XSplit should work with any DirectShow capture device, which the Datapath and Epiphan cards are. Technically you don't really need the OSSC if you have a Datapath card and are capturing from VGA sources (just use a DVI-I to VGA adapter). I would stick to 60Hz output though, makes life easier for capture and streaming.

Thanks for all the advice. I pulled the trigger on the Datapath. I'll come back to update or, more likely, ask follow-up questions. Much obliged!

imbarkus wrote on 2021-11-18, 01:01:

Thanks for all the advice. I pulled the trigger on the Datapath. I'll come back to update or, more likely, ask follow-up questions. Much obliged!

You still got a used one on ebay for a decent price (dont see any anymore)? Or did you buy one of the 700 bucks ones?

Kordanor wrote on 2021-11-18, 02:22:

You still got a used one on ebay for a decent price (dont see any anymore)? Or did you buy one of the 700 bucks ones?

I saw a used listing for $200 but I managed to find a new one for $340. I'll pay it off over 6 months no interest.
Here's hoping it is what it says it was. 100% rating on the seller, accepts returns.
It was not cheap and I already bought these crappy VGA-to-HDMI dongles so I guess I'll recoup some costs and see if I can return those.
Seems like I might have to deal with some card seating arm issues but if needed it seems like I can find some solutions.

My old VGA to Composite converter died so now im using one of those cheap Fosmon things with the OSD i got on E-bay for $15.

My setup is Vintage PC-Fosmon S-Video-Mitsubishi CS-2720R TV-composite passthru to HT Vidbox DV Capture NW06

Im using an older i7 Dell with OBS Studio to record as the HT-Vidbox only works in Windows (10 in this case). I also use the same passthru minus forsmark for the Tandy 1000a, NES, Atari 2600 (RF), Wii, amd anything else.

The Forsmark kinda sucks though in that it cuts off screen edges on most of my old VGA PCs. The ones that fare the best are my NEC Versa M/75 and P/75, which are 800x600 models in duplicate mode. Not sure if its the LCD handling or if the C&T 65545 chipset follows the rules more. The M/75 looks like a Playstation era Console on the TV running DOS games.

Promised update: My DataPath RBG-E1S arrived and I had the chance to do the install over the holiday weekend. I was immediately impressed and satisfied with the results of the card itself. All three weird iMac resolutions and frame rates were handled with ease and the card works effortlessly with XSplit. The challenges I encountered really had more to do with my PC, in that the Datapath requires a PCIx4 slot. I bought the card in a hurry afraid I'd miss the listing and wind up paying B&H photo prices for one, and it turns out my MoBo has one PCIx16 and three PCx1 slots. I don't play games with my old 550 Ti anymore though so I just pulled it out in favor of the Datapath.

What I underestimated, I'm presuming, is how much XSplit utilized the GPU to give me the smooth 60fps 1080 I had been capturing through the AverMedia HD card, and how much of a fps hit I would take also with Datapath capture of the iMac at 1024x768 in XSplit without a GPU in the capture box. Even with a recent i-7 I get framerate drops from 60 to 30 through both cards without the GPU. So I found a cheap GT 710 PCIx1 no-fan GPU I figured I'd throw in and see if it smooths out the capture. I'm also only running 16GB memory in the rig but a proper upgrade there was pricier so I put that off... any opinions if I made the right call or should have picked up memory?

At this point I just want smooth capture of the old iMac and it occurs to me if I set my XSplit stage to match iMac resolution output it will help as well (as opposed to scaling to fit the 1080p window which likely involves the GPU). Maybe I should have tried that first before I ordered the cheap GPU but I had a gift card for my birthday and I was out of time in the holiday weekend so what the hell. I imagine I'll let go of trying to capture webcam through the same PC, and just set up a tripod and record that with a phone or something. As long as I can get smooth capture of the iMac alone that will be fine and I'll assemble videos in edit later and upscale footage however I like in After Effects or whatever. I'm not planning on streaming them.

Then, many months from now when I'm done with the project, I can resell the Datapath (and the iMac) and maybe by then buy a decent mythical-future readily-available modern video card. 😉

Thanks! I'll update again if you like.

Check if there's any of those PCIe x1 slots is linked to CPU and not chipset, it might help. GPU going through chipset is never going to be good performance. But yeah, E1(S) is a 4x slot card, but it may work with 1x slot too, albeit limiting bandwidth is probably going to limit what maximum resolution and frame rate you can capture video.

