MPEG2 Hardware Encoder Capture Issues?

[aramkolt]

Hello all,

I'm working on comparing a variety of capture devices and methods and I've come across an older external USB capture card a Dell Angel USB TV Tuner. It has a fairly high build quality and even contains organic polymer SMT capacitors inside that will never go bad. Usually companies reserve those for higher end products as they cost anywhere between 5-10x as much as regular ones.

It hardware-encodes to an interlaced MPEG2 stream, so apparently traditional capture programs don't really know what to do with this since they are expecting uncompressed streams to then encode themselves.

I've downloaded the actual drivers and while the card is visible in all of the traditional capture programs like Virtualdub, iuVCR, VirtualVCR, etc, none of them will display a preview or allow recording in Windows XP. Crossbar does work to select the appropriate input and video standard.

What I'm told is that these originally came with with Dell Media Center Edition (MCE) machines, so they worked natively to capture through windows media center, but my understanding is that Media Center is not something that can be installed on top of a regular XP install and is basically its own operating system.

For some reason, An old trial version of PowerDirector 6 sees the card just fine (though is kind of stuttery probably due to the XP machine I'm using). I'm not sure if the more recent PowerDirector supports 20 year old cards like that, so I don't really want to pay for something that I'm just going to be trialing for testing purposes.

My question is if there's any sort of trick in general to get MPEG2 hardware encoders to work with any of the usual capture programs, or if there's any specific programs that are geared towards being able to identify that the card in question just needs to have the MPEG2 stream saved as is?

[lingyi]

I suspect your card may be MJPEG, an obsolete video format that was used in some early video capture devices. I had a Compaq Presario with built in video capture (160x120 @ 15FP/s!) that used MJPEG.

Standardisation

Unlike the video formats specified in international standards such as MPEG-2 and the format specified in the JPEG still-picture coding standard, there is no document that defines a single exact format that is universally recognized as a complete specification of “Motion JPEG” for use in all contexts. This raises compatibility concerns about file outputs from different manufacturers. However, each particular file format usually has some standard on how M-JPEG is encoded. For example, Microsoft documents their standard format to store M-JPEG in AVI files,[4] Apple documents how M-JPEG is stored in QuickTime files, RFC 2435 describes how M-JPEG is implemented in an RTP stream, and an M-JPEG CodecID is planned for the Matroska file format.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_JPEG

[jwillis84]

Uses an NEC chip, built-in TBC. Its unique in that it produced MPEG-PS not MPEG-TS, so the recording are TBC and stablized as delivered to the file system complete. Not many people today would bother with them since in the USA they were imported by Dell and targeted with a Microsoft certified device driver up through 64 bit for Windows 7 and intended to partner with the Windows Media Center.

I haven't tracked if they ever removed the native Windows device driver up through Windows 10, but they left the legacy Firewire device driver in, so its probably still there. I could check but haven't really looked in years.

As for third party, the Monsoon SnappySoft software works with it fine. Its probably got the most comprehensive suite of controls perfectly matched to the device of any capture program ever made. But the software is no longer sold, the company ran afoul of the GNU GPL licensing of some of its components and decided to cease sales and development rather than deal with the licensing. You can still download the Monsoon Snappysoft installer and it will detect and let you interact with it, this software works on Win7 with problems. You can use it with XP. You can also use it with WinXP Mode on Win7, 8, 10, 11 if you load the Win XP image in Oracle VirtualBox and use its USB device pass thru on those later operating systems. Win XP Mode is BIOS activated so its portable using VirtualBox to later operating systems. But WinXP mode is only officially licensed for use on Windows 7. The fact it still works on newer and faster hardware is an unintended accident on Microsofts part.




You can also use GraphEdit to load its device driver and decode or record from the device, but you have to configure the MPEG-2 Demultiplexer manually in GraphEdit. The stream IDs are a little unusual. 0xE0 for video 0xC0 for audio. The Output is as said MPEG2-PS and 48 KHz Stereo. There is a TV Tuner component if you need to manually switch channels, there were multiple models, some NTSC only, some NTSC + ATSC some for Europe.. mostly though that is not of interest today.





OBS Studio won't deal with the retconned "standards" for streams today, its not flexible enough to allow you to set the stream IDs. I know of no easy to use shim for mapping them for you.. which comes to the final point.


