Fujoshi-hime wrote on 2021-11-24, 16:07:
darry wrote on 2021-11-09, 02:51:I am happy to read that you are getting closer to your objective . I have tried some other capture cards cards, including bottom-of-the-barrel cheap ones, and most have been disappointing and/or unusable for non-HDTV resolutions . The previously mentioned Datapath E1S and Cam Link 4K have been the best ones I have tested . You could probably get some more recommendations from people in the VGA capture thread, but I doubt you will find something decent for much cheaper than the options that I am suggesting . A refurbished Cam Link 4K (USB 3.0) is about 100 $US on the Jeff Bezos initiated marketplace that shall not be named and a used Datapath E1S (PCI Express) can be had for less than that on a certain site that rimes with "free hay". 😉
I picked up a Cam Link 4K and now I have more questions. With the chinese knockoff 'Can't Link', even though it could only do 1024x768 at 60hz, and the refresh rate lowered if you went any hire, and it was MJPEG only, it was fine on resolution changes. You could set a fixed output resolution and any inputs would be scaled. It cleanly changed resolutions as the PC changed resolution, I could even boot the PC and capture the entire process before Windows booted. It was at worse, a bit slow in changing resolution.
The Cam Link 4K on the other hand, in OBS, and VirtualDub2, seems to 'die' when the resolution changes and you have to reset it. This is no good when capturing PC games that might go from a 1600x1200 desktop to a 640x480 2D game menu, to the game at 1024x768 when rendering in 3D. Is there a way around this? Better software? Also the official Elgato software doesn't even work, it reports that the resolutions it's getting are simply not compatible, meanwhile in OBS it's fine. Ideas?
I have never captured using mine during while dynamically changing resolution . The Cam Link 4K hardware might not be able to handle this .
On the software side, AFAIU, the capture application must be able to support dynamic resolution changes while capturing IF the hardware capture device does not allow automatically scaling input resolutions to a given fixed (possibly selectable) capture resolution (Cam Link 4K definitely does not scale). As this is not one of my use cases, I have not experimented with this scenario .
EDIT : AFAIU, the official Elgato software only works at HDTV widescreen resolutions (3840 x 2160 , 1920x1080 , 1280x720) . The only use I had for the said software is updating the Cam Link 4K firmware .
I see 2 possible ways to address the dynamic resolution change issue
a) get a software/hardware combination that handles resolution changes during capture
b) Use an inline scaler between the retro PC and Cam Link 4K to scale all resolutions to a specific resolution on the fly . Options include the Cypress CP-252 (VGA to DVI) and Extron RGB-DVI 300 ( VGA to DVI ). The latter of these is likely the best option .
Also, another potential option, if capturing from a new enough video card, would be to configure the retro PC for GPU scaling to a fixed resolution .