What do I need to record video from the real machine?

[mr_lou]

I've learned that my "Game Capture" unit actually supports recording from a composite signal. Tested briefly with my Amiga.

So I'm looking into getting a DVD Recorder afterall.

This one is rather cheap. Does anyone happen to know whether it likes the CPC or not?
KISS Recorder, KISS DP-558-... – dba.dk – Køb og Salg af Nyt og Brugt

[mr_lou]

Ah screw it.
1 XRGB-Mini Framemeister on its way now.

As my new 48" 4k TV has no scart input anyway I see me buying a framemeister next month, to allow me to use my original Xbox with coinops and the various retro consoles I have now bought again including the gx4000.

Will let you know how I get on with it soon.

No I will let you know. 

[CraigsBar]

Ah screw it.
1 XRGB-Mini Framemeister on its way now.

No I will let you know. 

Can you let me know where you bought it...  EBay?

[mr_lou]

Can you let me know where you bought it...  EBay?

EU Tax Free: XRGB-mini Framemeister Compact Up Scaler Unit | Buy EU Tax Free:

Also bought the EuroSCART cable and english remote control overlay from Worlds No. 1 for Retro Gaming Cables

[mr_lou]

@Bryce
As far as I can tell, the XRGB-Mini Framemeister wants 5 volts.

Would you mind investigating whether I can use the same power adapter as I'm using for a CPC? I.e. is the polarity the same? Plug size the same?
I wouldn't want to risk frying this expensive device....


EDIT: As far as I can see, polarity is the same, but the size of the plug isn't.

[Bryce]

Yup, I found this:

XRGB mini Framemeister Power Supply - mmmonkey

It's the same polarity, but a completely different size connector. Two things to be careful of:

- Some people in Europe have reported that theirs arrived with a Japanese 110V PSU - Don't plug this into a 220V socket, it will make a very loud bang!
- The original PSU supplies 2.3A! I've no idea whether the Framemeister actually needs all of this, but be sure that the supply you use can supply at least close to that.

Bryce.

[mr_lou]

- Some people in Europe have reported that theirs arrived with a Japanese 110V PSU - Don't plug this into a 220V socket, it will make a very loud bang!

What if I like very loud bangs?

- The original PSU supplies 2.3A! I've no idea whether the Framemeister actually needs all of this, but be sure that the supply you use can supply at least close to that.

Yes, I found that too, but I also read somewhere else that newer versions are shipped with a 2.0A PSU.
In any case, I have one that can give 5 volt 3,6A here, so I'll probably use that one, if there's a 4mm plug that fits it. (It's one of those multi-ones).

Thanks!


As for the SCART adapter cables.....  I bought the one with a CSYNC. Should I have gotten the passive one instead?

[Bryce]

What if I like very loud bangs?

Then buy a bag of the electrolytic capacitors and connect them to a 9V battery the wrong way around (from a safe distance).

As for the SCART cable, the CPC needs CSync, but I don't know what the wiring of the two options are, so I can't say.

Bryce.

[Munchausen]

But since I'm running Linux on a fairly old computer, getting a capture card working (fast enough too) is most likely not an option.
I also prefer being able to record from anywhere, rather than needing all devices right next to my computer.

I know you've already committed now, but I've had analog capture working perfectly on an AMD K6-II (333MHz) under linux without much effort (using a PCI card), and on a 600Mhz laptop with a USB analog card, and I didn't choose the cards specifically for linux I just happened to have them and they "just worked" - so I don't think this isn't very difficult to set up on linux and doesn't need much processing power at all. You just might want to use a faster computer to do compression afterwards because, at least for the cards I used, they could only do MPEG-2 in hardware IIRC. Any machine in the last 10 years ought to be able to do that too, though.

Having said all that, the framemeister does look a nice piece of kit and will make a nice set up too - and personally I don't want to have to connect my consoles/retro computers through a PC.

[mr_lou]

XRGB-Mini Framemeister arrived today!

Only took a few minutes to change settings to give the picture I want (zoomed to show only 240 scanlines in order to produce a great 720p picture with emulated scanlines).
I had no idea what I was doing, but simply by experimenting with the settings and see what happened, it was surprisingly fast I managed to get the right settings.

Gotta say it looks amazing. I had no idea our TV could even display 50 frames per second. Just looks awesome when everything is as smooth as it should be.

My video-recorder unit can't keep up though. It drops frames. I'm assuming it's because the USB stick that it's recording on isn't fast enough. Will try to obtain a faster one.

More updates later.

[mr_lou]

Something "funny":

My Hauppauge Pocket recorder won't recognize a signal if SYNC_MODE is set to ON on the Framemeister.
I have to set SYNC_MODE to OFF before I can record anything.

I would have thought it would be the other way around.

[mr_lou]

Had some time to do more testing today.

The Framemeister is brilliant. Awesome crisp 50 fps picture on my Sony LCD.

But the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket (for recording video) is a bit disappointing.

The CPC outputs a 50 hz RGB signal which the Framemeister receives fine and outputs a 720@50p signal.
But the CPC's output isn't really a 50hz signal. It's actually a 50.08hz signal. The result is a stutter every 13th second or so.
Luckily this can be fixed using the Framemeister's SYNC setting though. Just set SYNC to AUTO. (The other option is OFF... so AUTO = ON).

But here's the first problem with the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket: It doesn't recognize any input signal as soon as I put SYNC to AUTO on the Framemeister.

Recording a video with SYNC = OFF seems to go fine - but when playing back the video on the PC it's very jerky and chunky - frankly useless.

Googling a bit for this reveals some posts where people blames the jerkiness on the high bitrate. But when I convert to a lower bitrate, the jerkiness is still present.

