How to Capture TGM PCB Video

Thread in 'Hardware' started by Soulvirtue, 16 Mar 2015.

  1. Resurrecting this thread for a software question.
    You guys who are using a PEXHDCAP, what software are you using? I'm assuming AmarectTV would be the best, but even with all of its options, I'm having some trouble getting an optimal image from a TAP board.

    I'm not expecting a pixel perfect image - after all it seems the card itself is stuck to a standard output of 720x240 at 59.94fps when set to "NTSC_M". But in general the program seems to take its output resolution quite lightly, and there doesn't seem to be any way to force it into a specific size and aspect to eliminate unnecessary stretched pixels and such, as much as possible, or am I just doing something wrong / expecting too much from video capture?

    That said, the image is still pretty nice, and definitely good enough for a live stream, where I will be stretching the image in OBS anyway to fit into an overlay, and the output will be compressed at least a few times in the process of broadcasting it through Twitch.

    However, when I'm using the "Amarec Live" video source in OBS, which seems to be the only way to actually capture the output from Amarec, since Window Capture just results in a black window, the capture just seems to get another layer of hell applied to it.
    First of all, the resolution will be even more stretched, and the pixels more blurry. On top of that, the whole image is shaking slightly in a wavy way, as if the image was being interlaced despite being completely static. This happens to a very small degree on Amarec's own window, but it's much worse on the Amarec Live output. I'm guessing it's an extra layer of deinterlacing that I shouldn't need?

    The "live" settings in the "Graph 3" tab are quite limited, the FPS setting is stuck to integers, and most values won't even give me an image, so I'm not sure what I can do here. Should I give up on Amarec altogether? Or is there a way to capture directly from the program's own window?
     
  2. I think these are just the Amarec default presets. It's definitely possible to give whatever resolution and framerate (including 61.68hz for TAP) in OBS easily enough, and there are similar configurations available in Amarec once you get a handle on how everything is set up.

    I don't remember how to get this set up, sorry. I'll take a look at it next time I get a chance. In general it was easier to be lazy and use OBS's recording, provided I didn't care about getting a raw capture. I do think I got this figured out, though.

    Yeah, it sounds like one of Amarec's de-interlacers might be enabled by mistake.
     
  3. I actually ended up using PEXHDCAP's output directly in obs-studio instead of going through Amarec. I still haven't experienced any visible interlacing in any game using this method. At least not anything that's worse than what amarec provided.

    I still have the issue with a somewhat shaky and at times blurry image from arcade boards though. Testing both SNES, MegaDrive and an RGB modded NES, all of these provided a completely clear and sharp picture, so I'm guessing it might be an issue with the signals from arcade boards, and 300ohm resistors not being enough to give me a useful signal?
     
    Last edited: 17 May 2016

Share This Page