TV whether the picture is 16:9 or 4:3. My guess is the game console is telling the ElGato that the picture is widescreen so that's how the device saves it.

Oh yeah, well they all vary(I want to capture all consoles eventually), the xbox and the wii comes out as the full screen, the n64 and gamecube have a small border around the top bottom and left only, ps1 has a larger border on the top and bottom and a smaller one on the left but no right border, and the ps2 has a small border all around. I only tested the xbox on a bigger full hd tv which shower up as a box, not fullscreen.

[A lego man]

I found out that it's called interlacing, I want to know how to deinterlace on the tv, so the capture device doesn't record that interlace

[LMotlow]

That's not what interlacing is. Interlace has nothing to do with the frame size or the borders. TV's deinterlace anyway during play, unless your video really has other problems.

[newpball]

You should capture those composite sources in standard definition video and interlaced. If you do not get a standard definition interlaced video after capture you are doing something wrong. Run a mediainfo on the captured video and it will tell you the resolution, if it is interlaced and the codec that was used.

[jagabo]

Oh yeah, well they all vary(I want to capture all consoles eventually), the xbox and the wii comes out as the full screen, the n64 and gamecube have a small border around the top bottom and left only, ps1 has a larger border on the top and bottom and a smaller one on the left but no right border, and the ps2 has a small border all around.

Was that on a 4:3 TV or a 16:9 TV? If the latter, you should expect the same thing from the El Gato.

I found out that it's called interlacing, I want to know how to deinterlace on the tv, so the capture device doesn't record that interlace

There were no interlace comb artifacts in the sample images you posted. There were dot crawl artifacts though -- tiny rectangular boxes usually at the edges of colored areas.

[A lego man]

Oh yeah, well they all vary(I want to capture all consoles eventually), the xbox and the wii comes out as the full screen, the n64 and gamecube have a small border around the top bottom and left only, ps1 has a larger border on the top and bottom and a smaller one on the left but no right border, and the ps2 has a small border all around.

Was that on a 4:3 TV or a 16:9 TV? If the latter, you should expect the same thing from the El Gato.

I found out that it's called interlacing, I want to know how to deinterlace on the tv, so the capture device doesn't record that interlace

There were no interlace comb artifacts in the sample images you posted. There were dot crawl artifacts though -- tiny rectangular boxes usually at the edges of colored areas.

The t.v. is 4:3, dot crawl artifacts eh? how would I get rid of those? It would be nice not to have them on the t.v. as well as in the captured video, however there seems to be a lot more of them on the tv itself

[jagabo]

Was that on a 4:3 TV or a 16:9 TV?

The t.v. is 4:3

I haven't used mine in quite a while but I set it up again and checked. For a 4:3 source turn off the "Stretch Standard Definition Input" setting.

dot crawl artifacts eh? how would I get rid of those?

They are a fact of live with composite video. It's best to avoid them in the first place: use s-video or component video instead of composite. If that's not possible use a capture device with a 3-d comb filter. Next best is a capture device with a 2-d comb filter. If those aren't possible you can use software dot crawl filters. The better ones are in AviSynth. But for low definition consoles you can reduce the frames size to half then back up to full size. Your sample from the first post resized down then up (AR corrected, I think):

[A lego man]

They are a fact of live with composite video. It's best to avoid them in the first place: use s-video or component video instead of composite. If that's not possible use a capture device with a 3-d comb filter. Next best is a capture device with a 2-d comb filter. If those aren't possible you can use software dot crawl filters. The better ones are in AviSynth. But for low definition consoles you can reduce the frames size to half then back up to full size. Your sample from the first post resized down then up (AR corrected, I think):

If I was on a desktop I would have been able to get a capture card with comb filter, unless external capture cards have them which I doubt it. I'm pretty sure all consoles are composite only, unless I can do some sort of conversion. I watched a video of someone using all female splitters, would that even make any difference? That edited image looks pretty much the same as it does normally, I downloaded that program but unsure of how to use it(where's the exe file?).

[jagabo]

That edited image looks pretty much the same as it does normally, I downloaded that program but unsure of how to use it(where's the exe file?).

The downscale/upscale method can be done with any editor that allows multiple resizing. You don't want to use this method with higher resolution video as it will become blurry.

AviSynth is hard to get started with. There's no executable. It works with text scripts. You create a script with Notepad or some other text editor, then open that script with a video editor as if it was a video file, VirtualDub for example.

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Main_Page#New_to_AviSynth_-_start_here

Some dot crawl removal filters are CheckMate() and DeCrawl().

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/External_filters
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/External_filters#Rainbow_.26_Dot_Crawl_Removal