Well, it obviously can't be capture software for Windows 98SE as the lack of multithreading will always give you a slow recording and the last Fraps for Win9x has a 30fps cap and doesn't do sound.

Your best bet for quality and performance is VGA capture, which is going to be expensive. VGA2USB comes to mind.

There's also the Svideo alternative but requires your retro machine to have a host video card with svideo out, which can be varying in quality by many. My personal favorite for that is the 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 since it can get me a sharp 720x480 picture with the flicker reduction off. Many of my PowerVR videos use that card.

There are somewhat cheap solutions, like getting a VGA2SVideo converter and plugging that into a cheap SVideo/AV USB grabber.
It's lower quality than using an expensive VGA framegrabber, but more compatible than having to rely on rare cards with SVideo out.

S-video quality sucks imo, and since you already have a HDMI capture card I suggest the following:

1. Get an AGP card with DVI connection
2. Get a DVI to HDMI dongle
3. Connect HDMI cable to your capture card.
4. Record

This will work as I know you intend to capture PowerVR stuff, which outputs through the host card. There are other VGA capture cards if you want to explore that. They start at about 100 euro. Do not get the VGA2USB external thing. It is lacking in features.

Otherwise this topic has been discussed before here on Vogons, so a search might give more answers 😀

Okay thanks a lot for the reply, I dont have the voodoo3 but I have the Geforce 440MX which has a S-Video output which looks like this

if I connect it to the S-Video dongle of my dark crystal which looks like this

would my gaming PC display the screen of the Vintage PC I am running the 440MX on ? Because if yes I could just simply recod with fraps from my gaming PC, the sound is no issue since I can easily connect the two soundcards !

I also tried something else which didnt work out 😒 I have a ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card with a S-Video yellow out which looks like this

now I installed windows XP on a different PC and connected a yellow cable to the ATI Radeon 9200 (which I installed in the WinXP system) and the other end to the dongle cable of the AverMedia dark crystal (see above the dongle cable has a yellow S-Video in) and nothing all I got was a fuzzy black signal on my monitor 😒 so what did I do wrong there possibly ? is it not enough to just combine the two yellow S-Videos to one another ?

Hey Vetz yeah I plan on recording BioHazard from the Win98 machiene and I have the Radeion 9200 from above and that one has a DVI out but I dont know if it will run on Win98 😒

by the way vetz ! Will the Matrox G550 do the job ?

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gr … ies/g550/#close

because that one I could get and I think it has Win98 drivers and a DVI out !

9200 will run on Win98. The last Radeon that does run in Win98 is 9800 PRO iirc.
But the thing is, Radeons are a bit lacking in legacy features (no table fog is a big one), even the older Radeons including 7200 lack that stuff.

AlucarD86 wrote:

now I installed windows XP on a different PC and connected a yellow cable to the ATI Radeon 9200 (which I installed in the WinXP system) and the other end to the dongle cable of the AverMedia dark crystal (see above the dongle cable has a yellow S-Video in) and nothing all I got was a fuzzy black signal on my monitor 😒 so what did I do wrong there possibly ? is it not enough to just combine the two yellow S-Videos to one another ?

Dude, the yellow jack is composite video. That is not the same thing as S-Video. I don't know what you're doing with your Dark Crystal, but if you are instructing it to look for an S-Video signal after connecting the yellow jacks together, that is not going to work!

You will also probably have to explicitly enable TV-out in the display control panel. It might automatically detect the connection when you turn on the computer, but I've had some bad luck with that in the past.

Regardless, since the card has a DVI port, you should probably just buy a DVI-to-HDMI adapter and plug that into your Dark Crystal.

AlucarD86 wrote:

Hey Vetz yeah I plan on recording BioHazard from the Win98 machiene and I have the Radeion 9200 from above and that one has a DV […]
Show full quote

Hey Vetz yeah I plan on recording BioHazard from the Win98 machiene and I have the Radeion 9200 from above and that one has a DVI out but I dont know if it will run on Win98 😒

by the way vetz ! Will the Matrox G550 do the job ?

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gr … ies/g550/#close

because that one I could get and I think it has Win98 drivers and a DVI out !

I'm not sure if the G550 will do the job in this case. The only experience I have with early Matrox cards with DVI connector is the G200MMS. While it shows very good picture in Windows it is hopeless for DOS. The one card that I use for recording with DVI connector is my Nvidia Geforce FX5950 Ultra. Though you don't need to get this big card yourself as even the smallest FX5200 has more than enough performance. It provides the best compatibility for the DVI connector on Win98 and DOS of the cards I've tried. No experience with the 9200, so I don't know how that will behave with your capture card. As others have pointed out, there should be Windows 98 drivers for it. Test it out and see how it works with your capture card 😀 The missing D3D features in old games is not that important if you intend to show the PowerVR version of Biohazard.

Thanks again vetz I will definitely try the 9200 Radeon and will let you know how it plays out, I just need to get a DVI (Female) to HDMI (Male) adapter and run a HDMI cord to my 9200 Radeon and to the HDMI input of my dark crystal, I also thought about composit, what is it even good for ? How can the yellow output even be used ? Does it only connect to old TVs and not to modern LCDs or capture cards ?

