Analog Video Capture

CassLan

Have spent the last 3 hours in PC hell, I had this Kworld PCI-E Dual TV TUner with AV inputs·that I bought some time ago to make a DVR for the house, I ended up not using it.

So although its been laying around forever, I went to install it to start some good video capture of my propeller work.
Well, the damn things no good, finnaly tried it in a different machine and it also does'nt see it.

So, I know potatohead showed me a USB one that he was happy with which one was that?, does anyone have any recomendations for an NTSC Video capture Card/USB thing?

I would like to get this on the cheap, maybe used on ebay.

Rick

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potatohead

Well, what I've learned is there are HD capable devices and non HD capable. There is good software and kind of lousy software too.

OBC linked a non-HD device here that was $10 or so. It came with kind of lousy software. I'll try to find the thread after I post.

I've been using one of these:

http://www.adstech.com/products/PTV-384-EF/intro/PTV-384-EF_intro.asp?pid=PTV-384-EF

The capture quality is excellent.

I have both kinds of devices.

For higher resolution things, I cannot recommend the ADS device enough. It can do 640 pixels on a composite connection. Of course that depends on the color combinations used. All I can say is that device goes right to the limits of the spec, giving a best case signal. When I run it monochrome, it runs right to the 720 pixel limit with no problem. Very high quality. I can see very minor variations in signal quality and timing with this capture.

The software is excellent too.

Most of my captures I've posted here are done with that device. I paid $80 a year or two back. Probably cheaper now.

For $10, the non-HD device OBC linked here is a hell of a deal for the price. For lower resolution captures, it's good. Realistically, it's half the resolution of the ADS, and cannot really render 80 column text, unless S-video is used. I like this one because it captures in a way that's realistic for lower resolution displays, and or ordinary TVs. I cannot see minor signal variations, and interlaced color is kind of messy. The software is kind of crappy, but it works.

Here's the thread:

http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=847178

Near the bottom, I've attached two 80 column text screen captures. Both are just composite video with the same video driver. The images are different, but the most important thing to note is the overall capture resolution. The displays were interlaced, showing the differences well.

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Post Edited (potatohead) : 12/6/2009 1:52:31 AM GMT

Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

The one I bought for $10.00 off Ebay is *ok*

My gripe is that VLC doesn't get the colors right, and the software that comes with it does suck.
I've been using buggy "descaler" to use it which at least gets all the color right.

$10.00 USB capture device... yup worth about $10.00 [noparse]:)[/noparse]

OBC

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CassLan

Would that be this thing:

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&source=hp&q=easycap&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=bA0bS9u1G9HElAfc6unxCQ&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4&ved=0CB8QrQQwAw

These things are all over ebay for $10

Rick

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Oldbitcollector (Jeff)

Thats the one..

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potatohead

Yep. Those are the ones. Check out the other thread I linked for comparison pictures.

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Bill Henning

I tend to use the Hauppauge cards - the PVR-150 is well supported.

CassLan said...
Have spent the last 3 hours in PC hell, I had this Kworld PCI-E Dual TV TUner with AV inputs that I bought some time ago to make a DVR for the house, I ended up not using it.


So although its been laying around forever, I went to install it to start some good video capture of my propeller work.

Well, the damn things no good, finnaly tried it in a different machine and it also does'nt see it.



So, I know potatohead showed me a USB one that he was happy with which one was that?, does anyone have any recomendations for an NTSC Video capture Card/USB thing?



I would like to get this on the cheap, maybe used on ebay.



Rick

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potatohead

Would you mind attaching a frame captured from the Hauppauge? Could be the graphics demo, if nothing else. Ideally, a frame with 320 pixel + detail. We've got captures online from the ADS, E-bay EZ-CAPTURE, and an SGI. That last one is among my first posts here, and I'll eventually find it! Anyway, would be nice to compare.

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Bill Henning

I'd love to, except my PVR's are down at the current time (have been since I moved, have not had a chance to ethernet the house yet) - I can tell you that there was no discernable difference in quality between the output of the computer (S-Video) after digitization compared to the original S-Video input from a cable box.

potatohead said...
Would you mind attaching a frame captured from the Hauppauge? Could be the graphics demo, if nothing else. Ideally, a frame with 320 pixel + detail. We've got captures online from the ADS, E-bay EZ-CAPTURE, and an SGI. That last one is among my first posts here, and I'll eventually find it! Anyway, would be nice to compare.

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www.mikronauts.com Please use mikronauts _at_ gmail _dot_ com to contact me off-forum, my PM is almost totally full
Morpheusdual Prop SBC w/ 512KB kit $119.95, Mem+2MB memory IO board kit $89.95, both kits $189.95
Propteus and Proteus for Propeller prototyping 6.250MHz custom Crystals run Propellers at 100MHz
Las - Large model assembler for the Propeller Largos - a feature full nano operating system for the Propeller

potatohead

That's expected from the S-video. I'm particularly interested in composite frame captures. That is where the majority variation is, and is most of the Propeller output as well. Hope your move is going well! I really, really hate doing that.

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VIRAND

Now this thread may not be about using the Propeller for Analog Video Capture,
but I am always amazed at the "memory hole" effect. From my point of view,
all progress went back 20 years for everyone who had to "convert" to Windows.
And it took a considerable amount of time for me to find what I found, which is
consistent with my experience, on the internet.

I recall video capture throughout the 1980's, on TRS-80's, on APPLE II's, even
more than on DOS PC's, even on Macs in the 1980's. If it weren't for the Windows
dark ages, we would probably be on Mars now, although I'm not sure if the hobby
would have been prolonged or rendered so far beyond the understanding of a
single person that soldering irons would have been in the hands of cavemen in
the museums.

