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  • Greetings and welcome to a brief LGR thing

  • while I work on more involved LGR things for the upcoming near future.

  • And this is just going to be talking about VGA capture solutions for older PCs, and newer-ish

  • PCs because I capture a wide range of systems.

  • I'm also getting questions about it.

  • But more recently I was getting very specific questions because of the MCE2VGA box.

  • This is a converter for video signals.

  • It takes TTL RGBI right there for like old computers

  • running CGA, EGA, and monochrome and such.

  • And sends them to the other side here for standard VGA output.

  • It's pretty great but it also doesn't work with every capture device that I have, and

  • I mentioned that in the video and people were likewell what do you have?”

  • Anyway, my setup is always changing its gonna change again, but for now this is my basic setup.

  • So I've got a newer Windows 10 PC capturing things over there and then over here is where

  • I do most of the actual capturing.

  • And I like a separate station for this because not only do I get a nice CRT that feels appropriate

  • for a lot of the stuff I cover, but it also is just actually passing through and being split.

  • So that I can play and mess with software over here as it's intended and it feels

  • right and nothing is getting weird because of, you know, delay or anything like that.

  • What happens over here to make that happen is I've got several different PCs down here.

  • At the moment the main ones that I use are the LGR Woodgrain 486, that's a 66 megahertz.

  • Got the Lazy Green Giant running Windows 98 and 95.

  • And most recent one is the XP machine.

  • I've just had a bunch of problems capturing VGA directly so now I do a lot of conversion.

  • So let's talk about all that stuff!

  • Right, so.

  • Main capture area, got the computers down there and whatever I'm plugging in goes through

  • these splitters right here.

  • I have a powered VGA splitter and also some audio splitters to take the sound and the

  • video over to whatever capture device I happen to need.

  • And I'm pretty much never satisfied with these things, I've gone through a bunch of them.

  • There's always interference problems.

  • So I'm not saying these are the *only* ones that will work for you or anything.

  • None of this stuff is, it's just what I'm using at the moment.

  • In fact, there's also some ground problems I've had and of audio capture.

  • I've eliminated that as much as I can, you know but sometimes you just have sound cards

  • that are noisy.

  • Other components that are interfering, getting in the way, or the wiring in your house or

  • whatever like, I've done what I can.

  • But using some of these ground loop isolators or eliminators or whatever, these filter boxes.

  • They actually work pretty darn well, at least for certain types of ground loop hums.

  • So that's the first step in the process is just sending everything through some splitters

  • and filters and stuff to make sure that I don't have any lag

  • and I get as clear a signal as possible.

  • And then at that point it goes along in between here to get to my main capture PC.

  • And that goes through one of these StarTech VGA2HDMI Pro version one boxes.

  • I think this is a rebranded Micomsoft device.

  • But yeah, this is the version one of it, it's unfortunately discontinued.

  • And there are later versions but as far as I know this is the only one that handles some

  • of the weirder lower res and strange refresh rates and aspect ratios.

  • Say you've got something running at like, I dunno, 320x200 at 70 hertz or whatever.

  • This'll handle that just fine and upscale it to 720p or 1080p or whatever you need, really.

  • The only thing I don't like about it is that it puts an annoying little status notification

  • in the top left anytime the resolution changes.

  • It's also not the quickest at changing resolutions, so that's a problem sometimes.

  • And it also washes out the signal a little bit which I have to correct in Adobe Premiere

  • CC, which is what I use to edit stuff.

  • Now the nice thing is that it actually does capture the audio as well and sends that to

  • HDMI so I don't have to worry about plugging in

  • another audio cable over in my capture device side.

  • Speaking of the capture device I've used this for a very long time.

  • Another discontinued product, this is an Avermedia Game Broadcaster HD.

  • I do plan to replace this at some point because it doesn't actually capture really high resolution,

  • higher framerate stuff.

  • Like I want something to capture 4K 60 and I just haven't gotten anything to do that yet.

  • But the old Game Broadcaster still works.

  • I used to use the VGA capture part of it actually, but that's the thing -- the part of it that

  • doesn't capture the weirder resolution stuff, which is why I need that StarTech scaler box

  • in the first place.

  • So in a way yeah, this card is kind of redundant.

  • Another thing that I use though is this AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus.

  • This is an external -- actually a standalone capture solution, if you want it to be.

  • It just uses USB power or you can plug it into USB and use some software to capture things.

  • But if you just power it by USB it has this internal Micro SD card interface and it's

  • really nice because it not only has built-in pass-through for HDMI, but you don't have

  • to rely on a computer or software or anything to get your capturing done.

  • The only thing I don't like about it though is you can't actually see precisely what's

  • going on in terms of like, the settings or anything.

  • In fact all the settings are just internal as far as I know and it only captures at a

  • set kinda lower bitrate when you're capturing to the SD card.

  • But yeah, totally fine for capturing low res older game footage.

  • I'm still having to rely on that StarTech scaler though, because of course this doesn't

  • capture VGA, much less anything lower res than that.

  • I do have one other solution and this doesn't require the use of the StarTech scaler at all.

  • And that is the Epiphan AV.io HD.

  • Ay-vee-oh, I don't know it's this thing.

  • And it actually captures using DVI, but of course you can also capture HDMI or VGA with

  • a simple adapter.

  • It doesn't capture audio, but the video that it does capture is absolutely fantastic.

  • In fact you can plug this straight into a VGA card, like a DOS PC, and run CGA and EGA

  • things all day long and it'll handle them.

  • This is great if you just don't want to mess with a bunch of adapters and whatnot.

  • A couple things that I don't like about it, I mean it doesn't capture audio, that's kind

  • of a pain.

  • You have to route that into something else.

  • And it doesn't have any of its own software, which is both a blessing and a curse.

  • It's nice that you don't have to deal with anything proprietary but it's also annoying

  • because a lot of the different software I've used that is compatible with this thing, it's

  • just kind of irksome.

  • It doesn't handle the different resolution changes and scaling like I wish that it would.

  • And you know old PC games and software, they're changing resolution and refresh rates all the time.

  • So anytime it does that you're usually having to move things around in the software and

  • that's just kind of a crappy thing.

  • Whereas if I'm using the StarTech it just handles all that on its own, it scales all

  • the things internally and then sends it out HDMI in one standard resolution and refresh

  • rate all the time.

  • But again AV.io HD, it captures the older systems as long as it's got VGA of course.

  • And it'll also accept the MCE2VGA box just fine.

  • You don't need to do any kind of other conversion with it.

  • So if you just plug this straight into the AV.io HD it works.

  • Otherwise I have to plug it into my StarTech device to get it to working on my Avermedia

  • stuff.

  • And I wanted to start trying some other things too, because again I want something for like

  • 4K and really just a newer card than that old Broadcaster HD that I have internally

  • over there. It's fine, it works.

  • But I hope that this was helpful in some ways, a very scattered kind of video but it's a

  • scattered kind of process.

  • I will have some coverage of some stuff pretty soon, more of a normal LGR fare.

  • But yeah, till then thank you very much for watching!

Greetings and welcome to a brief LGR thing

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