AMCap works with it just fine, the XP version or the later versions for Win 7, 8, 10 and however far it goes. It costs money but its worth it. You (Do) have to go to Options > Video Device > Properties to launch the crossbar abd select "Default" to reset the Bright, Contrast, ect.. to see an image the device driver defaults to zero and it appears there is no image until its reset to Device Defaults and that makes the video image appear.






http://noeld.com/


Audio can make some pops and clicks while previewing due to USB hardware and operating system playback performance while its recording, but they don't show up in the actual recorded file when its played back. Weirdly AMcap will record to a .ts file which implies MPEG2-TS, but if you check the file streams with MediaINFO it will report the streams in the file as MPEG-PS like it should be.


Since its MPEG-PS audio/video drift or de-sync is not expected, I've never personally experienced it.. but I think to be part of the old Windows Media Player tuner list it had to be rather immune to de-sync.


You can setup Windows Media Center to use it as a Satellite Box with an S-Video or Composite Input and then use Media Center to record to its native .wtv or other formats .dvr-ms ect.. you might then want to use something like Wonderfox to convert it into other formats or file container formats, .mp4 or .mkv




AmarecTV can't deal with the stream mappings.


I would "guess" VLC could deal with the mappings based on its unique libavcodec use.. in theory.. but I've never mapped the pins correctly.


thats a quick summary of the options i know of.. but its not my first choice to record things these days.

[jwillis84]

I guess I should have been more explicit about OBS Studio.. it is a native Streamer tool.. so it deals only with uncompressed frames or h.264 sources.. it would need a transcoder to handle an MPEG-2 stream.. and I don't know how you could do that.. possibly with VLC as a frame server.. or some other ancient frame server tool.. I think VirtualDub would frame serve.. and I Think VirtualDub-MPEG2 included MPEG-2 support.. but it was a branch and controversial at the time.

VirtualDub-MPEG2 comes the closest to actually working with the Angel USB device driver, it constructs a graph that can be seen with GraphEdit remote.. but declines to preview or capture the video on the basis of not being able to start the graph. What is wrong is the MPEG-2 Demultiplexer is not setting up the stream IDs correctly so it doesn't understand how to decode the stream based on the device selected. I don't know how to correct that without modifying the source code and recompiling, or adding in a feature that allows manual selection of the audio and video streams by ID.

VirtualDub is very old, I have gone back and constructed a Visual C++ build tree and compiled it before.. but its no cake walk. The mere idea of doing this to support MPEG-2 is kind of odd.. a 1995 standard in nearly 2025. The 1980's were closer in time space.

I guess I'm saying it can be done, VirtualDub can be taught to use the Angel USB in 2024 .. but really.. I'll be out of the country most of next week. Maybe someday I'll poke at it.

edit: OBS Studio can use VLC as a source.. not sure its worth it though.. and there is the pin mapping scheme. I would just use the Windows Media Center option first, the AMCap if you want a standalone app .. and explore VirtualDub-MPEG2 if you have a lot of time and really wanted to.. ffdshow should also be able to handle mapping the stream ids .. but you might as well use GraphEdit. Probably Windows Media Center should be the go to tool for using it up through Win10.

[Alwyn]

jwillis, what a post (x2)! Great effort.

[jwillis84]

jwillis, what a post (x2)! Great effort.

thanks


i was just thinking about how many capture apps recognize the Angel USB "MPEG Device" but never bother to configure the Angel USB "Encoder"

That implies they aren't bothering to load it, or the Angel USB Encoder is not registered in the Merit list for the output format of the Angel USB MPEG Device Output Pin.. if thats the case then its no wonder they don't load the MPEG-2 Demultiplexer.

It makes me wonder if one could "trick" more capture apps into using it.. if the output format of the MPEG Device were associated in the Merit list for the Angel USB Encoder.

I'm not a regular DVB programmer and know only enough about DirectShow to make myself queasy.

GraphEdit2 or Next GraphEdit might be the places to play around with that idea.

it would be cool if a registry hack could make it more generally useful.. I could be selling generic capture software short.

ugh.. i got so much to do.. can't think about this anymore

[aramkolt]

Wow, that was way more comprehensive than I could have ever imagined, thank you so much! I almost certainly would not have found any of those programs or that level of detail anywhere else or certainly at least not all in one place.

Makes me wonder if it'd be possible to use the onboard MPEG2 encoders on the AIW cards without the hassle of setting up ATI MMC, or possibly use them in later versions of Windows, but that's something I can play around with on my own now!

I will say the build quality on those Dell Angel cards is some of the best I've ever seen, so it'd be pretty cool if the performance matched, not that I expect it to be anywhere near as good as lossless, but an option worth exploring.

My goal is to put together raw samples of as many capture cards as possible to show what the range of results are with different methods, all using the same starting source material so that other people have an easier time of choosing hardware that fits their needs without having to guess what sort of quality they'll get in the end.

Thanks again!

[aramkolt]

One other question, if I set it up in GraphEdit, will it then work with other capture programs like virtualdub, amarec, iuVCR as usual?

I think the main question is how to get the capture program to make sure it saves the native MPEG2 stream rather than trying to do any sort of re-encoding?

Also, GraphEdit isn't particularly user-friendly and beyond getting the crossbar to show up in the graph, I wasn't able to figure out the rest unfortunately. Any chance you could upload your .GRF file that works with the Dell Angel and tell me once that's loaded how I'd perform a test capture with it?

Monsoon did work as you said, but has a 15 minute and 50 capture limit and can't be purchased, so that option is basically out

AMCap worked, but I wonder if modern license keys will work with older versions on XP as well, or if once you've bought the license if it will work with them all?

[aramkolt]

Here's an attached capture via AMCap with the Dell Angel via S-Video with the SW2 moving zone plate pattern. This was done in XP 32 bit on a quite old Dell D620 with Core2Duo.

Looks pretty darn decent to me, but would be curious what others that have better video scrutinizing abilities have to say about it.

It's interlaced, so if watching in VLC, would make sure to turn on deinterlacing and choose a filter like Yadif 2x. My Mac likes to make you re-enable deinterlace options each time you open a new file which is lame.

[jwillis84]

what your doing, has been attempted by many other collectors, archeologists before, here and elsewhere.. they tend to get demotivated and lose interest after other forum posters criticize them and respond negatively to their efforts .. its not a happy hobby to participate in then .. so just prepare yourself for a lot of negativity


DV, then MPEG2, then h.264 and finally (for now) h.265 are methods of compressing a full uncompressed frame or field and then deinterlace it for modern playback methods in software or hardware



DV was kind of a denoiser and deinterlacer and not much more, but it was the best supported and easiest hardware and method for years.. its not used much anymore because it didn't compress very much and the files where huge.. today the ADVC-55 is the closest to the Dell Angel USB, nearly same form factor


MPEG2 was denoiser and could deinterlace, or keep the fields and not deinterlace, it had a lot more options in the specification, the Dell Angel USB is the best example of this form factor


h.264 solved a lot of the MPEG2 macroblocking using the Golden Ratio in its compression method and added options on top of those with MPEG2 the YUAN models from China are the best examples of this form factor, but can be hard to get.. and were really pro-devices for a long time .. it also where we have to diverge and explore native Japanese versus North American gear.. Japan has a much richer and diverse selection of "video stabilizers" that evolved into many of the I-O Data devices that had a form factor like the Angel USB


h.265 is yet another level and mostly in standalone devices.. its all opinion.. but I think the VideoLite by Cloner Alliance is the closest to the form factor and easiest to use.


you'll also come across things like the ATI USB, and Diamond Multimedia USB capture devices which are much older and powered by wall brick adapters.. the form factor is similar, but they aren't powered by the firewire or USB lines that connect to the PC.


there are also the Elgato video capture devices which are based off YUAN devices and chips but they started removing CVBS and S-Video with their later models so for ancient signal capture they are less useful


today the simplest USB with sort of the same form factor and stable drivers is the startech USB 3.0 video capture devices.. they just work and offer h.264 or h.265 and CVBS S-Video and are line powered, the software they came with was stream catcher until FLV was banned.. and now you can just use it with OBS Studio.. the setup is a little confusing, but its rock steady after setup.. but the cost can be like 200 usd or more


on the eve of Win11 and the device driver wars with microsoft.. all video capture may have to go underground and only stand alone devices like the Cloner Aliiance stuff will be practical


GraphEdit isn't a configurator or shim tool, its a software development prototyping tool.. you experiment and figure out how to work with a device driver and piece of hardware, then write a Visual C++ or .Net program to do the same things GraphEdit does.. it can sort of be used standalone from the command prompt.. but its better just to dive in and use sample code to build your own capture tool. If you can find another tool stable enough to use its best to go with that.. I think most people avoid development not because of the programming but the artistic user interface design.. most people can't do .. its a little like designing a website.. some people can, some people can't.. and some people can't stand the art they create and gravitate to the user interfaces other people make

