For the money invested a pretty nice setup. However, text is not very legible in Windows/480 lines mode, right?

I guess this is pretty good for capturing 200 lines, like in most DOS games before SVGA.

Anyone with VGA capture and a Kyro?

Thinking about ITC lately...

leileilol wrote:

Anyone with VGA capture and a Kyro?

Thinking about ITC lately...

Kyro I or Kyro II ?
like http://retronn.de/imports/hwgal/hw_graphics_c … _pci_front.html ?

Both should have ITC (a filter effect on top of a 16bpp buffer not too different from Voodoo3 except different as PowerVR always renders 24bpp internally and post dithers that to 16bpp and then filters it back to approximate a 24bpp picture again)

I have a Kyro2 myself but no vga capture, also the VGA signal it gives off is a bit blue-tinted anyway

I realize this thread is for capturing, but what about a scaler for playing games on a modern display? I have a geforce 4 win 98 machine, and with common 4:3 resolutions like 640x480 and above, my monitor can correct them to 4:3 (using vga). However, with DOS resolutions like 320x200 my monitor can only show them stretched all the way to 16:9.

That startech vga2hdmi scaler looks decent but I read in this thread someone had issues using it with a geforce 4? It would be essential that 70hz and other odd refresh rates are handled correctly without screen tearing and stuttering. Input lag would also be an issue.

I have a 5:4 vga lcd monitor but the issue there is everything is stretched vertically because it's just a cheap Dell.

A good capture card with an open api that you write a custom scaler for is the way to go.

I've been using some things for VGA capturing.
One of them was Pinnacle Dazzle DVC90.
It has only 32bit drivers for Windows, but I found a workaround that you need to download 64bit drivers for DVC100 and install them and force the video driver on DVC90. DVC90 on them works without any problems and is in UVC mode so that I can use it in Skype, Wirecast, OBS etc. And also changing resolutions is working.
For macOS that I use now, I had only to use VideoGlide and it works fine too, no drivers needed. But it is not UVC so it does not work without VideoGlide.
and for Linux, I used Raspbian on Raspberry Pi 3. It didn't need any drivers. It was not working and it was saying about something about SPI, so I enabled SPI in Raspberry Pi settings and rebooted. After reboot, it started to work but I saw some stutter. But I think that was only because I was connected to RPi with VNC. I was also trying it on Ubuntu on an x86 i5-660 machine and it was working too and also without drivers too. And I don't know if it is in UVC but it should be.

For capturing output from Retro PCs or any PCs I used S-Video input in DVC90 in which I connected the output from my VGA to Composite / S-Video converter box.

The output quality was great for my needs.

Here is a simple comparison between Composite and S-Video. The biggest change between them is the brightness and the quality of them.

I know this is PC VGA capture thread, but does anyone have some useful uncompressed Dreamcast VGA captures?

I just want to stare deep into the CLX for old PowerVR habits without the traditional composite capture getting in the way.

Bonus points if you've got an alpha blended thing up close. I don't care what game it is as long as it shows off some low res texturing (so.......probably the earliest and the later DC games)

I have a Dreamcast + VGA Cable + VisionRGB Pro that I've been meaning to put together for a while. Do you want video or screenshots?

videos would probably wind up being compressed, single screenshots are preferable

Still plenty of cheap datapath cards around I see. That's good. Always be mindful of that: https://github.com/leikareipa/vcs.

Someone should try the visionrgb-x2. Expensive and needs pci-x, but kinda interesting. From what I recall, even the older visionrgb-pro is limited more by bandwidth than compute, so pci-x would be cool.

ik777 wrote:

Gefen should do that, I also recently bought them cheaply. Since portta scaler is less than 10 bucks, it should be more cheaper. […]
Show full quote

pixelmischief wrote:

I recently tackled this problem with help from all the great information in this thread. The solution that works for me is a Gefen VGA to DVI Plus with a DVI to HDMI cable going directly into my Samsung 4K TV. I get all modes: BIOS, DOS, VESA, and Windows 3.1 with both SVGA and S3 Trio 64 drivers. The only caveat is that the Gefen output is vastly superior at 720P when compared to either 480P or 1080P. I suspect this has to do with some disharmony between the Gefen's scaler and the Samsung's scaler.

Very, very happy.

