Console Screen/Video Capture

devilman · **Posted:** Fri Jun 03, 2011 14:42

Every now and again, I dabble with hooking up a console and trying to take some decent screenshots of (mainly retro) stuff. This usually involves me arsing around without different capture cards (I've used various PCI and USB ones). I'm thinking that maybe a better alternative would be some kind of hard drive recorder with network access with composite and scart sockets (plus ideally, Component/HDMI for the more recent consoles). I could then transfer the files to my PC to chop them up a bit.

Is there something that fits that criteria that someone can recommend?

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

You are wise.

I too have dabbled in PCI and USB capture stuff, trying to make do with limited monies, and the result was never ending, head-scrambling pain. I write stuff for a website that's pretty much 'decent screenshots of (mainly retro) stuff', and got something resembling pictures out of a 3DO before I realised it was the 3DO screwing everything up and not my cheap crap USB capture gear. Move up to the PS2, and everything gets a bit shoddy.

A HDD recorder is a very good sounding option, if it's guts are good enough to decode the video right (comb filters 'n' stuff) and write it to disk without compressing it ass-ly. It would be nice if they had an option to record 'absolutely everything exactly', so you could step through it later and take the exact frames you want. I don't have one, though, so I can't help. I will remain here like an owl to steal all the advice.

devilman · **Posted:** Fri Jun 03, 2011 15:36

Sounds very similar to my experiences. The CD32 screenshots I did for DigitPress didn't come out too badly at the time but I remember it being a lot of work to get all the settings right and I don't think I can be arsed with that amount of hassle again.

DavPaz · **Joined:** 27th Jun, 2008 **Posts:** 38464

For very Retro stuff, wouldn't an emulator give the best results?

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

Composite capture is easy, but keep in mind many older consoles and computers don't exactly keep their voltages "legal" when on RGB. For example I had to doctor the Amiga RGB lead I was sold with some resisters to make it play nicely with an LCD TV. The voltages were way high and causing issues.

Of course you could always photograph the screen old school. Much easier with modern LCD's than CRT's.

devilman · **Posted:** Sun Jun 05, 2011 18:01

DavPaz wrote:

For very Retro stuff, wouldn't an emulator give the best results?

Yup. I'm thinking more for the harder to emulate stuff really.

KovacsC · **Posted:** Mon Jun 06, 2011 8:43

We have a device at work that sits between vga output of a pc and vga input of a monitor... then dumps screen shots to a laptop usb attached...

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

I've found some infos!

1: Everything looks crap on everything no matter what you do.
2: My capture card can't handle NTSC.

And you all thought Bubsy 3D couldn't look any worse.

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

Got Firewire?

Buy a Sony DV camera from Ebay or source one by other means that has composite in then use this for capture. This need not be expensive as you could get a unit with a screwed tape mechanism and it would still do the job. But the camera must have composite in.

I used to use my old (semi pro admittedly) PDX-10 to capture in VHS tapes before I got my combo unit. Did a sterling job as it would handle any PAL or NTSC signal and would squirt it down the firewire cable at a quality in excess of any cheapie capture card.

Just a thought.

devilman · **Posted:** Fri Jun 17, 2011 0:46

Never had firewire.

I've not given up on this yet, but finding a suitable HDD recorder is proving a little fruitless so I'm back to looking at capture cards. This looks suitable, but pricey, so I'm looking at possibly getting a Vbox 2 instead - it just does component but should at least give half-decent results.

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

I'm back! And I've got a DVD recorder!

It is a Sanyo DVR-S300. It records to DVD+Rs and DVD+RWs only. With DVD+Rs, you can't see what's on the disc in Windows until it's been finalised. You can use IsoBuster's raw reading powers to copy the .vob files you've made so far to your HD. With DVD+RW, finalising doesn't seem to be necessary or possible; you can view the contents of the disc without IsoBuster.

I went with a DVD recorder because it seemed like most HD recorders encrypt their contents, so you can't simply ethernet or USB the video across. Google shows me that a lot of people suggest plugging the HD recorder into a DVD recorder to get the video off, which sounds ridiculous. An alternative is to build my own PVR server. Not happening. At least, not for less than £100.

It has a Scart input that seems to accept everything and a Scart output that... does stuff. It has RF in and out and some component output.

I've tried it with nearly everything I've got in every possible way. Here are the results.

