
High End Video Capture? 75
A reader asks: "I work for a very well known company specializing in Game Engine Middleware. Recently we've been trying to gather together marketing material for some new products, and one step towards that end is capturing high resolution gameplay footage (1280x1024) into some kind of movie file for editing. According to the 'experts', the best solution is to scan convert the DVI out into HDTV 1080p, and then HD capture it back into another PC for editing. Surely all this conversion to 'broadcast' quality is pointless - has anyone come across a pure DVI capture solution?"
Software, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm thinking it might be possible to intercept the stream of data the game is sending to DirectX or whichever 3D library you're using, and record it. This data stream should be orders of magnitude lower than the actual video data, and you ought to be able to record it without much disruption to the game performance. Once you had the data, you could then re-render the game play frame-by-frame, and then convert it to video and compress it.
Hum. You might be able to hack this into your game code; but if you can do it externally, it might be a saleable product.
Re:Software, but... (Score:1)
But also, aren't 3D GPU's state machines? i.e. just because you have all the vertex data and everything doesn't necesarily mean you know
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Software, but... (Score:1)
Imagine you are playing a computer game on your PC that is designed to use 100% of all resources available on the computer (CPU,GPU,RAM) do you think there is enough resource left to capture/compress/save images to disk ?
Who have tried that know this, the quality is miserable.
For GUI applications, there are tons of screencapture tools, which work fine since frame rate is not important. But for those who need a high quality video capture, frame drops are not acceptable.
Re:Software, but... (Score:1)
They are called requirements for a reason (Score:2)
This is a typical
You could use X. It doesn't meet your requirements.
I know I oversimplify what you stated, but the bottom line is: He is talking business here. Rule #1 will be that the solution will have to meet the requirements.
Re:They are called requirements for a reason (Score:1)
There probably is no solution which exactly matches his requirements in this case. Bearing that in mind, which of the following answers do you think is most helpful?
A) Tough shit, there's nothing that meets your exact requirements so you're screwed.
B) Have you considered Product X? It doesn't quite meet your requirements, but with a bit of work on y
Re:They are called requirements for a reason (Score:2)
However, things have many shades of grey to me
1 There is no solution that meets your requirements (If that is the case, other comments seem to suggest there is)
2 Would it be acceptable for you to loosen some requirements?
3 If so,
Re:They are called requirements for a reason (Score:2)
Re:Software, but... (Score:2)
Re:Software, but... (Score:1)
Re:Software, but... (Score:1)
Nope (Score:2)
I looked at BlackMagic, AJA and Canopus.
Capturing HD takes a lot of grunt and space.
I'll be interested to see the final answers here.
Lossless capture solution (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.doremilabs.com/products/XDVI-20.htm [doremilabs.com]
http://www.onevideo.co.uk/xdvi20s-p-359.html [onevideo.co.uk]
(In the UK £2,687.23 inc VAT)
Step 2: HD-SDI capture board - Blackmagic decklink HD pro 4:4:4
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/ [blackmagic-design.com]
http://www.onevideo.co.uk/decklink-hd-pro-444-p-1
(In the UK £959.98 inc VAT)
There are many other alternatives to this. This is just one suggestion that I have tested to work.
For my capture PC:
Opteron 254 (2.8ghz)
Tyan Thunder K8WE
Adaptec PCI-X Ultra 320 SCSI Raid controller (39320 series)
4 x 300GB 10,000rpm Seagate SCSI disks running as raid0 (6-8 would be best)
New Nvidia graphics card
2GB ECC RAM
Re:Lossless capture solution (Score:2)
http://miranda.com/product.php?i=235&l=1 [miranda.com]
Re:Lossless capture solution (Score:4, Informative)
Relatedly, there's actually quite a market for VGA-level capture devices. Anystream and Sonic Foundry both market products that will capture video and VGA, and combine them into various "rich media" presentations. At work we use Anystream's Apreso system to combine video of professors with their live powerpoint doodlings, and present it as archived online lectures. I fully expect that as DVI becomes more common, DVI-capturing solutions will likewise become more common -- if for no other reason than to tap into the same market that exists for VGA capturing.
Re:Lossless capture solution (Score:2)
Re:Lossless capture solution (Score:2)
http://www.xrackpro.com/xtrovert1.htm [xrackpro.com]
No research done but.... (Score:1)
PVR's? just off the top of my head, can they record from aux sources? most have DVI output, but do any have DVI input? that would be a nice pure DVI solution if such a device existed. or DVI-To-HDMI.... keeping it digital.
Re:No research done but.... (Score:2)
Re:No research done but.... (Score:1)
But, aren't you The Man?
Re:No research done but.... (Score:1)
Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:5, Informative)
It can record at 1152x864 (4:3) or 1280x720 (16:9) as a max resolution.
1280x1024 is only about a third higher resolution. Perhaps there is some technical limit that prevents fraps from passing one megapixel per frame (both supported max res are slightly below that mark), and 1280x1024 is 1.3 megapixels. But maybe they just picked a megapixel as an arbitrary ceiling to prevent customer complaints from slow performance.
I don't know anything about the internals of FRAPS, but it seems ideally suited to a dualcore system.
I suggest you contact the FRAPS people and ask them:
1) If a special build can be produced that supports 1280x1024
2) If FRAPS can take advantage of a second core (Game on one, FRAPS on the other) for such intensive recording
The demo videos are impressive. The UT2003 one at 1024x768 is just the intro and title screen, but the 800x600 Doom 3 demo is a minute of gameplay, and it doesn't seem to be dropping any frames.
Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:2)
It can record at 1152x864 (4:3) or 1280x720 (16:9) as a max resolution.
Is there anything comparable to this in the Linux world? This looks like Windows-only software.
I'd love to be able to record some tutorial videos for software I've been writing, but some of it is high-motion video and/or OpenGL. The closest I've been able to come so far is to run everythin
Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:2)
Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:1)
I was going to post this right when the topic hit, but the database was down :(
"It doesn't quite meet your resolution requirements, but still gets you most of the way there. It can record at 1152x864 (4:3) or 1280x720 (16:9) as a max resolution.
suggest you contact the FRAPS people and ask them: 1) If a special build can be produced that supports 1280x1024 2) If FRAPS can take advantage of a second core (Game on one, FRAPS on the other) for such intensive recording"
Fraps can record at a much higher
Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:2)
Those are not higher resolution. Notice that as the horizontal resolution increases, the vertical resolution decreases.
1152 * 864 = 995,328
1280 * 720 = 921,600
1920 * 540 = 1,036,800
2160 * 480 = 1,036,800
Do you see the trend here
Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? (Score:1)
AccuStream 170 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:AccuStream 170 (Score:2)
ncast has an offering that's 1/2 that price..
http://ncast.com/telepresenterDigi.html [ncast.com]
Re:AccuStream 170 (Score:2)
$3000:
Hrm. Maybe there's a reason one is $3k.
Re:AccuStream 170 (Score:2)
also the cheaper one works on linux.
the more expensive one, well... they're in bed with MS apparently
Re:AccuStream 170 (Score:1)
the solution is readily available (Score:3, Funny)
Re:the solution is readily available (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the solution is readily available (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the solution is readily available (Score:2)
Re:the solution is readily available (Score:2)
SGI SGC (Score:1)
"
The Silicon Graphics SGC option is a video frame capture PCI-X card that allows a stream
of digital computer resolution video (as compared to Standard Definition or High
Definition Digital TV signals) to be read into the memory of a Silicon Graphics Prism
system. The computer resolution video is delivered in a digital form to the card via a
single link DVI-D connector.
The card itself is seen as an OpenML 1.1 device, and can be progr
Find a post house (Score:2)
Re:Capture solution (Score:4, Informative)
You can obtain good quality capture by pointing a HDTV camera at a computer screen in the same way that you can produce the next harry potter book with ink, paper, a knife and a large supply of potatos.
ILM used slow-scanning film recorders (like the Agfa QCR-Z that I used to make 35mmm slides from powerpoint with) which have resolutions of up to 32,000 lines and take up to 16 minutes to expose a single frame. While these machines do techincally point a camera at a screen, the camera is a fixed-focus 35mm head,the screen is closer to an oscilloscope than a monitor and it builds up colour through 3 passes with R,G,B filters, and the wole unit is airtight, blacked out inside, and highly susceptible to vibration.
Re:Capture solution (Score:2)
You are right! Except for the airtight part. They had very fancy mountings and gee would you want to disturb a painstaking shot like you describe? The boxes were light shielded not airtight. However there is a inherent problem with dust that accompanys film, and I will give you filtering the air rather then hermeticly sealed chambers.
My point that putting together todays cheap tech can do suprising things seems to have struck a nerve.
I
Re:Capture solution (Score:2)
Do you have anything to help this guy out?
I would also say that a program such as Avid Express DV just might settle the interformat hassle very well. >$5k. This program can cut through formats like a knife. Also some great stuff on sourceforge and other places for free.
Avid is used by film makers world wide. I insist that everybody in my workgroup has at least some knowledge so they can pass along Avid Free to their kids.
Got any help?
Just wondering.
Re:Capture solution (Score:2)
My suggestion would be to speak to the programmers and get them to add a debug mode that captures the screen to disk after every refresh, it seems
Re:Capture solution (Score:1)
Re:Capture solution (Score:2)
I had a chance to test drive a system direct from Avid and had the unique opportunity to pick from my stations limited supply of hi-def footage standard test footage of flowers and driving through eastern USA's wood covered bridges and such plus some goodies like an airshow recorded in HDTV but the kicker was the twelve reels of LOTR personally recorded by our chief as "Test footage", I wound up chopping down the battle for Helms Gate into four minutes with fighter j
Re:Capture solution (Score:4, Funny)
Though your ID is low, it appears you haven't actually been reading Slashdot until now.
> You can obtain good quality capture by pointing a HDTV camera at a computer screen in the same way that you can produce the next harry potter book with ink, paper, a knife and a large supply of potatos.
Expect to hear from my patent lawyers if you try.
Surprised no one mentioned yet, answer is obvious (Score:2, Funny)
Scalable Graphics Capture (Score:2)
http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/media/d
Direct to Harddrive. (Score:2)
Maybe peruse Markertek's website http://www.markertek.com/ [markertek.com]
Try the DGy system (Score:1, Informative)
Unigraf (Score:1)
start at the end (Score:2, Informative)
Will you stream it from the web? -- I doubt you'll be able to stream high def very well
Will you distribute DVDs? -- There's not much use for HD here for a while
Will you show it at trade shows? -- Renting an HD deck & plasma will be extremely pricey
For a real world solution, go to an Audio Visual
High-def TV not ready for Net's prime time (Score:1)
Perhaps a video stream would work? (Score:1)
Since you're not writing to HD you would just need a bunch of RAM to store frames while it gets streamed. Then you can use another system in a striped RAID-0 configuration to store the output quickly.
My other vote would go towards a frame-by-frame rendering situation. 1280x1024 is small potatoes for current graphics hardware. The resulting video won't be something you can't get in realtime.
1080p TV? (Score:1)
E3 Style (Score:2)
Ask your cube neighbor (Score:1)
Seriously, you've got "Game Engine Middleware" which is just a fancy way of saying "graphics and sound engine". Is it that difficult to just tap the output of your own in-house graphics renderer and send it to a file ? Then all you need to do is encode it to something slimmer like h.264 or WMV HD.
If you're too lazy (or your geeks are
Believe it or not...Matrox (Score:2)