I'm gonna guess none of the x1 slots go direct to CPU. If it's a blind pitfall, I'm gonna hit it. I'll check it out tho, thanks for the heads up.
Do you think a memory bump would have an appreciable effect?
Or do you think I pulled GPU cycles by capturing to a 1080p target and scaling the capture in XSplit?

I'll test that this weekend with a target matching the source resolution to see if XSplit quits hitting up the GPU.
The CPU should be more than up to these tasks. So maybe the scaling "involved" the GPU? At least it's a fairly easy test...
But I consider it unlikely to succeed as the Avermedia card showed the same frame drops in unscaled 1080p capture.

Geez. I probably shouldn't have ordered that PCIx1 GPU, if it just winds up running through chipset.
But the best the integrated Intel will give me is 1600x900 over DVI so I was pretty cramped without my usual GPU anyway, and it was cheap.
Still, if this all winds up with me getting a new motherboard, I'll be irritated at my past self for wasting time, money, and effort.

So I'm a big old dummy in too much of a hurry, operating off decade-old general IT knowledge and trying to throw money at problems instead of time. My MoBo's PCIx1 slots all went through chipset, only the PCIx16 went through CPU. But the thing is, the onboard Intel Integrated graphics chip handles the Datapath capture work just fine if I take the time to poke around through the BIOS and find where I can boost how much onboard memory it uses.

So I am returning the graphics card as it immediately delivered worse results than the onboard, though it's my fault so I'll pay that $5 restocking fee. That motivated me to sneak into the return window for all the various VGA-to-HDMI converters I bought that could handle my refresh rates, varied in price from $5 to $25, and all delivered pretty much the same results. Now that I know I can capture 60fps without frame drops with the Datapath in the PCIx16 slot even using the onboard Intel Graphics with enough memory allocated, the Datapath is all I need.

Scaling in XSplit had nothing to do with GPU usage BTW. Setting the capture destination resolution in XSplit lower gave no benefit in GPU usage. I lowered the resolution of just the monitor also running off the onboard, and saw a beneficial change in GPU usage in XSplit. This led me to the BIOS where I bumped the RAM for the onboard GPU up from 64MB to 1GB. I do have some compromises to accept not being able to have a graphics card installed along with the Datapath. I can only capture and record one source at a time and maintain frame rate so there will be no webcam capture in the same system, so if I want to capture reaction I can use another recording source.

So, I'm up and running! It's all thanks to the helpful folks here in this thread, really. Thanks!

I grabbed a used, but mint condition CYP SY-P293 off eBay for £20 and I couldn't be happier with the image.
I just wanted a decent solution for my Dreamcast, without spending crazy money. All the VGA to HDMI cables leave a lot to be desired. The main issue being no control over the pixel clock (DC is 720x480), resulting in incorrect aspect, and vertical lines. This upscaler has every setting I will ever need, and then some.

Paired with a very short £7 Dreamcast VGA cable, and I have got myself a fantastic little solution, for a good price.

As this is thread with the most extensive knowledge about VGA quality related issues I will ask here. I have problems with what you would probably call "ringing". My setup is GeForce 4 MX440, VGA cable and monitor AOC Q3279VWFD8. As you can see I have quite big problems with white shadowing around letters in horizontal direction. I'd say it's more or less visible on every object, but especially on black letters on gray background:

In the beginning I thought this must be cable related issue, so I went and gathered several VGA cables (some of them really thick with impedance = 75 Ω), but with no luck in improving the situation. I have also tried different graphics cards, again without success. Then I tried a different LCD (FSC P19-2) and suddenly the issue was gone (even with the cheapest of the VGA cables). Conclusion is that this AOC monitor has probably poor VGA input quality (maybe insufficient shielding or something like that), but since it has another pros (low input lag, extensive scaling options, no frame-skipping for 70 Hz) I would very much like to use it for retro computing purposes (that's why I insist also on VGA for better DOS support). The question is: Is there something that can be done with the VGA signal so that it will not manifest aforementioned issue? Some kind of active/passive adapter that can improve or tweak signal parameters?

elcrys wrote on 2021-12-21, 18:59:

As this is thread with the most extensive knowledge about VGA quality related issues I will ask here. I have problems with what you would probably call "ringing". My setup is GeForce 4 MX440, VGA cable and monitor AOC Q3279VWFD8. As you can see I have quite big problems with white shadowing around letters in horizontal direction. I'd say it's more or less visible on every object, but especially on black letters on gray background:

