pouët.net

After a thread about "the art of streaming", I thought it was time to follow up in the series with a "art of connecting oldschool gear..... blah blah"-thread.

So, in order to make the oldschool compo run more smoothly at this years TRSAC, we're considering getting some hardware to help with this - more specifically a [Some analog input] -> HDMI converter/scaler/whatever.

Something like this: http://www.hdtvsupply.com/av-to-hdmi-converter.html

Any of you guys have some experience with this. Warstories etc?

HDMI conversion, from my experience so far, has unfortunately been quite hit and miss from most systems. While the Atari Falcon and most Amiga systems can give a fairly decent picture quality via a scart=hdmi converter, with other platforms having difficulties. It'd be interesting to hear other people's experiences though .....

This is what we're using at Solskogen: http://retrogaming.hazard-city.de/framemeister.html

Gargaj: cool! So, what about experience/war stories with that hw? :)

Uh, far as I can tell the $300 price tag is the biggest issue, other than that from my experience "it just works". Dozer owns it so he might be a better person to ask.

+1 to Framemeister. I've used it at parties and running Famicom/Super Famicom etc. to HDMI displays. It's _not_ the best you can get, but it'll do 90% of the time. But if your demos change display modes during running, it'll blank for a few seconds, which is untolerable. But except that it's _perfect_ for party stuff.

Ok - and yep that's a bit pricy for a party budget

+1 for the Framemeister
did help us a lot at Nordlicht as well

Regarding cheaper Scart 2 HDMI converters: i have one (price point: 40 euros) and it works very well with the rgb output of the a600, a bit flaky (but mostly stable) with the rb output of the mega ste and horribly with the s-video/composite signal of the c64 (as in, dont even think about using that for a party).

It's a one-time purchase though. Anything worse (scalers etc) is considerably worse, and above it's mostly industrial grade stuff like the ImagePro.

The other hardware we use at Solskogen is this: http://www.lenkeng.net/home/Index/detail/id/56 - I don't think we ever tried the analogue inputs but how bad can it be?

Gargaj: The problem with oldschool stuff is that it sends out signals that are plain out of spec. So you can't just assume things work well; the scaler either has to be _designed_ to be flexible about it, or you just have to be lucky.

The Framemeister is the former category. Apart from that, it's not spectacular in any way IMHO, but probably you don't need spectacular, you just want “works” :-)

Read up on it, and it's really sad that the framemeister is missing a normal VGA input. Would it work to use two converter cables for achieving VGA input like this:

(Eg. old PC) VGA->component->D-link (framemeister)

Definitely considering bying the unit for minimizing hassles with oldschool gear.

the LKV does have VGA in

Yeah - that means byuing two units for covering "everything" though.

I was looking at something very similar as the LKV first as well, but I trust that eg. C64 (and others) might not work with those - or at least there's a good risk that they wont.

I think the way it was done at Revision may be more flexible:
You just connect the projector to a regular modern PC which just plays back videos.
Then the problem is reduced to just being able to capture the output of each platform to a modern digital format.
You could use different capture-equipment for each platform if need be, without having to change anything in the video projector setup.

Puryx: I'm most likely (~80%) coming to TRSAC, I can bring my LKV391N if you want to test. Of course, if you plan to play e.g. C64 stuff at TRSAC and it _doesn't_ work, you're back to emulator.

FWIW, the LKV391N also works as a reasonably good switcher. It has a six-second black period and a ten-second (forced) OSD after that, but it doesn't drop connection to the projector while doing so, so it's faster than most other cheap ways of switching. (The Framemeister, in particular, loses connection when switching.) This is what we've been doing at Solskogen the last few years; it's not perfect, but proper video mixers are super-expensive.

Have you considered a software video mixing solution?
Coupled with some semi-professional capture devices such as Blackmagic Intensity, it may be a cheap and reliable way to get smooth switching between devices, and also get free up/downscaling.

Currently looking in to making this a functional thing for my uses: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52172&sid=5689d622cd93a7ee3cfa2ff63e9a12b0

I suggest staying away from cheapo scalers normally as they might have tons of issues with PAL content, especially if it's lowres RGB PAL.

I've been part of organizing a speedrunning event in Skövde for the past few years and there are constant challenges with connecting old stuff in to a streaming setup, as we want RGB from everything possible.

Framemeister is not 100% perfect, if you use RGB then you naturally want "real" line doubling instead of de-interlaced output, in this case when you switch between lowres/highres it might go blank for multiple seconds.
This is a real issue with a bunch of demos.

For simulaatio, we ended up using XRGB-3 with it's linedouble mode as it has less latency but the de-interlace looks less awesome with it, luckily it's better than nothing.

Currently there is no "one device does it all" solution.
Looked in to that GBS mod datasheet and the chip seems to be very versatile, if it works well with 480p / 576p output linedouble (where everything is trivial after that) then it's a really big contender as it would allow straight control of modes and still cost 1/8 for a full setup compared to a framemeister.
Also since it would allow YPbPr output instead of RGB, it could be easily split with available devices and even captured with $30 USB capture devices.

Still waiting for my devices to arrive from china but I am really looking forward in to getting the i2c working with an arduino and inserting a nice LCD to along with it.
My goal for a long time has been affordable RGB quality captures and ease of use during parties. I'll gladly share my results and help people if they have questions.

Scali: Problem with video approach is that you still need to de-interlace the content and for 50Hz stuff you will need to sync it to the projector, have you taken these in to account ?
I have done a similar approach before and it does help things a lot though.