Long story short: Dreamcast, works with no sound. PS2, Xbox, Gamecube and 3DO work with sound. Everything else has vertical rolling.

Code:

Year            Console         Output                          Sound           Rolling         Good Enough     Notes
1982            C64             Composite Internal
1982            C64             RF Internal                     y               y               n
1986            NES             RF Internal
1987            A500            Composite A520 Modulator                                                        
1987            A500            Composite Amitek Modulator                                                      
1987            A500            RF A520 Modulator                                                               
1987            A500            RF Amitek Modulator                                                             
1987            Master System   RF Internal
1987            ZX Spectrum +2A RF Internal                     y               y               n               
1990            Mega Drive      RF Internal                                                     
1992            A1200           Composite A520 Modulator                                                        
1992            A1200           Composite Amitek Modulator                                                      
1992            A1200           RF A520 Modulator                                                               
1992            A1200           RF Amitek Modulator                                                             
1992            A1200           RF Internal                                                     
1992            SNES            Composite Multi-Out Gamecube    y               y               n
1992            SNES            RF Internal                     y               y               n
1992            SNES            RF Multi-Out Gamester           n               n               n               
1993            3DO             Composite                       y               n               y
1993            3DO             RF Internal                                                     
1993            3DO             S-Video                                                         
1993            CD32            Composite Internal              y               y               n               
1993            CD32            RF Internal                     y               y               n
1993            CD32            S-Video Internal                y               y               n               
1994            Jaguar          RF Internal                                                     
1995            PSX             Composite PlayStation           y               y               n               
1995            PSX             RGB Scart PlayStation           y               y               n               
1997            N64             Composite Multi-Out Gamecube    y               y               n
1997            N64             RF Multi-Out Gamester           y               y               n               
1997            N64             RF N64 Block                    y               y               n
1999            Dreamcast       RF Dreamcast                    n               n               y               50hz only
2000            PS2             Composite PlayStation           y               n               y               
2000            PS2             RGB Scart PlayStation           y               n               y               
2000            PS2 PSX         Composite PlayStation           y               y               n               
2000            PS2 PSX         RGB Scart PlayStation           y               y               n               
2000            PSone           Composite PlayStation           y               y               n               
2000            PSone           RGB Scart PlayStation           y               y               n               
2002            Gamecube        Composite Multi-Out Gamecube    y               n               y               50hz only
2002            Gamecube        RF Multi-Out Gamester                                                           
2002            Gamecube        RF N64 Block                                                    
2002            Xbox            Composite Xbox                  y               n               y               50hz only? Check settings!
2005            Xbox 360        Composite Xbox 360                                                              

Passing through a VCR (or at least my VCR) hoping for a RF->Scart miracle doesn't have any effect anywhere.
It likes VCRs playing tapes, but it doesn't like the VCR's setup menu. I haven't tried taping games and then capturing the tapes. I'm not that badly in need of 8/16-bit screenshots.

The thing likes to merge and blend adjacent frames on the output movies, which is frustrating for trying to get clean game captures. Only 1/8 of my Dreamcast captures are clear. 1/4 of my PS2 ones, but 3/5 of my Xbox ones. <-- This was wrong. This was my playback software not being set up right.

Crazy Taxi: Still pictures are clear, but the edges shimmer.
Ingame is unusable.
Pretend the motion blur is an added feature.

Tech Romancer.
"HUH?"
Tech Romancer's ugly anyway.
Gotta keep going back and forward through frames to find a solid one. (HATE that frame-backwards isn't straightforward in media players.)

The CD32 works! Oh dear.
False alarm. Looks like no Dangerous Streets for me.

'3DO experience'.
Picture, compressed for 3DO. Uncompressed, mashed up for output, captured, recompressed for DVD video.
3DO = lol

Twilight Princess
Twiiiilliiiiigghhhhttt Prriiinnnnceeeess.
There we go

Mario World Super
SuipoeWr oMralrd
Super Mario Blurred

Atlas games!
Fuzzy looking interface?

The PS games were frustrating. The games rolled, but the boot sequence didn't. Tried 'em on the original PS, the PSone and the PS2. I suppose the PS3's emulated PS1 might work, but that's just getting silly. NTSC PS games came out in the bizarre rainbow like that Bubsy 3D pic.