I've downloaded a newer firmware which I'll try installing next and hope it results in a serious improvement.

[mr_lou]

Well, the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket is out of the game it seems.

I received a reply from support today telling me what I already knew: That a framerate of 50.08fps isn't possible at this time.

^{Why are replies from whatever-support department is always useless? I knew that it wasn't possible. That's why I wrote the mail to them. How about answering my question instead: Is there any chance they'd make it possible in a future firmware?}

So it looks like my only chance with the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket is to hack the firmware, do some reverse engineering and fix it myself. Fat chance.
The firmware can be downloaded here in the form of a jedi.img file, in case we have a skilled haxor who's interested:
Support: HD PVR Rocket

Either that, or else I'll have to accept a lost frame every 13th second. I don't see myself accepting that.

Anyway, since I suspected I'd get a useless reply like that, I already ordered its competitor a few days ago; the AVerMedia Live Gamer Pocket.
So I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this device will do better. I know I probably shouldn't count on it, but we'll see.

There's also the new Elgato HD60 available. But despite being newer, this device actually supports a lot less input signals than the AVerMedia LGP and Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket does. There's no support for a 50fps signal. So that device is not even an option.

To be continued....

[Bryce]

I doubt it would be easy to add 50.08hz with a software or firmware update. The Framemeister is most likely just a big FPGA with an external clock that is being divided to derive the required frequency. Odd frequencies outside the real quotients of the base clock are extremely difficult to achieve.

Bryce.

[mr_lou]

I doubt it would be easy to add 50.08hz with a software or firmware update. The Framemeister is most likely just a big FPGA with an external clock that is being divided to derive the required frequency. Odd frequencies outside the real quotients of the base clock are extremely difficult to achieve.

Never give up. Never surrender.

AVerMedia LGP arrived just now. More updates soon.

P.S.: The Framemeister is not the problem. It can output 50fps or 50.08fps no problem. And the TV receives and displays both no problem.

[Bryce]

In the Hauppauge it might be a little easier and they could possibly widen the "window" for sensing the Sync signal, however, this would only reduce the problem, not remove it completely. To remove it completely the Hauppauge would need to re-Sync and this might not be possible, depending on how they did the architecture.

Bryce.

[mr_lou]

In the Hauppauge it might be a little easier and they could possibly widen the "window" for sensing the Sync signal, however, this would only reduce the problem, not remove it completely. To remove it completely the Hauppauge would need to re-Sync and this might not be possible, depending on how they did the architecture.

Be a little easier compared to what?

Re-sync? Even when the syncing is done by the Framemeister?

[Bryce]

Easier than changing things on the Framemeister.

Yes, the Framemeister is creating the sync signal, but the Hauppauge needs to synchronize its sampling to this signal, which seems to be where your setup is having issues. Depending on what method Hauppauge used to do this will decide how good the result is and whether is skips frames.

Bryce.

[mr_lou]

Well, good news and bad news.

Bad news first.

The AVerMedia LGP is really disappointing.
Looked promising at first though, in that it passed the 50.08fps signal through fine. The Hauppauge didn't do this.
But all recordings are 0 bytes.

They also seem to be saved in TS format, which might not be a problem, but it annoys me right now. (May turn out to be a good thing later of course).

Upgrading firmware requires a Windows machine or a Mac. You can't just copy the firmware onto SD card like you can with the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket. That means you have to first download and install a driver for this thing, and then download and install the firmware upgrade. No no no AVerMedia...
Upgrading firmware didn't help the 0 bytes issue.
Tried another SD card. Also tried re-formatting. I of course format according to their own guidelines, even using their own format-tool.

So this device is just disappointing. I'll have to write support I guess.


Meanwhile, I noticed there's actually a beta firmware 42 available for the Hauppauge HD PVR Rocket. And this seems to have fixed the problem! 
That's right! I am seemingly able to record smooth and nice from my Amstrad CPC now. At least everything points in that direction. I have yet to burn a blu-ray disc to make absolutely sure though.

[Gryzor]

(zoomed to show only 240 scanlines in order to produce a great 720p picture with emulated scanlines).

Photo, please?

[mr_lou]

Photo, please?

I was thinking of uploading a video to YouTube once find the time to create one. 

[robcfg]

Please do!


After all the odyssey you've been through, it's the big prize 

[mr_lou]

I need some CPC demo where a lot of things are happening on the screen to the beat of the music, in order to make sure everything is sync'ed correctly in the recording.

Anyone suggest me a demo or game that has a lot of audio/video stuff happening together.
You know, e.g. some VU-meter showing the music channels or something.

EDIT: Oh, and runnable on a CPC464, since my CPC6128 isn't working at the moment....
EDIT2: Something impressive for YouTube. 

[Grim]

See attachment below. Absolutely unimpressive anywhere, but it has some fat VU-meters and runs on 64K.

[mr_lou]

Alright.
Here's a recording of Delty - not the full quality one though. Bitrate reduced a little. But still 50 fps.

The actual recording happens at 51,43fps for some reason. (I thought it was supposed to be 50,08fps for the CPC).
I then convert these 51,43fps to 50fps in order to be compatible with blu-ray.
The audio that has been recorded then has to be stretched a bit to match the video.

The result is like this:

http://www.dewfall.dk/Delty.mp4

(Can you play it? It plays fine in VLC here, but when I try the link from my browser it keeps saying the file is damaged. Tried uploading it twice using two different FTP clients. Downloading first works).

Recording is 8 minutes long.
To me it looks like the audio is a bit ahead at first, and everything matches fine in the end.
What do you think?

The scanline emulation is from the Framemeister, and not very CPC'ish. I won't be using the Framemeister's scanline emulation in the videos.