Behold, in 1979, Color video frame capture was being sold to users of the S-100 bus,
and is that what the Altair used, or not? If not, Altair software was certainly compatible
and running on it! See the ad on the left, then notice the stuff about faster than light
communication on the right, and I assure you that this is NOT a SCIENCE FICTION
article. See attachment.

Now we can't even fix our own TVs, and VISTA will shut down if we even try to "capture video"
from it, as if that were more hazardous than pulling hot tubes out from between 30,000 volt
wires, and bringing them to Radio Shack for testing and replacement. And if we actually
compute any video at all, we need to buy new hardware and drivers every time we "upgrade".
I've been telling people since PC Processors started being rated in MHZ near and above 50 Mhz,
that software I wrote for DOS would have made video cards as unnecessary as they are in
the Propeller, or in the ... Apple II. My DIY sound card for a GWBASIC sound editor should now
have no problem pulling analog video out of an antenna and then putting it back in, thus
even perhaps recording multiple (defunct and obsolete) Analog TV channels at the same time!

It is more of a wonder that the PC cannot be a reliable DVR WITHOUT any cards, than it is that we
haven't YET (because we can and we will) be able to make one out of a Propeller, considering
that it can fully emulate that which could do so in 1979, without any special video cards.

ericball

@VIRAND with all due respect, there's a difference between a "frame grabber" and a "video digitzer". I suspect the CAT-100 (which is pair of S-100 cards) could only digitize a single frame of video at a time. As for doing video capture sans additional hardware - at least some minimal ADC hardware would be required (along with an RF modulator/demodulator if you wanted to "pulling analog video out of an antenna and then putting it back in"). The problem with such a design is the system would need to be dedicated to the task. But with dedicated external hardware, the processor can either be much less powerful or multitask. Digitizing analog video is easy - sample at 14.381818MHz (NTSC). The problem is the data never stops flowing.

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Ale

I have an elgato eyeTV USB dongle. It is just fantastic. It has AV composite input and a Analog and digital tuner. The soft is well, quite nice (compared to the nightmare I used some 10 years ago... some windws soft for a BT484/BT478 board that never worked very well for long periods and capturing to disk was... a no-go :-( ). It worked well on Mac OSX 10.4, 10.5 and now in 10.6. Same drivers, same software. No upgrades in the middle, unbelievable. But this thing cost me some 100 €. Did I said you can pause live tv ? I do not know how it does it. There is no slowdown on the pc... it just works right.

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potatohead

Yeah, my ADS is about the same thing. Great quality, pause, DVR functionality, the works.

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VIRAND

ericball said...
@VIRAND with all due respect, there's a difference between a "frame grabber" and a "video digitzer". I suspect the CAT-100 (which is pair of S-100 cards) could only digitize a single frame of video at a time. As for doing video capture sans additional hardware - at least some minimal ADC hardware would be required (along with an RF modulator/demodulator if you wanted to "pulling analog video out of an antenna and then putting it back in"). The problem with such a design is the system would need to be dedicated to the task. But with dedicated external hardware, the processor can either be much less powerful or multitask. Digitizing analog video is easy - sample at 14.381818MHz (NTSC). The problem is the data never stops flowing.

I have an idea for that problem, which I think is obvious, or may be to those who want to emulate an Atari on another thread...

The external electronics, or maybe even a Prop II Cog, does this:
1.extract the VSYNC and the colorburst from the NTSC, while counting colorbursts from 0 at vsync.
2.during lines 22 through 222 (or whatever the top and bottom lines of the picture are), delay the standard time for horizontal blank,
then read in at 14.318 M samples per second. If color decoding is done with hardware like in a tube TV, 3579545 samples are enough.
3.There is Extra Time when stuff is not being sampled to process the frame, and I'd recommend some kind of simple pre-compression
like Run Length or Delta if this is being done from scratch without advanced DTV or MPEG dedicated chips. That time is the same time
used by Atari-like stuff and PIC videogames to process video without (tons of) memory. I never used but often hear the rumor that DVI
is 30 Megabytes per second... (but we are just talking about NTSC)

... but I've used a 27512 EEPROM and binary counter as a color test patern generator, amateur TV station identifier, and I don't remember
the math but it was 64KB x 60 per second, maybe around a tenth of DVI, yes OK, my clock was only 3,579,545,
and that was color, lumin, and sync in 8 bits per byte of the 64KB EEPROM, full of one complete frame, looping, and if it were RAM,
I'd have two banks, onscreeen and offscreen, so that the processor had a whole 1/60 second to input or output the previous or
next frame. This works at only 3.58 MB per second, and INCLUDES all the time that the videosignal is not representing the image.

The ancient digital framegrabing trick only samples one pixel per line or one column per frame, and that is how it could be done on
an Altair in 1979, since the sampling rate was only 16 Khz, the horizontal line rate, which is also a good rate for audio.
It takes a few seconds to grab a frame (or slice up a loaf of 320 frames) at that rate, so hopefully not much is moving.

Propeller is 8 and 20 times more powerful than Altair, so sure we can do all that Windows stopped us doing, and also
everything that Windows will never be able to do!

Question. Is it ok to finish and share my 32K hubful of code that generates the intro of a popular TV show? Will the laws of physics
or some other Science (which might say its impossible) be enforced by someone? Since the show is science fiction, it will
certainly make an impression when it comes out of no where.

ericball

The advantage of sampling at 14.381818MHz is then the Y,U&V components can be extracted in software from a single ADC. Sampling at 3.57MHz requires an external hardware and 3 ADCs (one for each component).

DV is 720x480x30 intraframe compressed to 25Mbits/sec.

A long, long time ago I did work for a division of Scientific Atlanta on pre-MPEG video compression. I also used an EEPROM to generate a zone plate test pattern for testing a 2-D video filter.

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