Looking for a decent capture card with a break out box

[Barker]

In our high school, we have a student-ran Media dept that does the morning announcements and many other various video projects. They used to have a pinnacle DV500 with a breakout box, but now it's outdated and we have upgraded the computers and the website says it won't work on XP later than SP1 and won't work with premier CS4. I'm looking for a replacement for them.

I've looked around the forum for a bit, but unfortunately I don't know much about capture cards at all, I just know the requirements we need. They have a studio where they film the kids and feed it into a computer using RCA or svideo. The previous device (DV500) had a breakout box that accepted RCA, SVIDEO and DV Input (1394) and outputted RCA and SVIDEO. They use both the inputs and outputs.

I found the pinnacle movie box, which seems to be similar, but without an internal card. The box hooks to the computer via USB2. I've read some really bad reviews about it having problems keeping up with the video so I'm a little concerned about purchasing this unit.

I've also seen a Matrox unit that looks really nice (RT.X2) yet this unit is quite pricey (~$799). We are looking for something in the range of $100-$300.

I was wondering if anyone had some suggestions or other devices similar to this that they have used and are happy with. It doesn't have to be top of the line, just able to keep up video streaming both ways through it and capable of accepting the inputs listed above, preferably in a breakout box.

Thanks!

[Asmodian]

Blackmagic's Design Intensity Pro has breakout cables, not a box, but works great in Win7 x64 and can capture from and display to HDMI, component, s-video, and composite.

They also offer a similar device that connects via USB3 instead of PCI-E 1x and is more of a box but check USB3 compatibility as I have heard it has some issues. The Design Intensity Pro also has reported issues with the x58 chipset but I am using an Asus P6T delux V2 with a new bios with no trouble.

They are both about $190.

I am very happy with my Intensity Pro.

[Barker]

I was SO close to asking about this device, but I thought it was a cheesy side consumer device. I've heard good things about this box, and I think your comment seals the deal. We don't need the extras (hdmi) but it's good that they are there. We don't need usb3 pci-e is fine.

Wow, thanks for the info, I've always loved this forum for these kind of answers that I can't find anywhere else!

[TheSkiller]

@ Asmodian
Can you please tell me whether the Intensity Pro does have a Video and Audio Proc-Amp (you know adjustable audio volume, video brightness, contrast, color, sharpness...)? The Intensity Shuttle (USB3 external) seems to offer this but I can't find information about that issue with the Intensity Pro.
I'm still looking for something that'll FINALLY be good enough to capture all my home video VHS. The number one requirement for that is a device that does both audio and video so that they stay in sync even if there are 30 seconds of snow on the tape. Anything like video capture card + sound via line-in will choke when that happens (a/v sync wise) and will take minutes to resync again.

[Asmodian]

I can check for a proc amp, I think I did see one in its contol panel but I have a hardware proc amp so I have not looked for it.

It keeps sound sync very well, in virtual dub it always displays 0ms desync. It does capture audio and video.

EDIT: I am not sure about the case you mention, I have a TBC so nothing changes when I get snow on the tape. I can test that tonight as well.

I love the monitor feature, I have my TV plugged into its HDMI out and it displays exactly what I am capturing off of s-video, both audio and video. It makes it easy to setup capture.

Also it does come with the weird s-video breakout cable adapter. I couldn't find anything online which mentioned weather or not it was included and it isn't in the pictures. If you want to both capture off of s-video and monitor s-video out you will need another one. I purchased a full length s-video breakout cable because I wanted to be sure to have one and while it does save an extra connector I do not see any difference.

[juhok]

BM Decklink Studio does the video adjustments after AD conversion. I'd guess it's the same deal with the cheaper Intensity "Pro". I leave the settings at default and do adjustments later in better software. If your tapes aren't 100% perfect you need frame sync (often called TBC) in between. BM will drop frames if there's any problems withs the signal. I've tried this with many VHS players and other formats. It's a no-deal without a frame sync.

