BrightEye 75 VS Pinnacle 500-USB

[dellsam34]

Capture comparison between the BrightEye 75 a professional capture device from Ensemble Designs and the 500-USB a consumer capture device from Pinnacle Systems. The test subject is a Video8 cassette containing a home video played on a Sony CCD-TRV66. Both captures are done on the current update of Windows 10 64 bit, The capture application is CaptureFlux, A stripped down version of Vdub, The audio cable is not connected for this tests.

Workflows:

CCD-TRV66 (Line TBC ON, DNR ON) -> S-Video Cable -> BE75 (SDI out to SDI in BM UltraStudio USB3.0 Adapter) -> USB3 cable -> CaptureFlux app in lossless AVI 4:2:2.

CCD-TRV66 (Line TBC ON, DNR ON) -> S-Video Cable -> 500-USB -> USB2 cable -> CaptureFlux app in lossless AVI 4:2:2.

Although the BE75's full frame TBC is ON it didn't have any effect on the video because the source is clean and stable to begin with, As you can see there is nearly zero difference between the two captures when tapes are pretty stable.

Next test will use a VHS tape with timing errors to see if the 500-USB handles the capture without full frame TBC and how the BE75 capture will look like.


Lossless captures:

BE75
500-USB

Encoded captures:

BE75
500-USB

De-interlaced and encoded captures:

BE75
500-USB

[jagabo]

You need to adjust the proc amp settings before capturing. The 500-USB cap is clamped at Y=16 and Y=235, crushing darks and brights. The BE75 cap is full range (Y=0 to 255) but has retained more of the darks and brights and can be fixed.

[dellsam34]

You need to adjust the proc amp settings before capturing. The 500-USB cap is clamped at Y=16 and Y=235, crushing darks and brights. The BE75 cap is full range (Y=0 to 255) but has retained more of the darks and brights and can be fixed.

Thanks for the evaluation, This is exactly the purpose of the test, just comparing the raw captures, If I adjust the proc amp individually then it defeats the purpose of the test. The scene suffers from low light condition when shot as you can see.

[dellsam34]

The BE75 has a setting for Analog setup, If I turn it off the histogram lower level gets better, Attached is another clip with the feature turned off and I trimmed the luma level slightly to bring the upper level down from the red:

BE75 Analog Off

[jagabo]

This is exactly the purpose of the test, just comparing the raw captures, If I adjust the proc amp individually then it defeats the purpose of the test.

Nobody in their right mind captures without adjusting the capture device's proc amp.

[dellsam34]

Again, this is not a capture job, it's a performance comparison with no tweaking or video processing.

[lordsmurf]

You need to adjust the proc amp settings before capturing. The 500-USB cap is clamped at Y=16 and Y=235, crushing darks and brights. The BE75 cap is full range (Y=0 to 255) but has retained more of the darks and brights and can be fixed.

You have that inverse. It's not "clamped" or "crushing" anything, a wording that makes it seem as if the card is at fault. Yes, the Pinnacle is capturing 16-235 (are you sure it's not 16-235?), but that's the legal range. 0-255 is illegal. That may be fine for capturing, but the final video must be corrected into the 16-235 range. The capture card isn't bad. The ingested video is bad. Both can be acceptable, it fully depends on the use case.

Do note that the 500-USB is not a card I suggest.

Nobody in their right mind captures without adjusting the capture device's proc amp.

Only if the card needs it. My AGP AIW is usually at defaults, because it's one of the few devices that's perfect as-is.

This is exactly the purpose of the test, just comparing the raw captures, If I adjust the proc amp individually then it defeats the purpose of the test.

These are always great tests, but too often people take the results out of context. You know this, I know this, I think jagabo knows this, but others rarely do. So tread carefully.