Best USB capture card
category: general [glöplog]
I'm looking to capture from old computers (mainly), so I'm going to get an OSSC. But what is the best USB capture card to pair with it?
Not many takers on this thread I can see :)
I've gone through at least a dozen RGB->HDMI upscalers/converters and likewise for HDMI USB frame grabbers.
A problem with all upscalers I've had:
They black out when the video source changes, even if it's the same refresh rate, going from progressive to interlace (happen often on Amiga, Falcon and probably other systems). And yes it includes OSSC and the old classic XRGB Framemeister.
The Retrotink 5x Pro claims to have seamless change between p/i modes. I beleive it when I see it :) It's $325 plus shipping and taxes to test.
The best upscaler I've used for ST/Falcon is the Medusa device. Like the OSSC and Retrotink, it's expensive. But it does come with a bunch of presets for different Atari and Amiga screen modes and will report the resolution nicely to the capture device.
And when speaking of the USB-capture device (which was your original question) I've finally found one that seems to capture at the resolution Medusa reports without frame drops, it's the Elgato Camlink 4k. Not terribly expensive.
The setup with Medusa+Elgato Camlink seems to work well for ST and Falcon (when it doesn't change progressive/interlace mode). I can't guarentee it will work as well for other machines though.
My setup is the latest macOS/AArch64 and Quicktime Prores capture.
PS. I've heard that the Startech USB3HDCAP does a good job. It's locked to Windows with proprietary drivers so I'm not able to try it.
I've gone through at least a dozen RGB->HDMI upscalers/converters and likewise for HDMI USB frame grabbers.
A problem with all upscalers I've had:
They black out when the video source changes, even if it's the same refresh rate, going from progressive to interlace (happen often on Amiga, Falcon and probably other systems). And yes it includes OSSC and the old classic XRGB Framemeister.
The Retrotink 5x Pro claims to have seamless change between p/i modes. I beleive it when I see it :) It's $325 plus shipping and taxes to test.
The best upscaler I've used for ST/Falcon is the Medusa device. Like the OSSC and Retrotink, it's expensive. But it does come with a bunch of presets for different Atari and Amiga screen modes and will report the resolution nicely to the capture device.
And when speaking of the USB-capture device (which was your original question) I've finally found one that seems to capture at the resolution Medusa reports without frame drops, it's the Elgato Camlink 4k. Not terribly expensive.
The setup with Medusa+Elgato Camlink seems to work well for ST and Falcon (when it doesn't change progressive/interlace mode). I can't guarentee it will work as well for other machines though.
My setup is the latest macOS/AArch64 and Quicktime Prores capture.
PS. I've heard that the Startech USB3HDCAP does a good job. It's locked to Windows with proprietary drivers so I'm not able to try it.
i posted my retro-capturing config here almost an year ago, in short: I'm using a combination of OSSC and ezcap GameLink RAW (aka ezcap321, ca. $40 at AliExpress) USB3.0 capture card with orignial firmware patched with custom resolutions/frame rate unlocked. Other IT992x-based USB3 capture cards (like EVGA XR1 or ASUS CU4K30) could be used for that as well, unfortunately their stock firmware is not much capable and needs the same hacking as ezcap do :)
As for the software side, since I had to deal with completely non-standard sources with oddball refresh rates (like 48.8 hz) I initially used custom ffmpeg DShow capture scripts under Win10, later ended up with making a fork of kb's Capturinha integrating FFmpeg/LibAV libs to capture the video stream, while the tool itself doing further integer-upscaling and encoding the stream in realtime using hardware NVENC on NVidia cards.
This actually work pretty neat for non-standard sources like Pentagon 128 or BK-0011M, as well with Amiga and PC/VGA - we have done all the CAFe'22 captures with that setup :)
if anyone is interested, I may release all the relevant binaries/sources.
As for the software side, since I had to deal with completely non-standard sources with oddball refresh rates (like 48.8 hz) I initially used custom ffmpeg DShow capture scripts under Win10, later ended up with making a fork of kb's Capturinha integrating FFmpeg/LibAV libs to capture the video stream, while the tool itself doing further integer-upscaling and encoding the stream in realtime using hardware NVENC on NVidia cards.
This actually work pretty neat for non-standard sources like Pentagon 128 or BK-0011M, as well with Amiga and PC/VGA - we have done all the CAFe'22 captures with that setup :)
if anyone is interested, I may release all the relevant binaries/sources.