[TheSkiller]

Asmodian, thanks for your response.
Yes, I found out about that S-Video to two RCA cables adapter that comes with the Intensity Pro. Seems very unusual to me. Having an additional piece of connector and wire in between is never a good thing. And indeed I would be capturing via S-Video only from my S-VHS deck (to preview during capturing I simply use the additional video outs on my VCR). My VCR does have an integrated line-TBC that corrects the visible horizontal VHS wobble but of course it does not clean the signal.
I would appreciate it if you could try that, capturing snow without TBC, if things are still in sync after that then it's what I need.

I don't mind frame drops in places where there is snow on the tape or when there's a small dropout during a fine section (it seems naturally to me that such "signal" cannot be captured).
The tapes are actually mostly in good condition but between clips there are sometimes long periods of nothingness (snow) on the tape and I don't want to interrupt/stop capture every time that happens.

@ juhok Yes of course one can do most adjustments in post, however if the levels on the tape are really high and therefore get clipped during ADC with default values then they cannot be recovered. Not sure if that applies to my tapes as well but with a proc amp, at least the way they are implemented in cheap old TV capture cards, this is no problem, simply turn down the contrast and it's there again.

[juhok]

There are drops everywhere - not just the unrecorded parts of the tape. And it looks like crap. Nothing natural about that and it can be avoided.

Just for fun I just tried capturing test tape from Panasonic NV-HS1000, newly recorded mint SVHS tape. There are frame drops every 5 seconds without the frame sync.

Rarely if ever I've experienced a signal that clips using Datavideo frame sync and Decklink. Often the signal goes over the 235 "TV" limit into 235-255 range but not really hitting 255. This can be recovered.

I've captured thousands of hours of VHS from hundreds of people using dozen different high-end decks so this is not just speculation.

edit: A/V sync comes from the same clock and it doesn't drift. Propably the possible frame drops without FS don't affect this either but I've never really tried because that is just using the hardware wrong.

[Asmodian]

I checked and there is a simple proc amp in the control panel, I assume it is after ADC but that is before 8-bit at least.

[juhok]

If you take a look at the waveform monitor after using BM's digital proc amp, it's stairstepped and ugly. They're doing it wrong--

edit: and IIRC it clips everything above 235.

[Asmodian]

Ouch :(

Glad I don't need it then.

Edit:
It looks like the Intensity Pro makes up black frames and silent audio instead of desyncing when it loses frame sync. I cannot be sure about audio sync as my testing wasn't too extensive but everything seems ok even capturing my worst tape (a copy of a copy over pre-recorded video which shows through in parts, a really bad tape) without my external TBC and the TBC in the VCR off. There are a lot of frame drops, judder, bounce, etc. without any TBC but I get a solid 30000/1001 fps from the Intensity Pro and VirtualDub thinks everything is ok. It seems to blank the audio if there is a video error, made up black frames have silent audio even if the audio from the VCR is still OK.

Edit2: I should mention that what I mean by "external TBC" is an AVT-8710. I understand a wide range of devices are called TBCs.

Edit3: After some testing it looks like BM's uncompressed codecs clip YUV to 16-235 when converting to RGB but do save full range YUV. This gives a nasty clipped white effect if the material has out of range values and the codec is asked to give RGB but can be avoided by doing full range YUV->RGB conversions outside the codec. The codecs will only give UYVY or RGB32 which makes them annoying to use with Avisynth.

[juhok]

Good info. I'm using UT Video Codec for capturing and intermediate files and it handles UYVY<->YUY2<->YV12 quite nicely and no clipping problems.

edit: To think of it I guess it's expected behavior that everything above 235 will be clipped when outputting "PC-levels" as there shouldn't be anything above 235 in the first place.

[Ghitulescu]

edit: To think of it I guess it's expected behavior that everything above 235 will be clipped when outputting "PC-levels" as there shouldn't be anything above 235 in the first place.

That has nothing to do, both ranges should represent the same range in terms of video information.

[Asmodian]

edit: To think of it I guess it's expected behavior that everything above 235 will be clipped when outputting "PC-levels" as there shouldn't be anything above 235 in the first place.

That is actually when outputing TV-levels isn't it?

[juhok]

What I was thinking when I wrote that was Levels(16,1,235,0,255) which would discard information stored in the 235-255 range.