Recording using the DVD is still less noisy and easier than the alternatives:
a) play the game while sitting in front of DScaler, manually pressing the screenshot key when something interesting happens and hoping I caught whatever it was I wanted. This gives me the benefit of DScaler's noise reduction and deinterlacing heuristic stuff to get clear progressive-like pictures. I miss frames, and it's not easy playing directly off DScaler's delayed output. A split and amplified signal is needed if I want to play the game on a TV while DScalering and I suppose I could make a screenshot pedal or something. (Or put the keyboard on the floor. Or get a copilot.)
b) play the game while using AMCAP to record the direct output of the console. Recording the entire sequence allows me to pick the exact frame I want. I have to deinterlace the pictures manually (halving the vertical resolution) or engineer situations where there's little motion, pretending it was a progressive picture all along. Needs loads of hard drive space and with my hardware the results aren't very good. I end up having to play in 15 minute bursts of recording, taking frames, and deleting. Luckily, that's about as long as a 3DO game needs to disappoint.

With these methods, I have my crappy noisy internal Hauppage Bt878 and my crappy EasyCAP. The results are a bit crap and involve me dragging the computer across the room to meet the consoles.

Red Faction with AMCAP
Red Faction with DScaler
Red Faction with Sanyo DVR-S300

See full results of DVD capture here!

http://www.mrdictionary.net/stuff/2011/cap_dvd/

It works! Ish! It'll do for what I'm using it for. Oddly enough, I bought it to capture 3DO, Xbox, Gamecube and PS2 games... and that's ALL it does. I suppose that's what you get when you buy the first cheapest thng you see. I expect that even if I did buy a moderately more expensive one it would probably have a lot of the same guts (and same problems) unless I went up a tier to ridiculously expensive things.

What I would like is a DVD recorder with the permissiveness of an old CRT telly which records unprocessed video. (Is there a magic box I can use that'll goodify a composite signal so that my DVD recorder'll take it? A camcorder's a bit expensive

... maybe I could put some phono sockets on a breadboard and just throw things on it to make an ad-hoc filter until the signal is fine.) What I would like even more is if interlace never existed. Whoever invented interlace and whoever made this DVD recorder so you can't fiddle with its decoding parameters have a lot to answer for.

devilman · **Posted:** Tue Jul 19, 2011 12:19

Some thorough tests there! I'm not sure why stuff would roll though - I would have expected that from non-PAL stuff maybe.

I still haven't decided on which method I'm going to go down though.. a DVD Recorder looks like it might be a decent enough option though if I don't get a VBox II.

chinnyhill10 · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 15695

devilman wrote:

Some thorough tests there! I'm not sure why stuff would roll though - I would have expected that from non-PAL stuff maybe.

The levels that old computers shove out of their RGB or composite ports aren't always legal for starters. In the analogue age this didn't really matter. But in the digital age circuits can get overloaded.

The rolling could be a sync problem or if RF is selected you could have the wrong TV system selected. Turn off any auto detect for the TV system in use as if this is turned on it will probably not be able to work out what the incoming signal is and get it wrong.

However, another problem is that modern digital tuners hate the cheap and nasty modulators used in old computers. Spectrums and Atari's are particularly prone to this.

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

Quote:

The rolling could be a sync problem or if RF is selected you could have the wrong TV system selected. Turn off any auto detect for the TV system in use as if this is turned on it will probably not be able to work out what the incoming signal is and get it wrong.

I tried all the different TV systems I could see in the menu. (You mean PAL-[?], NTSC, SECAM?) Didn't do me any good.

Are the thumbnails on that page working for you guys by the way? It's supposed to be showing thumbnails down the side but I've been having problems with file permissions.

devilman · **Posted:** Tue Jul 19, 2011 23:59

Nope.. not working here. I think I've had that same issue with snif before too. Does it maybe only thumbnail JPGs?

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

Bah.

If you were to go to the url that snif uses to retrieve the thumbnails (something like index.php?thumbnail=blah.png) and save the result, you get a text file with some PHP permissions errors about not being able to read the thumbnails. I guess I've gotta shell in there and set everything to readable and writable, or maybe it's a users thing. I wasn't really paying attention when I put that snif up, I assumed it would just work straight off. It was working yesterday: the thumbnails are still there, but they are verboten.

My instinct is to blame Dreamhost for everything, but Objection's snif works fine. http://objection.mrdictionary.net/evide ... allpapers/

MrD · **Joined:** 30th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 2139

Alright! Now we're crackin'!