Gefen should do that, I also recently bought them cheaply. Since portta scaler is less than 10 bucks, it should be more cheaper.
Please do not advertise this one's capable of 720*400 so price got lower. (I think ebay things are from school.)
But Phil will advertise it... 🤣 🤣

I saw a low priced auction for some boxed Gefen units so I put in an offer for one. Hopefully gets accepted, I'm interested in seeing what it can do. I'd rather not buy capture card after capture card if I can avoid it, so if it can put out a signal my SC-512N1-L/DVI will accept, then great. Sounds like it will (basically nothing over 60hz)

Although that Epiphan DVI2PCIe looks neat to have too, I'm curious what the onboard memory can do regarding certain games appearing to play fine but always have dupes/drops during playback of recordings (my rig is more than capable of recording 60fps/H264 in real-time)

Hi, few notes / questions from me:

1. I read whole thread, but it took me lots of time, it would be nice, if someone could try make some summary post at the start of this thread, or perhaps some external page / Google docs document / sheet with pros/cons - and some checks table what is working and what doesnt. We already have similar tables for VGA / Sound card etc.. so why not for capture cards / boxes..
   It would be also nice simply make some tiers, best for $50 / $150/ $300 etc solutions.
2. Phil in 2014 mentioned 50 bucks S-Video capture DOS solution with VGA to S-Video box, if i dont overlocked something, he never mentioned which s-video capture card he is using and its good and cheap.
3. Saw someone actually these vvbe's mystery $20 cards, which he often mentioned? I wasnt able to find anything close to that on eBay now at the end of 2018.
4. Some recommended capture cards has only DVI input, what about sound capture? Its good to handle sound card through sound card, or its additional hassle with capture software?
5. What is exactly wrong with DOS Videocarts with DVI and its inbuild scalers? Its often stated as disadvantage, but why? Its that inbuild videocard scaler so bad, does it cripple quality a lot?
6. I found at home too very old S-video / Composite PCI cards which is better? For at least Windows XP recording, i suppose that there not Windows 7 drivers?
   Leadtek WinFast TV 2000 XP
   Genius Video Wonder Pro III
   Make sense even bother with them?
7. What now is best external USB3 extenal box solution for DOS capture? I mean which USB3 box (it would be nice it that would be good for modern Windows stuff too) + convertor / scaller box? For ~$200 budget and second hand eBay stuff?
   I know that is worse than internal cards, but still i would like to know best external option.

If you just read the whole thread, you could summarize the contents so far. Pros and cons people mentioned, etc. Put it on the wiki or wherever and get it going.

My initial impressions of the Gefen VGA2DVI Scaler Plus I picked up are very mixed/trending negative.

Right now I am not sure if it is an issue with the scaler unit, or my capture card, or a combination of the two.
Although last night I had somewhat stable 1080p output, the card would stutter / dropout (sound drops out etc) and there would be video artifacts present in the image. BUT using my cards passthrough to another monitor the image was displaying fine.

Capture software could also be an issue in that area....

Strictly on the hardware side, it will take BIOS screens, POST, etc like a champ. DOOM runs in pure dos (only game I have on this machine to test at the moment). Windows did run, although its finnicky for some reason. Lowering the resolution of windows itself can fix some of that, but overall the framerate conversion is less than stellar. Screen tearing is evident, if not outright stutters (very brief) in some instances. I haven't tested general Windows usage at great length yet.

The unit runs a bit warm, so I don't know how unusual that is. All I know is if I try to run this thing at 1080p60 output my SC-512N1-L/DVI starts sperging out. Unstable image, dropouts, etc.

I wish someone would just go design a video card PCB that forced all DOS resolutions to cap @ 60hz 🤣 😢

Vcs has real-time anti-tearing, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KqOZniGTt0. You can see which capture tears constantly and which doesn't.

I see tearing even in 'professional' (e.g. phil) captures, and I wonder whether it's because they can't remove it or because they can't be bothered. I also wonder why their expensive capture cards aren't getting rid of it. Sub-refresh rate tearing should be possible to remove, at least, and with not too much trouble.

I'll be honest in that I haven't studied Phil's captures very closely but assuming they came from real DOS captures and not DOSBox then I'd say it never occured to me there -might- be tearing there.
At this point tearing is a secondary concern, I'm more curious as to why my capture card goes full retard at 1080p output from this unit.

I'm wondering if I may have damaged it with ESD or something as I have a habit of playing with connections while things are live and sometimes notice small sparks.

Maybe I'll just have to try and find a card that can take 70hz or just get a different one to see if its less temperamental than this Micomsoft stuff
I'll try and play around with things some more.

Desktop youtube will let you play/rewind one frame at a time with period/comma, which is what I at times do when I see non-rate-locked capture. When I find tearing and it's a professional channel with expensive gear, I shrug, because I've written free software that gets rid of it much of it. That said, performance might suffer at high res, etc.

You got a link to this software? I hope its not dependent on Avisynth I haved used that stuff for ages 🤣

I mentioned it a few posts up. Requires a datapath capture card.