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Author Topic: Capturing game screens  (Read 863 times)

Offline MAKAVELIUK
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Capturing game screens
« on: July 28, 2004, 09:01:08 AM »
I need some good software for my TV card, and before anybody recommends D-Scaler it doesn\'t work :p

WinTV capture software - sucks complete arse.




Photoshop\'s capture software which is much better, but it has a delay so you\'re not capturing the frame you want. Also it has these annoying lines when capturing a moving image.



Can anybody help me out? :sconf:
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Offline THX
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #1 on: July 28, 2004, 09:17:48 PM »
What capture card are you using?

Programs to use with it:

VirtualVCR
iuVCR

Best capture cards:

AverMedia EzDVD Maker $40
Flyvideo 2000/3000 $40
Hauppauge PVR-250/Blackbird (best but $100+)

The jagged line problem is called interlacing.  THis is how your captures SHOULD look since the PS2 sends out a 480i signal over S-video.  Just throw the picture into Photoshop.  Filters > Video > De-interlace.
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Offline THX
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #2 on: July 28, 2004, 09:36:52 PM »
Here are sample caps from my fly 2k card:
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\"i thought america alreay had been in the usa??? i know it was in australia and stuff.\" -koppy *MEMBER KOPKING FANCLUB*
\"I thought japaneses where less idiot than americans....\" -Adan
\"When we can press a button to transport our poops from our colon to the toilet, I\'ll be impressed.\" -Gman
Offline THX
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #3 on: July 28, 2004, 09:39:09 PM »
another
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\"i thought america alreay had been in the usa??? i know it was in australia and stuff.\" -koppy *MEMBER KOPKING FANCLUB*
\"I thought japaneses where less idiot than americans....\" -Adan
\"When we can press a button to transport our poops from our colon to the toilet, I\'ll be impressed.\" -Gman
Offline THX
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #4 on: July 28, 2004, 09:41:55 PM »
Above pic was De-interlaced in Photoshop.  Here is the original pic:
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\"i thought america alreay had been in the usa??? i know it was in australia and stuff.\" -koppy *MEMBER KOPKING FANCLUB*
\"I thought japaneses where less idiot than americans....\" -Adan
\"When we can press a button to transport our poops from our colon to the toilet, I\'ll be impressed.\" -Gman

Offline Paul2

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Capturing game screens
« Reply #5 on: July 29, 2004, 12:42:20 AM »
THX,

not a bad capture. Color looks pretty nice.  Did you feed it composite, s-video, or component for capture?

oh, why naming it teekan instead of tekken?  :confused:
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Offline Paul2

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Capturing game screens
« Reply #6 on: July 29, 2004, 12:53:28 AM »
oh, see, judging from the picture that you guys capture from ps2, you can tell that ps2 games are underscan.  Probably the most popular underscan game is FFX.  It have the worst, if not one of the worst underscan I ever see.

What is underscan?  Its just screen with black borders on all four corners.

I found out that on psx, if the resolution of a game is 320 x 240.  that games only underscan  the left and right corners.  the top and bottom is intact...  meaning some pixels of 320 lines is either cropped off or the size isn\'t right while 240 lines is intact.

lets take tekken tat tournament or tekken 4 for example.  Its resolution is 640 x 480, but because its underscan, the resolution was chopped off when it display to the tv screen.

instead of receiving full 640 x 480, its receive about 586 x 448 while the rest is either being underscan with black borders or pixel cropping.  But mostly underscanning cause this.
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Offline Paul2

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Capturing game screens
« Reply #7 on: July 29, 2004, 01:04:19 AM »
Also, you may not see these black borders on your tv say when you play tekken 4 or ttt because your tv is overscan as its default setting.

Most tv out of the box have a 5% overscan  on all four corners.  Making it 20% total area of the screen being cut off.

What is overscan?  Its the area of your tv screen that kinda zoom in the pic and cut off the one that is "overscan".

Probably that\'s why videogames were underscan on purpose to compensate the different of the tv "overscan".

But when you properly adjust the tv overscanning rate to 3% or lower on all four corners, you will notice black borders on videogames.