IMG_20211221_122149.jpg

In the beginning I thought this must be cable related issue, so I went and gathered several VGA cables (some of them really thick with impedance = 75 Ω), but with no luck in improving the situation. I have also tried different graphics cards, again without success. Then I tried a different LCD (FSC P19-2) and suddenly the issue was gone (even with the cheapest of the VGA cables). Conclusion is that this AOC monitor has probably poor VGA input quality (maybe insufficient shielding or something like that), but since it has another pros (low input lag, extensive scaling options, no frame-skipping for 70 Hz) I would very much like to use it for retro computing purposes (that's why I insist also on VGA for better DOS support). The question is: Is there something that can be done with the VGA signal so that it will not manifest aforementioned issue? Some kind of active/passive adapter that can improve or tweak signal parameters?

To my eyes, these look more like over-sharpening artefacts . I presume you've already tried auto-config to no avail . Have you tried lowering the sharpness setting ? Also, If that AOC monitor displays correctly when fed through DVI or HDMI, you might want to consider an external digital like an OSSC to convert the analogue VGA output from your card to DVI/HDMI .

Note that the sharpness setting might be per input or global and over-sharpening is likely to be a lot less noticeable the higher the source's resolution .

Sharpness setting is something definitely worth checking out. Although as I have experienced in the past, the effect of oversharpening was much more subtle (more like a corona around objects). The effect in the picture is huge (several pixels) and the shadows are going strictly in horizontal direction.

Yes I've tried auto-setting, the resolution in Windows is 1280x720 (for correct aspect ratio) and the effect is more visible on 1:1 setting.

OSSC can be a solution, but I guess it can bring some other problems. I'm not sure if it can process all types of DOS inputs without constant tweaking. VGA is quite straightforward in this. Yes, this AOC can handle DVI/DP/HDMI inputs without any problems.

I will check the sharpness once I get home.

To capture my VGA computers and also my consoles that use SCART, I'm now using an OSSC video converter a friend of mine gifted me for my birthday this year, it's a very cool device and I really like it.
It can convert VGA, SCART and RCA signals into HDMI with a lot of settings in the OSD (it comes with a remote control), so I have my VGA PC connected straight into it and the HDMI out of it into my PCI-e AverMedia LiveGamer HD capture card (I tried it on my Razer Rispaw HD USB card, but it was always cropped and looked bad for some reason, tho it looks perfect on the AverMedia, with the proper resolution set on it thru OBS) and I can stream my Windows 98 PC and even my PS2 just fine on Twitch and make videos!
I haven't tried it with ALL of my retro computers yet, but it should handle DOS resolutions just fine as well!

Capturing my VGA only computers was always a problem for me, finally I can record them super crisp and it's awesome!

darry wrote on 2021-12-23, 03:24:

To my eyes, these look more like over-sharpening artefacts . I presume you've already tried auto-config to no avail . Have you tried lowering the sharpness setting ? Also, If that AOC monitor displays correctly when fed through DVI or HDMI, you might want to consider an external digital like an OSSC to convert the analogue VGA output from your card to DVI/HDMI .

Note that the sharpness setting might be per input or global and over-sharpening is likely to be a lot less noticeable the higher the source's resolution .

Thanks, it looks like you were right. Unfortunately setting for sharpness is quite non-linear with this AOC: There is barely difference between "100" (the highest sharpness) and "50" where white "shadowing" is still visible, then there is a big step on "40" where all the "shadowing" disappears, but at the same time everything gets blurry and then there are gradual steps of blurriness to "0". Originally I had "100" so I set "50" and it's better.
Good thing is that these artefacts are non-proportional - this means the amount is always approx. 2 pixels around objects on every scaling setting (from 1:1 to full-screen). This would indicate the issue is not the signal itself but more likely the processing. For low-res DOS games with non-native resolution the artefacts are hard to spot. The issue is visible only on 1:1 scaling setting, which I am not planning to use, so I can live with this. In this case I can also set sharpness on "40" as the additional softness is not so visible on 1:1 scaling.

I finally pulled the trigger on a VisionRGB-E2S fairly recently, since it was about the same price or a little more than what most eBay sellers are currently charging for the E1S, and I might as well get the one with two inputs, right?

This thing blows the old Yuan-Tech-based PEXHDCAP/SC-500N1 out of the water when it comes to VGA and DVI capture.

720x400@70Hz VGA text mode? Grabs it with no fuss.

1920x1080@60Hz? It's trying, all right, but the Mac Pro 3,1 that I crammed it in (needed to give it some kind of purpose around here!) drops frames trying to handle that.

