Good HD external USB capture device?

[dbhankins]

I'm looking to capture output from my game consoles, some old, some new. I've done this before, back in 2006, but my device was SD only and has since been stolen. So since it looks like there's a wide variety of devices on the market, I thought I'd ask the experts here for advice. My requirements are this:

Must capture from both component and composite video sources
Must capture audio as well as video
Must be external device not internal card
USB 2.0 or USB 3.0
Must produce editable output files
Must accept at least 720p input
Must have pass-through support or be extremely low latency
Under $350 USD

Nice to have:

1080i/1080p
VGA/DVI-A, HDMI, S-Video, Co-axial
Ethernet in addition to USB
Uncompressed output
Can be used as a standard video capture device (i.e. does not need device drivers, is Linux compatible)

Can anyone suggest a suitable gadget that I can use to capture gameplay? A DVR-type solution would also be fine, providing I can get the files off the internal hdd later to edit them.

Thanks!

Dan

[Blue_MiSfit]

Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle, perhaps? It's USB 3, and should meet all your requirements. I don't know about pass through suppport or the latency, but you can always ask their sales team.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/models/

List price is $199.

Derek

[Ghitulescu]

You have no problems in finding 720p or 1080i, but AFAIK there's none providing you 1080p.

[dbhankins]

The Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle sounds like just the ticket. Thanks Derek!

Dan

[dbhankins]

I got the Shuttle, and I've been using it to capture Shadow of the Colossus gameplay at 720p. It works for what I want it for.

Thanks for the advice!

Dan

[Blue_MiSfit]

Awesome! Always good to hear a success story!

[Capsbackup]

I have the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212, and I am pleased with it's video and audio quality. It does capture DD 5.1 audio through the optical line in too, not just 2 channel stereo. It is limited to 1080i, but with a combination of VideoRedo to edit and remove commercials when necessary, etc.., and MeGui/Avisynth to reencode and restore 23.976fps from the 1080i capture of 29.97fps, I get a pretty good looking 1080P final output. :D
I have not tried capturing any games, but it can do that too! :)

[Grandy]

Anyone know if the intensity shuttle captures to MPEG-2?

Would like to edit files in virtualdubmod

[maxrnb]

I have the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212, and I am pleased with it's video and audio quality. It does capture DD 5.1 audio through the optical line in too, not just 2 channel stereo. It is limited to 1080i, but with a combination of VideoRedo to edit and remove commercials when necessary, etc.., and MeGui/Avisynth to reencode and restore 23.976fps from the 1080i capture of 29.97fps, I get a pretty good looking 1080P final output. :D
I have not tried capturing any games, but it can do that too! :)

Greetings all,

I know by today's standards that a 4 month old forum thread is ancient history. If I have posted in the wrong place
please let me know. And I have already spent hours searching for relevant information about my issue and found no
joy.

I'm a total noob to HDTV video capture and recently purchased the Hauppauge HD-PVR 1212. When capturing from
my HDTV set-top-box (Dish Network) through the HD-PVR my 1080i captures end up (according to MediaInfo) at
30fps and 720p captures encode to 60fps.

As an experiment I captured some video from a Blu-ray player/Blu-ray disc. I had to set the blu-ray player to 720p
to capture on the HD-PVR and the frame rate did come out at 59.97fps and not 60fps like I get through the STB.
I won't be using the blu-ray as a source as I can backup BD's directly.

I've never seen frame rates of 30fps and 60fps before. I want to archive my HDTV captures to AVCHD-DVD.
When I deinterlace the 1080i and decimate I end up with 24fps. I've tried both decomb.dll and TIVTC.dll filters and
come out the same either way. All the clips I've tried so far to archive started life as film. BTW I'm using x264 with
various flavors of front-end to transcode.

Capsbackup mentioned the ability to re-encode and restore to 23.976fps.

Any suggestions on how to accomplish 23.976fps are greatly appreciated.

[Capsbackup]

maxrnb, my understanding of the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212 is that it records exactly the same resolution as the source. I set my Comcast DVR to broadcast to 1080i. It does have an option for 720P, but I have never tried that. I believe all of my captures have been 1080i.
I think 24fps and 30fps is AVCHD compliant, but am not sure why your captures are such. Have you tried making an AVCHD from your captures and burn to DVD+RW/BD-RE and does it play back properly?
The Avisynth script I have been using with MeGui that converts my captures to 23.976 is:
LoadPlugin("C:\Tools\MeGUI\tools\avisynth_plugin\TIVTC.dll")
tfm(order=1).tdecimate()

The annoying part for me is I cannot use the actual H.264 TS captured file from the Hauppauge, since when I use tsMuxeR to create a Blu-ray with that .TS file, and then ImgBurn to burn it, the resulting disc displays what appears to be the wrong field order or interlacing, so there is lots of stuttering and jumping on panning scenes when viewed on my Sony S360 standalone.
So I either deinterlace the original, keeping 29.97fps or decimate it to remove this issue and get 23.976fps. Both look pretty good too!