Hopefully next generation videogames fix this issue and have the videogame scanning rate at 0% on all four corners or make it adjustable for consumers like us and hopefully we can save it to the memory card or hdd...

it would be cool if we can have both, 0% scanning, and user adjustment screen size and position.:D
« Last Edit: July 29, 2004, 01:09:36 AM by Paul2 »
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Offline THX
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #8 on: July 29, 2004, 05:12:45 AM »
Feeding the card S-Video.  There are only a couple of Component input cards for hundreds of dollars and I don\'t even think they let you capture video or even stills.

Good point on the underscan, the PS2 does it like a biotch.  I think you can adjust screen position but that\'s about it.

oh and "teekan" is just an old school name we called it back in da day ;)
« Last Edit: July 29, 2004, 05:13:56 AM by THX »
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\"i thought america alreay had been in the usa??? i know it was in australia and stuff.\" -koppy *MEMBER KOPKING FANCLUB*
\"I thought japaneses where less idiot than americans....\" -Adan
\"When we can press a button to transport our poops from our colon to the toilet, I\'ll be impressed.\" -Gman

Offline Paul2

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Capturing game screens
« Reply #9 on: July 29, 2004, 05:36:35 AM »
I don\'t think it worth buying a capture card with component video input, esp. one that cost hundreds of dollars.

If you know DAC, and ADC...and the ps2 is pretty much an "okay" DAC...which means its not worth buying a hundred of dollars to capture frame via component...

DAC stands for digital analog converter.  It read the digital information off the disc and convert it to analog.  But ps2 did it an okay job at converting digital information to analog, by that i mean video and audio.  I don\'t know how well they do the DAC at audio, but I assumed its just "okay job". but the video DAC is  Mediocre at best.  Seeing  now that the system is sold at $149, i wouldn\'t expect much out of a videogame console with dvd and psx playback...

Its not only ps2 that have the black borders problems.  I see XBOX and GameCube have this problems too.  But it looks like ps2 black border is a bit thicker than xbox or gamecube.

I think they were formatted that way, and video games developer probably didn\'t notice it or didn\'t care to give us "consumer" the option to adjust its screen size.

Can\'t blame them for not noticing it because when they hook it up to an "uncalibrated" TV with 5% overscan on all sides, they didn\'t see it...or maybe the ps2 hardware lack the option to adjust the screen size...whatever the reasons might be...

lets hope this get fix on next generation console...

If we all address this issue to them (hardware and software developer), chances are they may make it right....but who here would like to address this?  I would like to but i don\'t know how...sorry for the long post, i am just an audio/video geek...
« Last Edit: July 29, 2004, 05:45:46 AM by Paul2 »
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Offline MAKAVELIUK
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2004, 06:38:59 AM »
My card is a crappy WinTV USB, I frickin hate it :mad:

I aslo have a ATI All In Wonder... But I re-formatted my hdd and it won\'t work now because it needs direct x9 installed. But when I try to install it, up pops a message saying its not compatible with the version of Windows I\'m running. However before the RF it worked so WTF is that all about????
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Offline Waspman
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Capturing game screens
« Reply #11 on: July 31, 2004, 08:59:16 AM »
Makaveliuk or Paul:


Do you guys know of any capture card that stores the images memory externally.I mean not directly connected to the PC.The problem is im using my elder bro\'s pc which connected far away from my tv.

I think if theres such a product, it will work better than a digital cam.
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Offline Paul2

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Capturing game screens
« Reply #12 on: July 31, 2004, 11:15:09 AM »
sorry I don\'t.

by digital cam, do you mean camcorder?  just use your digital camcorder method which i believe is hook your ps2 cable to a digital camcorder and capture it via firewire.  I think this is a good method.  Why bother capturing using good quality method, i mean look, some ps2 games only runs in interlace, not progressive.  Even if it runs at progressive, only component video work, s-video and composite video only output interlace.

If ps2 can output video digitally using connection such as firewire, DVI, etc....then there will be no DAC (digital to analog conversion).  All its do its send the data digitally and hopefully no enhancement and by sending the signal digital, you get the best video quality.

But ps2 don\'t output video digitally.  Maybe next generation console.

The next best video is component but hopefully you can get a capture card $50 or less on that one.
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