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fibbingbear
10th February 2008, 00:42
I know that most people on this forum have experience with DVD or TV capture, but I've recently come across some really *weird* behavior while trying to capture from my ps2 and gamecube. Maybe someone with more experience can give it a shot?

Basically, my problem is that when using s-video, the colors are over-saturated. When I capture using composite, the colors are normal. I know I can fix this in post-processing, but it makes no sense to me why switching to s-video would cause this distortion, and I want to know why :)

The weirder thing: the color distortion only happens when capturing from the gamecube. The PS2 s-video capture has no distortion.

The weirdest thing: I'm using the same s-video cable for both: an intec universal s-video cable (has plugs for both the ps2 and gamecube). Also, if I use the composite out from the intec cable (it has composite as well as s-video), it looks exactly the same as the Nintendo composite cable, so I don't think it's garbling the Nintendo signal. If anyone's interested, the cable looks like:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21FNHMCPM8L._AA280_.jpg

I've actually tried capturing on three different cards and they all experience the same problem: VIVO on an GeForceFX card (uses a Phillips IC), an ATI Theatrix Pro 650, and a Leadtek WinFast 2k. The ATI card has a really strange problem that when I try to capture using virtual vcr, the image becomes 50% darker (I have to use the "Personal Cinema" software that comes with it for a clean image).

It doesn't seem like the cable (given that it doesn't affect the PS2, and it also has a composite out that gives the same results as the Nintendo composite cable), and it doesn't seem like it's any particular card (since all are over-saturated)... any ideas?

I can post screenshots or upload small clips if you think it'll help... let me know.

fibbingbear
11th February 2008, 00:06
After a lot of work, it turns out it was hardware overlay --- it wasn't disabled for some of the viewings, and hence screwed with the colors.

This raises another question, though: why do video card hardware acceleration render colors differently? It seems to me that if the card can display the colors correctly without acceleration, it should be able to auto-adjust the acceleration's distortion until it looks the same.