AlucarD86 wrote:

I also thought about composit, what is it even good for ? How can the yellow output even be used ? Does it only connect to old TVs and not to modern LCDs or capture cards ?

Your Dark Crystal connector has a yellow jack on it, so it would certainly appear that it is designed to process composite signals. There are still enough devices that use composite video that my LED TV still has two sets of composite connectors.

Composite is just another means of conveying analog video data, but it's inferior to both S-Video (which uses two separate signals) and RGB component (which uses three signals).

Allright I tested the Radeon 9200 LE with DVI and composite and I managed to capture Windows XP in 1280x720 by connecting the DVI to HDMI adapter but recording Windows 98SE seems not possible 😒 It says "out of range" (is there even a way to capture Windows 98SE by using the DVI to HDMI adapter), composite worked for both Windows XP and Windows 98 but the signal is low quality and blurry but weirdly enough the scanlines from BioHazard PowerVR are not visible for the composite singal transmitted to the dark crystal but its so blurry that its really not recommended. So in the end is the Radeon 9200 just not capable of recording the Windows 98SE desktop in HDMI like it can the Windows XP desktop or is Win 98SE just not HDMI compatible ?

Have you made sure that the refresh rate is set to 60hz in Windows 98 and not Optimal?

That is most likely the reason. Did you get any picture from the bootup/BIOS?

This is btw the quality you should expect. Here is a short test clip I made earlier this year for maur1wulf1977 with HDMI recording from a GeforceFX card. It shows Doom, DOS, restart and BIOS bootup:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/57506833/files/doom.mp4

I'm btw using the Avermedia Gamebroadcaster HD. In general it should be the same card, just you have HDMI only input, while I have HDMI and VGA.

Yes I see the BIOS bootup but on the right side is a green vertical bar, I am pretty sure I saw the drop down option but not sure I think it was set to optimal, I will check it and let you know, by the way I see the bios but it just gets dark and the avermedia software says out of range during the Windows 98 bootup logo. When I have set it to HDMI, I will also use S-Video once I get a cable !

I am using this capture card here

If you have a Xbox 360 slim with HDMI cable connect it to the HDMI in and you get crystal clear picture and sound on your PC monitor, you can also capture with FRAPS from it and edit with SonyVegas 😁

Check this quality test out, recorded with FRAPS from the Capture Card and edited with Sony Vegas 12 using OpenCL !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAoHl_ziPWY

I am just so disturbed that I cant capture the stupid Win98 desktop 🤣

AlucarD86 wrote:

So in the end is the Radeon 9200 just not capable of recording the Windows 98SE desktop in HDMI like it can the Windows XP desktop or is Win 98SE just not HDMI compatible ?

To be quite clear, a DVI-to-HDMI adapter is purely physical and does nothing to the video signal. If Windows 98 can display a picture on a DVI monitor, there should in theory be nothing to stop it from displaying a picture on an HDMI monitor. I have personally connected DVI Radeons to my HDMI TV without any problems.

Nope cant get a DVI to HDMI signal in Win98 (I see the BIOS and I see the Win98 bootuplogo but once it starts the desktop my AverMedia software goes "out of range") I also want to mention that I am using 2 LCD screens (one is for my gaming PC where I have the AverMedia installed and the second LCD is connected via VGA to my vintage PC) maybe its the LCDs but I get a clear signal with Windows XP on my AverMedia so it must be Windows 98 itself or the settings for the Radeon 9200 LE in WIn98, I also tried s-video which worked but it so blurry that its not recommended. Also windows 98 always says that I have 2 monitors I can select from or maybe it needs the LCD drivers who knows.

It is due to refresh rate issues in Windows. Have you made sure that the output to DVI is set to 60hz?

Yes there are 3 options I think "adapter default", "optimal" and "60Hz" I kinda managed to get the DVI signal in WIn98 but it seems I have to set the resolution in Win98 to the lowest possible 640x480 only then I even receive an image and even thou the image is quite sharp I have crazy flickering horizontal lines and if I set the resolution higher then 640x480 the signal just stops 😒 I also saw that the HDMI resolution in the AverMedia 3D center is set to 720x480 I will have to test another graphics card with DVI-out as right now I am kinda fed up with Win98 and HDMI 🤣

AlucarD86 wrote:

Nope cant get a DVI to HDMI signal in Win98 (I see the BIOS and I see the Win98 bootuplogo but once it starts the desktop my AverMedia software goes "out of range")

I do not know why you are insisting this is a problem with Windows 98 when it could be a problem with your AverMedia.

Also, your posts are kind of hard to read. Please use more periods.

Yes it could be, the thing is I am not quite sure for myself what it could be as Vetz has apparently no problems recording off Windows 98SE.

Well the thing with AverMedia is it uses a software called AVer Media Center 3D, it looks like this

its capable to record different signals, including HDMI and DVI !

I think its probably the graphics cards as unfortunately I dont have another AGP card with DVI-out for testing but I dunno if its really the software from the AVer Media Center 3D then maybe there is something different out there (another software) that sees my capture card and has more options for the output.

I am new to this so I am doing a lot of testings left and right but my best bet is that its either the Radeon 9200 LE or its the software itself but need more testing with other DVI AGP cards ^^