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First post, by soviet conscript

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so is anyone using a Epiphan DVI2PCIe Capture Card? I snagged one a few weeks ago thanks to a tip from here that a guy was selling them cheap but I haven't been able to get mine running.

first off I didn't get a bracket with mine which is no big deal. I have a collection of dead video cards but none of there brackets matched up to the Epiphan DVI2PCIe Capture Card. anyone know of a cheap card that matches up so I could swap?

more importantly what OS/drivers are you guys using? I am trying to run it on 64bit Win 7 Ultimate using the only 64bit win 7 drivers I could find on the website labeled at Beta. they install but I get an error. the Epiphan DVI2PCIe Capture Card is detected and labeled under device manager but it has a "!" next to it and running the software says no card detected. I also got a error message about the drivers not being verified? anyone else having issues? should I try Win7 x86 instead?

Reply 2 of 68, by elianda

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I have one and I know that vetz has one.

Drivers are usually no big deal. I use currently the latest 3.30.2.10 in Win10, previously in Win7 Pro 64 bit.
Never had such problems like you describe. You can find a few older versions on my ftp.
If you go for older ones, try 3.29.1.000.

Maybe check you mainboard settings that the slot is really running at x4 lanes or try in another pc. If the problem stays i guess the card has some defect.

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Reply 3 of 68, by Beegle

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I wrote to epiphan directly about buying cables and a bracket.
Turns out cables are standard. And I have yet to get a reply for the bracket.

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Reply 4 of 68, by soviet conscript

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mrau wrote:

I didn't even notice the other driver. thanks. the older one seems to work just fine.

Beegle wrote:

I wrote to epiphan directly about buying cables and a bracket.
Turns out cables are standard. And I have yet to get a reply for the bracket.

so I'm not the only one without a bracket. let me know what they say if they ever get back to you.

Reply 5 of 68, by elianda

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Cables and Adapters are Standard, HDMI-DVI and VGA-DVI.

I also did a brief guide with vetz covering some how to use tricks to get the most out of the card.

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Reply 6 of 68, by PhilsComputerLab

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Yea I posted a link to that eBay seller on the eBay thread. He sold a lot of 10, so I told him about the retro people and that he could sell them as single cards 😀

They do come without brackets, I found a matching one from an graphics card.

The card is professional level, so it has a lot of settings and there is a learning curve. It's certainly not as straight forward as AVerMedia or Elgato, but once you understand how it works, there is nothing better.

New this card sells for over $1000, so that eBay price is an absolute steal.

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Reply 7 of 68, by soviet conscript

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PhilsComputerLab wrote:
Yea I posted a link to that eBay seller on the eBay thread. He sold a lot of 10, so I told him about the retro people and that h […]
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Yea I posted a link to that eBay seller on the eBay thread. He sold a lot of 10, so I told him about the retro people and that he could sell them as single cards 😀

They do come without brackets, I found a matching one from an graphics card.

The card is professional level, so it has a lot of settings and there is a learning curve. It's certainly not as straight forward as AVerMedia or Elgato, but once you understand how it works, there is nothing better.

New this card sells for over $1000, so that eBay price is an absolute steal.

guide video in the future? do you happen to remember the model graphics card you got the bracket from? I've tried a few and nothing lines up right.

Reply 8 of 68, by PhilsComputerLab

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It was one of these graphics cards that only work for this Intel 945 or so chipset. From Intel. Worst case make your own out of a blank one if you have the tools.

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Reply 9 of 68, by elianda

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The given VGA modes of the card are a bit misleading, it defaults to 720x400 for DOS text modes/low res graphics.

The truth is that the vertical number of scanlines is given but the number of horizontal pixels can freely be chosen. So it will also sync to 1280x400 or 640x400 and so on with the same source mode.
Considering that text mode is 640x400 pixels and low res graphic modes are scandoubled versions of it like 320x200 then capturing this at 720x400 gives a non-integer oversampling horizontally.
So better disable 720x400 and add 640x400 as own mode for all low res DOS stuff.

Well there is a lot more to consider...

The card usually comes with two brackets (for use with and without A/V-Kit). So I most likely have one left for use without A/V-Kit. Anyone?