So in short: If you are in a hurry,
-> XRGB-3 has a nice linedouble mode that works well with amiga
-> Framemeister works better with PAL stuff overall but has slow screenmode change, should work well with composite/svideo as those are generally ignored when it comes to 240p/288p vs. 480i/576i.
--> You can however get around that limitation with say.. bypassing it through some DVD recorder that changes the sync to always report alternating fields (interlaced) instead of "progressive" We had a set of scalers that crashed if PAL60 was fed in to them but worked fine if it was interlaced. This should be the most compatible setup overall without crazy mode swap delay. Downside is that the content will always be de-interlaced so you won't get a nice and crisp "emulator-like" clarity.

Otherwise I'd suggest experimenting with the GBS as well or check this guy out: http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=52158

Again, I am more than happy to help over IRC/etc.. with this stuff if needed.

Scali: BMI is a horrible option as it doesn't detect screenmode changes at all and you have to manually change it every time.
For SDI capture these might work better, I haven't tried the top end models.

What I suggest is the micomsoft cards, same guys who did the XRGB scalers.
SC-512 This does up to 1080p60 capture along with analog RGB and other stuff, it's a bit pricy but does pretty much everything.
I've even captured amiga RGB and it manages to capture every frame without any issues.

There is a little brother called "SC-500", this one also does digital/analog RGB along with component but lacks 1080p60, going only up to 720p60/1080p30 for capture. It doens't have s-video or composite either but it's much cheaper.

THEN there is a cheaper clone of the SC-500 called "PEXHDCAP" that you can find for $100 easily when discounted, with this card you can capture pretty much every retro system as long as it uses RGB or Component. (HDMI works just fine as well!).
PEXHDCAP ships with it's own drivers but you can also use the micomsoft (japanese) drivers with it as the card design is the same.

If you are getting a capture card then get the PEX by all means. (unless you REALLY need composite / svideo, you might just as well get any throwaway card for these).
I've heard some horror stories about incompatibilities but so far I have used it in 6+ different systems without any issues and nobody who I have suggested it to has reported any issues. It's only downside is that you can't have more than one of these in a computer at a time or you might run in to issues.

Then finally there is an external USB3.0 version of the SC-512 called XCAPTURE-1.
This is basically the Rolls Royce of retro capturing when it comes to external devices.
It does all the RGB / HDMI / Component / S-video / Composite up to 1080p60 from "240p", except that it's external.

I strongly advice against blackmagic intensity pro, usability is clunky and I've had stability issues with it as well. It gets it's job done most of the time but it is not something I would rely on. Every time the card locked, it would cause a blue screen instead of letting me reset it gracefully by releasing it's handle.

http://lerppu.net/pic/rgb/s2_240p_clean.png This is an old shot but this shows the clarity you can get with "240p" out of a megadrive with these cards.
This was taken with a SC-512.

FWIW, I've never had any problems with Intensity/DeckLink series, stability or otherwise. Then again, I've never used the Windows drivers either. (I've used both SDI and HDMI. The input mode problem oasiz talks about is very real, but for stream capture this doesn't matter; you set it once and then never change it.)

The main problem with using a software switcher is that you'll need many capture cards (obviously one for each input); once you're at, say, four, you're very close to just having a video mixer even if you don't count the PC you need to drive it. If you want 1080p60 (or are you fine with limiting your bigscreen to 720p?), the field narrows, and if you don't want to lug around a desktop, you're down to USB3 cards, and then the field narrows even more (and the price goes up correspondingly). Plus the fact that you'll probably saturate what your USB3 controller can do pretty quickly.

The Blackmagic Capture device was what factually killed the stream at Nordlicht for the reasons oasiz stated above and the fact that somehow they "forgot" to include 50Hz support (Im not exactly sure if it was the intensity, might have been a different card).
Before we opted for the Framemeister we were thinking about the XCAPTURE-1 thing as well as it looks really promising but the XRGB was more flexible in the end (and we still had some issues with connecting it to neomans compo Amiga...).
So if anyone has experience with the XCAPTURE, please share it (although I suspect the chips/software inside are pretty close to the Framemeister).

XCAPTURE is identical to how SC-512 or SC-500 /PEXHDCAP work, except that it doesn't require slight shift in chroma to fix a very tiny ~½ pixel shift (can be done in software normally).

It is very flexible and I already covered it a bit on my previous post (preview screenshot).
XCAPTURE is something that a lot of people use to connect their old gear with.

http://lerppu.net/fapcap/ These are amiga captures from a SC-512, quality should be 98% the same compared to XCAPTURE, except slightly better.
These are compressed so the there is some slight additional noise.

For captures, I highly recommend any of these 4 products, SC-512 and XCAPTURE are capable of 1080p60 in addition to supporting good quality svideo and composite capture.

Cheapest way to capture old systems would be PEXHDCAP in this case.
Pair that with a sync strike and you can capture virtually everything that uses RGB SCART. (Applies to the rest as well)

There is no reason to go with BMIpro these days as it costs more and is less flexible.

wtf.device: What do you mean “forgot”? I've captured 50 Hz from Blackmagic cards (SDI and HDMI). It's in the modelist the card reports, and the entire TG stream has been running off that for years.

For oldschool stuff I'd really suggest snagging a Sony DSC-1024 (G or HD) from Ebay for a few hundred bucks. This thing eats everything for breakfast including PAL60, and outputs RGB which is ok enough for projectors and a lot of capture hw.

Also rumours say certain belgians purchased a few of them the other day and might be willing to negotiate... conditions.

(and if you have a nice rental company - Barco ImagePro2. Actually a lot of them)