All the screen modes an AGA Amiga can spit out, complete with on-the-fly progressive/interlaced switching? Yeah, it does all those too, but expect some vertical jailbars if you don't use a DE-15 adapter with some kind of amp (like the sort Arananet sells) and/or have the phase set dead on (and on my A4000, the ideal phase does shift a bit the longer it's been on and warmed up).

Component/YUV signals from a PS2? Color space switching is really iffy on it and VCS doesn't handle that properly, but once it's set correctly, it works very well.

I just had to adapt myself to how aspect ratio correction is NOT a job of the capture resolution, but the window resolution. You're undoubtedly going to have some ludicrously wide windows if you just try to leave the capture window at "native", and fortunately, VCS has plenty of good rescaling options so it doesn't look too bad.

Input lag is surprisingly low, too - enough that using a mouse on a captured system doesn't feel unnatural at all. I was expecting to need a splitter, but that doesn't seem to be the case - as long as I'm strictly using VCS. Having OBS open seems to delay things more noticeably even with VCS also open, which I'm not sure why it does that.

If I ever get around to building a more powerful PC for video capture, I'll test it with more demanding resolutions and refresh rates (none of my other capture devices do 1080p60, for starters), but first I'd need to find a decent Z270 motherboard to fit this 7700K into.

The other thing I need to figure out is how to capture audio and keep it synced with the VCS window the whole time, because VisionRGB cards only do video and trying to have Windows' own feature for listening in on inputs adds far, far too much latency to be usable.

As an aside, I also tested a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro (non-4K) that I had lying around somewhere, and I almost thought the HDMI port was fried or otherwise broken because I wasn't getting anything but a black screen until I set it to capture the exact input resolution and refresh rate. That's quite a design fail if you ask me, especially for a card that can't do 1080p60.

With all that said, after having done all my research, there is one other capture device I'd like to get my hands on for testing, but at $419 new, it's quite pricey - the Magewell USB Capture DVI Plus.

It's the ONLY USB capture device I've seen that even claims to support any video mode over 60 Hz in its datasheets, also lists analog capture capabilities, and I do have some experience with their USB Capture HDMI devices at work.

PCIe cards are nice and all, but sometimes all you have is a laptop or some tiny Mac mini-esque desktop. If it works, it'd be considerably more versatile in what it could work with, all without the jank and expense of setting up an eGPU enclosure just for a capture card and needing a Thunderbolt-capable computer. I just hope USB doesn't add more latency.

NamelessPlayer wrote on 2022-01-09, 00:11:

As an aside, I also tested a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro (non-4K) that I had lying around somewhere, and I almost thought the HDMI port was fried or otherwise broken because I wasn't getting anything but a black screen until I set it to capture the exact input resolution and refresh rate. That's quite a design fail if you ask me, especially for a card that can't do 1080p60.

So as someone looking to record some DOS things (and possibly Dreamcast and N64), this card would work provided I do a lil poking (and possibly source a breakout cable)? A capture card is one of the last things I've got on my list as apparently the monitor I've got can handle just about any res I've thrown at it, unless running 720x400@70, 320x200@70, etc. via the Nvidia custom resolution testing stuff isn't representative of anything working.

EDIT: also what revision is it? I'm finding a number of different ones via eBay and am starting to wonder what the differences would be.

TehGuy wrote on 2022-01-15, 22:16:

NamelessPlayer wrote on 2022-01-09, 00:11:

As an aside, I also tested a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro (non-4K) that I had lying around somewhere, and I almost thought the HDMI port was fried or otherwise broken because I wasn't getting anything but a black screen until I set it to capture the exact input resolution and refresh rate. That's quite a design fail if you ask me, especially for a card that can't do 1080p60.

So as someone looking to record some DOS things (and possibly Dreamcast and N64), this card would work provided I do a lil poking (and possibly source a breakout cable)? A capture card is one of the last things I've got on my list as apparently the monitor I've got can handle just about any res I've thrown at it, unless running 720x400@70, 320x200@70, etc. via the Nvidia custom resolution testing stuff isn't representative of anything working.

EDIT: also what revision is it? I'm finding a number of different ones via eBay and am starting to wonder what the differences would be.

Trust me, you DON'T want an Intensity Pro if you don't already have one (mine was a freebie). Buy a used Datapath VisionRGB-E1S/E2S off of eBay, or if you can afford it, a Magewell Pro Capture DVI or AIO (they're hard to find used, unlike the HDMI ones, and pricing is very consistent across sellers).