[jwillis84]

there are other aspects of this hobby you'll get into; how to deal with macrovision, copyright protection. signal clean up and timebase correction, frame sync or audio video lock .. these are hard to relate to by new comers to the hobby who didn't live through the transition from NTSC to ATSC 15 years ago .. and then there are all the aspects of VHS players, tapes.. DVD collections ripping, or booking, indexing and cataloging.. scrapbooking and DVRs


not many people stand back and think about what they are doing.. there is duplication of effort, when to give up and accept a better digital copy from online, and rescue or time capsule approaches to video archiving.. and whether it only survives your life time or you have other member your family to accept and curate for later.. there is a whole hoarder, and regret cleaning out the tape collection aspect too.. it can be quite traumatic for some


for me I got dissolutioned by some of the things happening online and only occasionally survey whats going on.. its getting very quite.. and I am working on reducing my collection.. tending to family members.. and finding other things to do with friends.. as opposed to online.. I'm here today.. but may not dip back in for months or years

[jwillis84]

Monsoon Snappysoft was hacked many eons ago, there is only one file that needs to be changed to fully enable it and remove the limits. But unless you strictly use it on a machine running XP or WinXP mode on Win7 its just not as stable on Win7.. it works.. but its glitchy and broken.. so unless you really want to run XP all the time.. its not worth the effort.


Amcap is a fine replacement for Snappysoft.. Snappysoft is just a toy at this point.. a toy I wish I had a real license or key for.. just for nostalgia .. but a toy nonetheless.


I like the DVR capture experience (or the standalone capture tool experience) much better than PC .. if its going to be MPEG-2 .. but h.264 is native on all modern operating systems and devices now.. so its best to stick to h.264 .MP4 files for simplicity .. and for me that means a Cloner Alliance device direct to h.264 .mp4 files and then to Terrabyte micro SD cards and then into a PC or iPhone for playback. MPEG-2 will be around.. as will uncompressed .AVI video or DV video files .. but their time has passed and they never supported the much larger resolution program formats today.

[lollo]

GraphEdit isn't a configurator or shim tool, its a software development prototyping tool.. you experiment and figure out how to work with a device driver and piece of hardware, then write a Visual C++ or .Net program to do the same things GraphEdit does.

Or you can use GraphEdit itself as capture tool (with all its limitations) . Mine is the following (no audio rendering):


All solid capture software are based on it. Here for example the graphs used by the most used programs:

AmarecTV 3.10:


VirtualDub 1.9.11:


VirtualVCR2.6.9:

[poisondeathray]

Here's an attached capture via AMCap with the Dell Angel via S-Video with the SW2 moving zone plate pattern. This was done in XP 32 bit on a quite old Dell D620 with Core2Duo.

Looks pretty darn decent to me, but would be curious what others that have better video scrutinizing abilities have to say about it.

It's interlaced, so if watching in VLC, would make sure to turn on deinterlacing and choose a filter like Yadif 2x. My Mac likes to make you re-enable deinterlace options each time you open a new file which is lame.

There look to be fields where the moving zone plate pattern disappears for 1 field (77,135,149,155,297...), and at least one instance where it moves to a different location outside of the box (131) . I doubt those were part of the original SW2

[jwillis84]

ATI MMC - yes I've created GraphEdit profiles for every ATI card ever made.. at least I think so.. ATI cards are very old at this point and have a lot in common with the Dome project to capture raw signal and software decode the audio video signals. Except ATI did it the "hard"ware way in silicon.


ATI MMC knew all the registers and tricks the actual ATI cards could do. replicating that in a simple GraphEdit flow would be hard.. especially since the knowledge was proprietary at the time and when AMD acquired ATI they hid most of that away as trade secrets.


The PCI and PCIe bus is not pass-thru in most Virtual Machine technology so running Windows XP on a VM on modern hardware isn't going to happen, or at least soon.



The USB bus is pass-thru so the ATI MMC for ATI USB device is far more doable.. I've done it.


But again, its come down to user interface mostly.. you can do it.. but why not use more modern hardware, faster, cheaper, easier to get.. they really did make improvements in compression and signal processing technolgy.. its easy to become a luddite and a conservative if you don't understand everything.. you fear making a wrong choice, or bad decision .. but its the only way to learn.. we make mistakes.. buy things we regret .. you have to let go and move on .. live your life


ATI and ATI MMC is a snapshot in time, it was cool we had things like DOS .. its not to be trashed.. but treasured and respected.. but there are easier options today.

[jwillis84]

GraphEdit is a puzzle box of things to discover, about hardware and itself.


I'm still learning things about it and get excited seeing other peoples GraphEdit flows.