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Reply 10 of 68, by vetz

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I have the card (and the A/V daughterboard) as Elianda said. Never had any issues like described by the OP. My secondhand card came with the bracket so never had to go look for one. An option is to buy the A/V daughterboard, as it comes with a full-height bracket to include the daughterboard on the same bracket as the DVI2PCIe.

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Reply 12 of 68, by elianda

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It can capture analog RGB starting at 15 kHz horizontal frequency. So it works for e.g. Amiga directly. Just make sure you that the Sync signal is mapped correctly (like Sync on Green). So for Amiga there is the C= 390682-01 Adapter that maps the Dsub to VGA jack.
http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/rgb2vga
From there the DVI2PCIe can directly used with a VGA cable.

You can use a similar approach for other systems/consoles.

Also: such low frequency modes are captured as interlaced. A very suitable program to get a good representation is DScaler using the 'Old Game' deinterlacing mode (which is Duplicate Fields+Double Frame Rate). Same applies when you capture. Run such deinterlace filter afterwards to get the progressive output again.

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Reply 13 of 68, by Stretch

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soviet conscript wrote:

on a side note can this thing capture analog RGB from old consoles for instance? and if so what kind of adaptor would I need?

If you want to try processing the video with Avisynth, refer to this post Capturing LDTV 240p/288p s-video from retro game consoles

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Reply 14 of 68, by NJRoadfan

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vetz wrote:

I have the card (and the A/V daughterboard)

Does this option have the ability to capture from composite video sources? The kit is overpriced for what it includes, looks like a passive breakout cabling kit and back plates, all for $250. These really should have been included with the boards to begin with given the high selling price of these cards.

Reply 15 of 68, by vetz

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NJRoadfan wrote:
vetz wrote:

I have the card (and the A/V daughterboard)

Does this option have the ability to capture from composite video sources? The kit is overpriced for what it includes, looks like a passive breakout cabling kit and back plates, all for $250. These really should have been included with the boards to begin with given the high selling price of these cards.

Yes, composite and S-video is no problem.

It is overpriced, but I got it at Ebay for below 100 dollars NIB so I figured it was worth a shot.

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Reply 16 of 68, by elianda

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While the card is very good I am not so convinced about their A/V-Kit. I did some capturing with composite but the luminance stability is really bad.
Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_1PxYtsVtY at 3:05 , note the grey background/border it should stay at the same color/brightness all the time.
There is also some sharpening applied seen at the edges at 1:10 that leads to a grid effect, e.g. where the grey border meets the brown background. There is no option to switch this off.

So currently an oldschool BT878 based card does the job on regular video better.
Maybe some newer driver will fix this.

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Reply 17 of 68, by NJRoadfan

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elianda wrote:

While the card is very good I am not so convinced about their A/V-Kit. I did some capturing with composite but the luminance stability is really bad.

So currently an oldschool BT878 based card does the job on regular video better.
Maybe some newer driver will fix this.

The problems shown in that video are common with many capture cards. Its tough to find one that doesn't suffer from over sharpening and luminance/AGC issues (false Macrovision detection). Granted, the C64 isn't exactly broadcast standards, but the same problems likely show up on other video sources too. A driver may fix the over sharpening (good drivers allow one to tweak the value like on the bt8x8 cards), but the AGC issues are likely coming from the capture chip.

Reply 18 of 68, by elianda

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I got an answer from the Epiphans support regarding these issues. There doesn't seem much they can do driver side since they basically show what the receiver chip puts out. I have not checked in detail what chip they use, but chances might be slim.
This applies to composite. I will try again with S-Video as soon as I get a cable.

Workaround is of course to capture a PC that has a BT878 based card via VGA/DVI set to 50 Hz. Or BT878 directly in WinXP/Win98SE. DScaler supports BT878 natively for viewing even in Win10 64 bit, but it's no regular driver to use with any DirectShow program.

So someone tried my align tool yet? Feedback is always welcome.

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Reply 19 of 68, by DNSDies

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Anyone that has the AV kit for this card, would you mind posting some pics of the front and back?
They only show a simple render on the product page, and at $250, it seems like a CRIMINAL amount of money for what is, I'm guessing, a breakout board.

If it has no components on it, one could easily make their own breakout cables for it for 10% of the price.

Hell, I could probably design a proper expansion board using over the counter parts if it's simple enough and have the PCBs printed by OSHPark.