SD Video Capture via TV relay

Excellent video Myke, great work.

If you are capturing with an SD video camera, and can bear playing on s-video/scart/composite; you should be able to use your TV to relay the video/audio through one of the spare AV sockets on the TV; although you'll need to check the TV menu and/or manual for this feature.

The signal can then be simultaneously output to the camera's input/output cable for recording while you play; giving a clean quality capture, and will be free of lag that plagues even the best PC capture cards.

Alternatively you can use three 1-to-2 splitter connectors; one for each signal line of your console cable (video, left channel, right channel audio). However using splitters will half the signal to noise ratio for each signal, making both your TV picture and Video camera capture signal worse than it can be.

If you further want to avoid camera recording completely, and just use the camera as a DSP converter, and record directly on the computer, you can set up like below.


Console---> composite out --->TV AV1 internal relay to TV AV2 or AV3 -----> Video Camera in/out cable ---->Video Camera ---->Camera USB 2.0 or Firewire in/out cable ----> PC


Naturally you'll need to be familiar with the capabilities of your TV, Video camera and Usb/Firewire capture software to get this to work. You will also need to check system performance to verify you can capture DV-AVI streams in real-time, as dropped frames will occur if performance is inadequate.

I tried this method some months back with a Handycam, TV and PC with success.
The picture quality of the SD capture was around Superbit DVD quality, very sharp, with great colour balance; although this will be Video camera dependent. Also the capture produces a perfect audio mix that excludes any room noise that may be unwanted and a separate Microphone could be used to isolate and record the joystick noise.

 

Haha wow! I don't think this will work as I was planning to use my photocamera for this! However I could probably borrow a videocamera from a friend.

I'll try to record a video on my photocamera soon and see how much I enjoy doing a tutorial vid like that. If I enjoy it enough I'll see if I can borrow my friend's camera and do some vids in proper quality

Copy-pasting your tutorial to a text-file anyway, you never know when you might need it. Thanks man!

 

I think you are right Myke, moving it here makes more sense.

Your comment about the PAL60 has got me thinking about something specific to PAL that I hadn't consider before; and highlights why this method should be good in NTSC regions (with 480i @60 fields Standard Def TV's and video cameras) and has problems in PAL regions if wanting to use the Xbox360 version of VF5c, that only supports 60fields per second modes PAL60, EDTV/HDTV, VGA.

When I tested this originally, I wasn't thinking about PAL50 or PAL60, and it is now looking likely that all composite/scart/svideo output from the ps3 in PAL regions is actually PAL50.
Though the game should still process inputs the same at PAL50, the framebuffer updates will be v-synced at 50fps instead of 60fps slowing the game down.

For a completely clean capture of VF5c in PAL territories, a PAL60 PC capture card will likely be needed in place of the video camera; I'm not sure if any video cameras support PAL60.
From what I've been reading PAL60 is also referred to as "pseudo PAL" and is hybrid system made up of 480i lines at 60 fields (like NTSC) but has elements of PAL's colour space system.

The Standard Def Tv relay method in NTSC territories will have less picture quality than PAL50(480i versus 576i), but will have smoother motion and be suitable for use with either VF5 b or c, and will not slow up the game to discourage its' use for lag free real-time captures of 2player matches.

Unfortunately this method is looking bleak in PAL regions and making the ease of the recognised point camera method probably the best option for most people.

Having resisted throwing out my old analogue video converters a few months ago I might still try VF5c with an analogue converter; between the signal coming out of the TV and going to the video camera, and see if conversion from PAL60 to PAL50 prior to capture produces good results.

 

I tried it last night with the 360 & Handycam composite cable (now need to buy s-video ones) and it provides a great capture/reproduction of the composite signal.
Sadly the composite signal has picture quality issues even before the capture (fuzziness and slight washing out of colours) which are naturally visible on the TV even before it gets relayed.

To improve the loss of sharpness on the in-game-text I changed the xbox360 output to PAL60 at 4:3, rather than 16:9; but then wasn't happy with other aspects of the image.
When converting from PAL60 to PAL50, the options on the converter I selected were PAL, 50 fields and 4.43 (instead of NTSC, 60 fields and 3.38).

The output from the converter and received by the video camera gets letterboxed resulting in left and right black borders; which remained with 4:3 or 16:9 setting in the 360.
I presume this is because the video converter outputs a 720x480 interlaced PAL signal rather than the normal 720x576 interlaced PAL50.

The method is still very usable in PAL regions using composite; although primarily when capturing in areas with varied light conditions (or the video camera won't allow for a manual exposure) the video camera doesn't have a manual focus or option to disable of autofocus.

I'm also assuming this method will still work with the s-video(advanced scart) cable for the 360 and s-video cable for the video camera, as I am confident that picture quality will be near that of a clean PAL50 capture from VF5b on ps2 s-video lead. Unfortunately I don't have the xbox lead so I can't confirm if this works, so I will be interested if anyone does get this working.

Digressing slightly. One last point on the PAL60; I'm reasonable sure that hard drive DVD video recorders such as the Panasonic DMR-HS2's can capture this signal to the hard disk in PAL regions; allowing for a very small loss in quality when transferring using the DVD-Video format on DVD-R / DVD-RAM.

The DVD-video format disc can then be recoded and editted on a PC with something like Nero.

Years back I used my imported DMR-HS2 for live captures of 4 player Mario kart double dash gaming; but then the Gamecube was excellent for this type of job, as it could simultaneously output s-video for capture and component video(interlaced) for racing.