Datapath, Magewell, and maybe Epiphan (I don't have a DVI2PCIe to test with) are well-suited to capturing DOS stuff. Blackmagic Design hardware isn't fit for anything that falls outside the scope of broadcast video signals (NTSC/PAL timings, anything natively done by component video or HDMI), and VGA modes like 720x400 70 Hz are very much outside that scope.

Meanwhile, I got a Magewell USB Capture DVI Plus today and am currently putting it through its paces. So far, so good on testing it with my Amiga 4000 (admittedly not VGA for anything other than the MULTISCAN: Productivity mode), barring a few quirks. My biggest gripe is just that the USB devices' control panel software doesn't offer me fine adjustments on the video timings, making pixel-perfect capture and consistency between screen modes far more difficult to set up than it needs to be. (Fortunately, like Datapath, Magewell has their own hardware API. Might have to take up programming just to code up a better interface that lets me make adjustments in increments of 1 and type in correct values directly.)

However, latency isn't perceptible (even though only their PCIe cards offer a proper low-latency mode, one of the few things missing from the USB devices by comparison), and the benefits of having a USB 3.0 device that plugs into any old laptop or compact desktops like Mac minis is huge. It's much less bulky compared to setting up a mATX desktop with the room to hold full-height PCIe cards.

Granted, all this comes at a price: $419 + tax + shipping. Got mine open-box for $375 and free shipping, but GA taxing Internet transactions bumped that up to $401. If you don't need an external USB device or the additional SDI and analog capture options of the Pro Capture AIO, the Pro Capture DVI is $359. Not much cheaper, but this is professional-grade A/V equipment.

NamelessPlayer wrote on 2022-01-16, 02:20:

(Fortunately, like Datapath, Magewell has their own hardware API. Might have to take up programming just to code up a better interface that lets me make adjustments in increments of 1 and type in correct values directly.)

The Magewell can probably be supported in VCS just by implementing the capture interface for it, even though VCS isn't explicitly designed for non-VisionRGB hardware. The interface is more or less documented there: https://www.tarpeeksihyvaesoft.com/vcs/devdoc … _capture_h.html, with examples. Though it would be useful to do these things as DLLs so the whole app doesn't need to be compiled to support them.

NamelessPlayer wrote on 2022-01-16, 02:20:

TehGuy wrote on 2022-01-15, 22:16:

NamelessPlayer wrote on 2022-01-09, 00:11:

As an aside, I also tested a Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro (non-4K) that I had lying around somewhere, and I almost thought the HDMI port was fried or otherwise broken because I wasn't getting anything but a black screen until I set it to capture the exact input resolution and refresh rate. That's quite a design fail if you ask me, especially for a card that can't do 1080p60.

So as someone looking to record some DOS things (and possibly Dreamcast and N64), this card would work provided I do a lil poking (and possibly source a breakout cable)? A capture card is one of the last things I've got on my list as apparently the monitor I've got can handle just about any res I've thrown at it, unless running 720x400@70, 320x200@70, etc. via the Nvidia custom resolution testing stuff isn't representative of anything working.

EDIT: also what revision is it? I'm finding a number of different ones via eBay and am starting to wonder what the differences would be.

Trust me, you DON'T want an Intensity Pro if you don't already have one (mine was a freebie). Buy a used Datapath VisionRGB-E1S/E2S off of eBay, or if you can afford it, a Magewell Pro Capture DVI or AIO (they're hard to find used, unlike the HDMI ones, and pricing is very consistent across sellers).

So uh let's say, hypothetically, I've got a Pro 2 for like $10 because it advertised 1080p60 and that's good enough for recording my PS4, switch, or PowerMac (yay DVI-D) and came with the breakout cable so I can slap my N64 or Wii/GC on there and I just needed the device to show up in OBS (give or take some tinkering). How much DOS stuff am I about to not be able to do, if any at all? I mainly keep to the later-ish end of the DOS spectrum, I think, with stuff like Epic Pinball, Xargon, Doom, Duke3D, etc. and Windows 98. GPU also happens to have an S-VIDEO on it if that changes anything (because previously mentioned breakout cable comes with a S-VID in), though I'm aware that's not as great as VGA.

EDIT: would one of these Gefen boxes make things play nice?

EDIT 2: managed to snag one of those DVI2PCIe cards you mentioned, should get here next week; Let me know how it needs to be tested and I'll get you results.