Capture Device Recommendations

[Solice]

I'm trying to use XSplit to record and broadcast 720p gameplay from a PS3. I've got the following hardware to work with, but at this point I don't mind finding another, as long as I can find something that actually works well.

Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme 3D - I can get this to work with every application except XSplit. Using every permutation of recommendations regarding Blackmagic cards, I just cannot get XSplit to use settings that are compatible with the video stream that the console is outputting.

Hauppage Collosus - I was able to get this to work by capturing the PVR preview screen, but the card itself displays a crappy image; thus, making the capture of that preview screen crappy.

Roxio Game Capture - I was actually able to get XSplit to use the device as a capture source, eliminating the need to capture a part of the screen and reducing overhead considerably. I was quite impressed with the results, save for the fact that the device can only capture 480p, so the image captured is somewhat blocky and downsampled, before XSplit does it's own resize on it.

Can anyone recommend a capture device that works as well as the Roxio Game Capture device as an actual capture device with XSplit, has at least component inputs, and can capture at 720p? Thanks in advance.

[Trance]

What you need to know about Decklink at least is that their newest drivers are a mess to use with XSplit or any other program, you have to use older ones. Besides that I have successfully used Decklink Intensity Pro and Decklink SDI capture cards successfully with XSplit.

[dreamyriley]

Do you have a link to the older drivers as I have a intensity shuttle and would love to use it with my xsplit

[Solice]

What you need to know about Decklink at least is that their newest drivers are a mess to use with XSplit or any other program, you have to use older ones. Besides that I have successfully used Decklink Intensity Pro and Decklink SDI capture cards successfully with XSplit.

Which package version do you recommend? I just took a look at the driver archives on the Blackmagic Support site, and there are a ton.

[Trance]

Usually the ones that have Media Express v1 still in are a safe bet. You will have to try a couple older ones until you hit one with it.

[Superroach]

The problem being I guess for solice and me, is that the older drivers won't likely support these newer devices - his one is a decklink hd extreme, which is fairly recent. I don't have that card so can't verify, and I havn't tried the v1 with my intensity shuttle either....

But I wouldn't be able too without scouring the web for the older drivers, as even the cd it came with has much newer ones. I also think its likely the Shuttle requires the newer drivers.

Ah well, more testing time.

[Solice]

I spent the entirety of yesterday trying EVERY driver package on the Decklink website, and I cannot get my card to work with anything that comes with Media Express v1. I can't even get Windows (win7 pro 64 bit) to recognize it as something it can find drivers for... so, back to square 1.

[Trance]

I spent the entirety of yesterday trying EVERY driver package on the Decklink website, and I cannot get my card to work with anything that comes with Media Express v1. I can't even get Windows (win7 pro 64 bit) to recognize it as something it can find drivers for... so, back to square 1.

Welcome to the painful world of Decklink/Blackmagic drivers :/

[Superroach]

Darn.... and thanks for testing the v1 drivers Solice.

[Superroach]

I'm still going through to find how I had an older version partly work.
At one point I was able to get the iPad 2 (720p @ 60) working but my computer screen didn't (720p @ 50) I really should have noted the version I was using. It would have likely been beta1. Beta 2 and 3 (and the newest) I havn't been able to have it work at all though.

The trick to get at least the iPad 2 going when I was able too, was to go to black magic user control panel..... This has been documented in another place on here with a screen shot. But the IME was set to 0, and Input processing to SD Letterbox.
The funny bit was, once I got it to work once, It worked afterwards, even after changing those bm control panel settings back to nothing.

ARrgh hey?

When saving presentations, I noticed that the .bpres files do not contain any information about the configuration options (I searched for the item element with decklink video capture). I wonder if that's related?

Turning it off for today, tried all I can think of for now..

[MSgtGunny]

make sure you are capturing your ps3 with Component cables, NOT HDMI. The PS3 uses HDCP on all hdmi connections and so prevents ANY legal capture card from capturing from the ps3 using hdmi, but component allows resolutions up to 1080p actually (i've tested it on my tv and it worked, but you will only be able to capture 720p and 1080i signals with a blackmagic intensity pro) I am not sure if the decklink extreme 3d can capture 1080p 59.94 on component.

also, are you sure you have the decklink hd extreme 3d? It is a $1000 capture card. most people have the $180 blackmagic intensity pro.

[Solice]

make sure you are capturing your ps3 with Component cables, NOT HDMI. The PS3 uses HDCP on all hdmi connections and so prevents ANY legal capture card from capturing from the ps3 using hdmi, but component allows resolutions up to 1080p actually (i've tested it on my tv and it worked, but you will only be able to capture 720p and 1080i signals with a blackmagic intensity pro) I am not sure if the decklink extreme 3d can capture 1080p 59.94 on component.

also, are you sure you have the decklink hd extreme 3d? It is a $1000 capture card. most people have the $180 blackmagic intensity pro.

I paid $950 for it, and got a bundle to get Vegas Pro 10 with it. I'm fairly certain that the markings on the box, the price tag, my reciept, and spec sheet that described the hardware all say it's the Blackmagic DeckLink HD Extreme 3D; though, I hear there's a 3D+ out, so perhaps I should have waited a month. I'm also quadruply sure that I'm capturing through component cables, and not HDMI. I tried the HDMI first, and ran into the HDCP issue. Like I said, I can get the card to work with other software, just not XSPlit.