It can be used for capture.. but geez its a lot easier with dedicated tools.. but at least it won't up and disappear one night, expire or go away. (Microsoft you aren't listening are you?)


I use it, have used it.. and respect it.. but a dedicated magic box that does capture for me.. like a DVR to HDD or Video to SDcard .. gets the job done too.

[aramkolt]

Many thanks for the replies! I've experienced a fair amount of what you've described already, criticism for trying other things than what is touted to be an ideal capture chain. But I do question some of the advice in terms of "how much better" different components of a chain are compared to less expensive ones. I also suspect that many commercial TBCs are better or at least equal to the TBC-1000 just as an example, even for consumer video.

I honestly would have thought there'd be a project like this already where something like 50 capture cards and TBCs were tested on the same materials with pros and cons summarized in a chart with raw capture samples of each for those so inclined to look.

If you had to go the DVR route for MPEG2 capture, what device model would you choose? I personally like the AJA Ki Pro as a DVR (though that's ProRes), though that'll only accept analog component or SDI, but when paired with a frame TBC that outputs either of those (like the FA-310 or any variety of SDI outputting TBCs), it seems like a good match. The interlaced ProRes files it makes can then be processed however you like. The other quirk of the KiPro is that it saves the left and right audio tracks as separate mono tracks, so you can't listen to both at once without a linear editor, or remuxing those into a single stereo file.

I do plan to try the ClonerAlliance Viewlite and see how it compares to everything else. Was kind of debating between that and the Cloner Alliance Box Pro, but knowing me, I'll probably try both for completes. Downside to the Pro is that they got rid of the S-Video input in favor of component - which I suppose is fine if you're using it with a frame TBC that has component output.

I do think the Dell Angel is probably an overlooked gem and I'll be curious to see how the quality of its captures compare to something like the ClonerAlliance Viewlite. From what I remember reading, the viewlite does mess with the aspect ratio and doesn't preserve interlacing. I will say the Angel definitely knows when macrovision is present and will just show full screen alternating colors when it sees it. I suspect the capture quality is similar to DV, but at a far smaller bitrate. Looks like the bitrate is about 1/3 that of DV. Seems like a pretty ideal capture size for non-critical content without taking up crazy amounts of space.


This is a simple YouTube bob deinterlace with Handbrake (on Mac) and upscale to 720p so that framerate can be 59.94: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyUsPkYw-yE

Seems like that result is better than a lot of the much more involved capture processes I've seen, but yet again I haven't really tested other cards with the same test - still coming up with what patterns and video and samples to use...

[lollo]

It can be used for capture.. but geez its a lot easier with dedicated tools..

Sure, but trough it you can understand (a bit) the architecture of the "dedicated tools". What I really miss in the custom GraphEdit capture graph is an effective "insert frame" procedure. "AVI Mux" takes care of the dropped frames, and the fact that is configurable is a nice feature, but to "insert" a frame there is no simple solution.

(We all wish to have 0 dropped and inserted frames, but that's another story)

but at least it won't up and disappear one night, expire or go away. (Microsoft you aren't listening are you?)

I use it, have used it.. and respect it.. but a dedicated magic box that does capture for me.. like a DVR to HDD or Video to SDcard .. gets the job done too.

I see your point, it has its reason

[aramkolt]

Here's an attached capture via AMCap with the Dell Angel via S-Video with the SW2 moving zone plate pattern. This was done in XP 32 bit on a quite old Dell D620 with Core2Duo.

Looks pretty darn decent to me, but would be curious what others that have better video scrutinizing abilities have to say about it.

It's interlaced, so if watching in VLC, would make sure to turn on deinterlacing and choose a filter like Yadif 2x. My Mac likes to make you re-enable deinterlace options each time you open a new file which is lame.

There look to be fields where the moving zone plate pattern disappears for 1 field (77,135,149,155,297...), and at least one instance where it moves to a different location outside of the box (131) . I doubt those were part of the original SW2

Yeah, I did see where there was that frame jump. I wouldn't put it past it to have been the TPG21 pattern generator glitching for a second there, or could also have been due to the old laptop I was using it with. Definitely wasn't writing to a different drive than the OS was on, so could have been a disk access thing.

What program did you use to get the numbered frames and analysis?

[poisondeathray]

What program did you use to get the numbered frames and analysis?

Avisynth and AssumeTFF().SeparateFields() in avspmod . Or if you double rate deinterlace (in any program) , then each field is essentially resampled into a frame , and that framenumber would correspond the original field number - that gives you similar information