I was getting annoyed at the interpolated frames, figuring that the DVD recorder must be really bad if it's doing that to the output. The recorded DVD is going to be interlaced anyway, so it wouldn't make sense to screw up the signal by blending frames and then record half of that. Assuming that it's recording it right, I wondered if it was just my player (Media Player Classic Homecinema + whatever CCCP installs) being silly. T'was. Play->Filters->MPEG-2 Decoder lets you set the deinterlacing type. You could probably run the output through VirtualDub to use DScaler-like smart deinterlacing motion detecting filters to get the 'progressive like' picture.

Halo...
01
02
03
04
05
...smelllllls.

Of course just as I figure this out the remote stops working for the DVD recorder, so I can't record anything. It either wants brand new batteries or I broke it.

juju · **Joined:** 25th Jul, 2011 **Posts:** 1

to take video screen captures i use this prog http://www.FORFRODO!.com/

devilman · **Posted:** Thu Aug 11, 2011 11:51

This looks quite natty, if pricey. I've got a feeling that I don't have a spare PCI-Express slot though - isn't that slot mainly for video cards?

WTB · **Joined:** 27th Mar, 2008 **Posts:** 14497

devilman wrote:

This looks quite natty, if pricey. I've got a feeling that I don't have a spare PCI-Express slot though - isn't that slot mainly for video cards?

Yeah, you usually only have one PCI Express slot, unless you've got a motherboard that supports dual video card fun, then you'll have two. You can also get them with four now, or probably even more. But if your system is a couple of years old, you'll likely have one, unless you bought an SLI/Crossfire motherboard.

edit: Although thinking about it, I haven't had a motherboard since around 2005 that didn't have at least two PCI-e slots. But, I do build my systems for gaming.

devilman · **Posted:** Thu Aug 11, 2011 12:00

WTB wrote:

devilman wrote:

This looks quite natty, if pricey. I've got a feeling that I don't have a spare PCI-Express slot though - isn't that slot mainly for video cards?

Yeah, you usually only have one PCI Express slot, unless you've got a motherboard that supports dual video card fun, then you'll have two. You can also get them with four now, or probably even more. But if your system is a couple of years old, you'll likely have one, unless you bought an SLI/Crossfire motherboard.

Thought as much. Cheers.

There's always the 'taking photos of the telly approach I suppose...

ZOMG Spoiler! Click here to view!

Attachment:

typing.jpg

Mr Russell · **Joined:** 6th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 12243

GamesMaster (the mag) used to have articles on hooking up your VCR didn't they?

Can't you root out an old copy of that and use your VCR?

Heh.

Alberto · **Joined:** 28th Jan, 2011 **Posts:** 1198

Longines Symphonette wrote:

GamesMaster (the mag) used to have articles on hooking up your VCR didn't they?

Can't you root out an old copy of that and use your VCR?

Heh.

But in the absence of tapes nowadays he'd have to tape over his "Port Vale's Top Nine Goals" video...

Mr Russell · **Joined:** 6th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 12243

I've got an old Scotch brand tape. Re-record, not fade away...

devilman · **Posted:** Sun Sep 25, 2011 12:49

Currently eyeing one of these up, but at £149+VAT, it's not exactly cheap.

devilman · **Posted:** Mon Sep 26, 2011 9:40

devilman wrote:

Never had firewire.

I've not given up on this yet, but finding a suitable HDD recorder is proving a little fruitless so I'm back to looking at capture cards. This looks suitable, but pricey, so I'm looking at possibly getting a Vbox 2 instead - it just does component but should at least give half-decent results.

The Hauppauge thing is now £139.99 so I've taken the plunge, although via Quidco/Play to get a little money back.

devilman · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 19:59

First video capture. Battle Construction Vehicles on the PS2. The bundled software is pretty straightforward to use. Shame it doesn't do still capture, so I'll have to find some third-party application for that.

Oh and this was the first time I've played BCV.. hadn't a clue what I was doing. The voice acting is bloody awful though.

Grim... · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 20:12

That's clearly the best game ever!

Bobbyaro · **Joined:** 18th Apr, 2008 **Posts:** 11843

That really is an amazing looking game! I love the special power move out of nowhere!

devilman · **Posted:** Fri Sep 30, 2011 20:40

Ooh.. I got a Youtube comment!

Quote:

...the fuck am I watching?!

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Console Screen/Video Capture

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