EDIT: I just read some other posts in another thread... So, ideally, the Intensity Pro should work because there's a Media Express v1 driver for it? That's utterly disappointing, but I suppose I'll buy one of those to see if I can get that to work. Thanks for not abandoning the input.

[MSgtGunny]

I wouldn't have bought the hd extreme 3d, but thats your choice. I think the problem you are having is that it is actually too recent of a blackmagic card. The intensity pro has been around long enough that the older firmwares come with the original media express (its a simple purple window with a capture tab and a playback tab, but no master tab). I find that when you set the default resolution setting using this version of media express it gets saved in the way xsplit uses, so the changes you make in the older media express will transfer over when you close it and start xsplit.

It looks like decklink version 7.3.2 uses the older media express so its worth a shot
http://blackmagic-design.com/support/de ... &fid=10614

Make sure to fully uninstall all blackmagic products including the newer firmware and the newer media express before installing 7.3.2.

After you do that, and if it works with your newer extreme 3d card, then right click on a media express shortcut, hit properties, go to compatibility tab, check run with adminitrator privileges. do this again with xsplit. then open media express, preferences, set the resolution to ntsc, save quit. then open it up again, set the resolution to 720p 59.94, save close. If your ps3 is on and it is already set to 720p on component, the image should appear in media express. if not, recheck the console to make sure that it is set to 720p. Also make sure to check that the plugs you are using are the inputs for the blackmagic and not the output plugs.

if you do get an image in media express, open up xsplit, add the source and it should come up.

[Solice]

I had planned on using my capture card for more than just game records, so the features included in the capture card that I purchased fell in line with what I wanted to eventually do with it... which is also why I got Vegas Pro.

In any case, I tried all of the driver packages on the Decklink support site on Saturday (I do mean ALL). Between each install, I uninstalled every piece of software that was installed in the previous installation and rebooted. None of the packages that came with Media Express v1 had drivers for my card. What I want to avoid doing is getting creative with installations. I went as far as deflating some of the installers, and they don't come with driver files. They're code that's compiled during install, which complicates things. I think the applications may be hardcoded to only work with certain devices, driver revisions, and firmwares on the cards. I have no idea how to backdate a firmware, as the firmware update subprocess is what handles that. Only packages that contained v2 were able to actually change the firmware on the card.

[MSgtGunny]

if you go into device manager, select your device, right click properties, drive tab, hit driver properties. it should show all the drivers used by the piece of hardware.

also, try downloading the Decklink sdk. so install the latest version, download the sdk from here,

unzip it and go to this folder, Blackmagic DeckLink SDK 8.0\Win\Samples\bin and look for deck control.exe, you might be able to change the default options from there, but I am not sure if xsplit will detect it.

and if all else fails, you could afford a $900 capture card and sony vegas, so you could get the intensity pro, and use that for game captures, and then use the hd extreme 3d for everything else not streaming related.

what other things do you have planned for your hd extreme 3d?

[Solice]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll see if I can give it a try tonight.

As you might have guessed, I'm a computer enthusiast turned video enthusiast, though at this point it's merely an expensive hobby. I plan on capturing from various video sources, both digital and analog. This includes transforming amateur video and adding special effects. I built an as top of the line machine* as I could for the line of projects that it will be handling, and I've purchased a copy of Carrara, a 3D modeling and animation studio program. The Decklink line has an onboard processor to handle much of the capture work. In my experience, when a capture device consumes too much of any single logical processor on a machine, the entire system tends to suffer, causing the actual capture to start dropping frames, desync, etc. regardless of how much un-utilized processing capacity you have. Being able to capture gameplay and do something like stream it to justin.tv was icing on the cake, but I was irritated when I ran into this issue.

Aside from that, I also do some general computer consultation to people, so experience with consumer hardware, and new software seems to always come in handy. If I can get this to work, I can suggest XSplit and particular hardware combinations to my clients to fit certain needs.

* Core Specs:
CPU: Core i7 990x 3.47 GHz Hexcore
RAM: 24 GB
System Drive: OCZ Agilty 3, 60 GB
Workspace: 3x HyperDrive5 (ANS 9010, 96 GB total) in RAID0 on an Areca 1231ML w/ 2GB cache

[Superroach]

Yeah solice, we've had a intensity pro (the pcie card) working internally for us here just recently at the SGL gaming lan for broadcasting. Because it's an older card, it works with the v1 software. Note that its not just hte v1 software, but its the firmware too... more specifically, it's 3.4.

Doesn't help me wanting to get the newer devices though which won't work on v1.

I'm more frustrated because there was one version where it partially worked, and now I can't duplicate those results haha.

[Superroach]

A note guys:
I have emailed a contact (Kristian Lam) at blackmagic to get a hold of you guys. I asked them to email support@xsplit.com .

They said that noone from XSplit has attempted to contact them yet, which I thought you would have to help resolve it when it first cropped up.