[maxrnb]

maxrnb, my understanding of the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212 is that it records exactly the same resolution as the source. I set my Comcast DVR to broadcast to 1080i. It does have an option for 720P, but I have never tried that. I believe all of my captures have been 1080i.
I think 24fps and 30fps is AVCHD compliant, but am not sure why your captures are such. Have you tried making an AVCHD from your captures and burn to DVD+RW/BD-RE and does it play back properly?
The Avisynth script I have been using with MeGui that converts my captures to 23.976 is:


The annoying part for me is I cannot use the actual H.264 TS captured file from the Hauppauge, since when I use tsMuxeR to create a Blu-ray with that .TS file, and then ImgBurn to burn it, the resulting disc displays what appears to be the wrong field order or interlacing, so there is lots of stuttering and jumping on panning scenes when viewed on my Sony S360 standalone.
So I either deinterlace the original, keeping 29.97fps or decimate it to remove this issue and get 23.976fps. Both look pretty good too!

@Capsbackup

Thanks for the quick follow up.

I'm new to broadcast capture and scratching my head about all this.

Yes, everything I've read about the HD-PVR 1212 says it encodes in exactly the same resolution as the source. The clip I'm working on
now is the 1986 version of the film Platoon and conventional wisdom says "if it's film, then it was 23.976fps".

I'm using the DishNet VIP622-DVR STB and capturing the clips I have stored on the VIP622 hard drive through the Hauppauge. When the
STB output is set to 1080i I get 30fps-interlaced as you might expect. When set to 720p I'm getting 60fps-progressive. Perhaps your
Comcast is outputting 1080i at 29.97fps (30000/1001). My DishNet box is outputting at a straight 30fps (30000/1000).

When transcoding I index the clip first with DGIndexNV. Using straight ahead techniques in DGINdexNV or AviSynth I get a 24fps x264
transcoded clip as indicated by MediaInfo and VirtualDub.

I can force 23.976 fps by using

tfm(order=1).tdecimate(mode=2)

or

tfm(order=1).tdecimate()
ConvertFPS(23.976)


But I don't know if this is the right way to restore the clip to original. When viewing the avs file with the tdecimate(mode=2) line, I get a
frame stop every 64 frames in VirtualDub. Maybe this will smooth out when it is transcoded in x264. I'll try it and see how it works.

Answer to your AVCHD quesition: I have been able to burn AVCHD-DVD's at 30fps and 60fps using the TME software that comes with the
HD-PVR, but it looks soft more like mpeg2 than nice sharp picture on the original h264. I was also able to reauthor some AVCHD-DVD's
using the same clips with TMPGEnc Author Works 5 that play on my Sony stand-alone but TMPGEnc AW5 completely re-transcoded the
clips again.

I read somewhere that running the original captures through eac3to before you remux with tsMuxeR seems to clear up some of the bugs
in the original capture file.

Maybe 1080i is not such a good idea for me so I'll look at 720p. Hopefully it's easier to work with.

Well I guess I'm off to do some more reading up on this stuff.

Thanks again for your help! :thanks:

[Capsbackup]

@Capsbackup
Maybe 1080i is not such a good idea for me so I'll look at 720p. Hopefully it's easier to work with.

I set my Comcast HD DVR to 720P output and ran a test with the Hauppauge, which was now displaying capturing 720P, to make a Blu-ray of this ts file through tsMuxeR, and burn to DVD+RW as AVCHD. This played back perfectly on my Sony S360! It is hard to see a difference, if any, between the 1080i capture and the 720P on my 50" Plasma. And no reencoding to remove the field order/interlacing problem with the 1080i capture.
This capture does report 1280x720; 59.94fps via DGAVCIndex.

[Blue_MiSfit]

TFM and TDecimate are definitely the tools you want to use. Don't specify any extra parameters if you don't know what they do. The defaults should suffice - at least for 1080i video containing 1080p24 video via standard 3:2 pulldown.

If you're processing 720p59.94 which contains 720p24 video via pulldown, you can skip the TFM filter, since all you need to do is decimate the duplicates. I'm personally familiar with this process, so you'll have to do some digging.

[maxrnb]

TFM and TDecimate are definitely the tools you want to use. Don't specify any extra parameters if you don't know what they do. The defaults should suffice - at least for 1080i video containing 1080p24 video via standard 3:2 pulldown.

If you're processing 720p59.94 which contains 720p24 video via pulldown, you can skip the TFM filter, since all you need to do is decimate the duplicates. I'm personally familiar with this process, so you'll have to do some digging.

Yes I continue to study up on all this and x264 in particular.
My depth of "knowing" what the TIVTC parameters all do is limited to what it says in the User's Reference. Beyond that I can only guess as to what's
going on in the lower levels of the process.

I have indeed tried using plain ole tfm().tdecimate() on my 1080i test clips and the result always comes out to 24fps with my HD-PVR (30fps and not 29.97fps) caps. I've experimented with changing the frame rate in x264 and it works but I can't find the settings to get TAW5 to use smart rendering
in the re-authoring process.

My goal is to try to get it right the first time and eliminate all the repeated transcoding that is going on right now in my work flow.
BTW - The video looks good, I'm just trying to find a way to reduce the processing time to what I know each component is capable of
doing.

I'll keep trying. Thanks for the info. :thanks: