VGA Capture Card

Jorge

Hi Phillipe,

What do you think about this card?. http://www.epiphan.com/products/frame-grabbers/dvi2pcie/ Do you think that Millumin can detect this card?. I have a Mac pro and I want to put this card or whatever that works with Millumin in a PCIe port. I´ve been Checking Syphon2network and Syphoner , was good , but I want to try another solution, we work with scaler with VGA and its important find a integrated solution.

Regards.

Jorge.

Millumin

Hello @Jorge,

I don't have such a card, but I got an Epiphan VGA2USB, and I have been pretty disappointed by the performances.
I guess you should have a look to Blackmagic Decklink family. Of course, Millumin supports such cards natively.

Best. Philippe

CitizenCaine

Hi Jorge,

your question about this card was quite interesting.

Did your tried that card or other solutions already?

For myself, i´m searching for solutions for several VGA or DVI inputs from computer into Millumin.

The Blackmagic devices are good for camera and video device inputs.

For computer inputs, I would rather prefer a capture card, which can deal with the computer resolutions and color space of the computer.

greets

CitizenCaine

Jorge

Hi,

Finally I work with a Blackmagic hd-sdi capture card, I have a switcher DVI connected to blackmagic dvi extender, and everything works great, I can connect 4 laptops at the same time. and I never get fails.

Regards.

CitizenCaine

Info to all,

Well, I tried the appropriate capture cards DVI2PCIe Pro of Epiphan. I removed them from the VGA Grid, which they have in their product portfolio, because there the corresponding cards are installed.

I installed two of them in an expansion chassis from Sonnet (Sonnet Express SE II Thunderbolt 2).

I installed their drivers and software. OSX and their software recognizes the built-in cards in the Sonnet expansion chassis properly.

In system preferences the system settings of Epiphan allow me only adjust a maximum of 30fps.

However, the technical specification on their web page of the Epiphan DVI2PCIe Pro shows a recording with 60fps.

Small microstuttering occur in the capturing and recording with 30fps. The performance of the capturing cards are not sufficent enough. I wrote a e-mail to the support of epiphan and waiting for a response for a solution.

I´ve tried their capture Software (VGA2USB) and in Millumin on various Apple computers. A MacBook Pro 2,7Ghz, MacPro late 2013 all with OS 10.9.2 on it.

Here in my studio still around a new Blackmagic Ultrastudio 4k Thunderbolt2 and a AJA IO XT. Both devices do here completely smooth recording with the HDMI Input.

It would be nice to get a smotth capturing with these cards. Since they really offer a rich variety of computer resolutions. And it would be possible to have VGA and DVI to connect with a screw.

Greets

CitizenCaine

CitizenCaine

Update:

now i´m able to capture with epiphans own software completely stutter free. It was a setting in the software preferences that restrict the fps.

But unfortunately I´m not able to set any parameters in Millumin, except the "keep hot" setting.

In Millumin itself, i´m not able to capture with 60fps.

Sometimes also hangs or crashes Millumin with two cards simultaneously in the dashboard.

Otherwise these cards would fit perfectly in a professional environment.

This cards provides either Dual-Link-DVI, Single-Link-DVI, VGA or HDMI and Y/C and audio.

These cards represents all common resolutions and you can set your own computer and video resolutions and refresh rates.

Thus you can still connect older notebooks with a VGA connection and work with RGBHV cables.

They providing a SDK on their website to download. But i´m not able to handle that.

The idea with the switcher before a Blackmagic card is obviously a good idea.

Sometimes it may also be that, for example, at a triple projection also three different sources must be present. Therefore, this configuration with multiple capture cards is planned.

If Millumin would support this card, it would the big hit.

I have already written it as an idea at UserVoice.

Greets

CitizenCaine

PhilipHamilton

BlackMagic Decklink has some cheaper options than Epiphan.

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink

there is a thread about this topic (mLogic mLink + BMD DeckLink Duo).

alenmecan

Main problem I see people running into here is trying to capture RGB colorspace output from their switchers to Blackmagic cards which are YUV only.

Decklink Studio 4K (and up the range) solves this problem, it's HDMI can capture RGB, and also solves the problem of capturing at max of 30fps, as it supports 1080p 50/60 and up.

The image quality is also impeccable, so this is definitely the way to go.