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High End Video Capture?

Posted by Cliff on from the hardware-image-acquisition dept.

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?"

75 comments

  1. Software, but... by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You'd probably be better off listening to the experts, because the bandwidth off a high-res video connection is monstrous, but...

    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.

    1. Re:Software, but... by gameforge · · Score: 1

      That's a good idea; but here's a question... if you re-rendered it using something like Renderman (and it ended up looking a lot better than the actual game) would that be considered false advertising? I guess you'd have to re-render it frame-by-frame on a similar card, and individually capture each frame. It wouldn't be realtime, but you could play it back at realtime.

      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 how to reproduce the image; you'd have to begin recording from the very beginning of execution (as oppose to just recording the few seconds that you need). I'm not a graphics programming expert or anything, so I could just be spitting in the wind here... :)

    2. Re:Software, but... by Kegetys · · Score: 1

      Easier method would be to just grab the frames as the game renders them. Hook into the D3D/OpenGL calls and get the finished frames and save them. If you also hook the timer functions the game uses you can make it run at whatever framerate you want without having to worry about how long it takes for you to save those frames.

    3. Re:Software, but... by mderdem · · Score: 1

      Fraps doesn't cut.

      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.

    4. Re:Software, but... by cyclomedia · · Score: 1

      back in the 90s games such as Doom/quake made it so you could record your gameplay and play it back exactly. instead of storing the video data it stored the gameplay data. a bit like making a savegame for every frame. the id games actually did this by simply recording every event as it occurs (player steps forward, monster 1 turns left 10 degrees, rocket 12 hits wall). the playback was made reliable by a random-number generator who's output was always the same from initialisation... the "randomness" of the games came from the fact that the generator was stepped for every event, even if it didnt need it, so to replicate a game's randomness exactly whilst playing you'd have to press all the buttons at the exact frames you did last time. not impossible but highliy improbably.

      if you did that then played it back you could adjust the framerate and then save as a string of bmps, or jpegs to mjpeg

      --
      If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
    5. Re:Software, but... by Psiven · · Score: 1

      Dual-core might solve that issue. Games use only one thread.

    6. Re:Software, but... by JLennox · · Score: 1

      I believe the idea behind thouse recording formats were to capture player input on the grounds that all other variables need not be recorded because they will synce if the input synces. Less like a savegame, more like an input macro.

  2. Nope by martinX · · Score: 1

    20 minutes with Google and all my fantastic video expertise (!) and I can't find a thing for you. All the HD stuff uses HD Serial Digital Interfaces, not DVI (except for monitoring). Those HD boys work in a different world to us.

    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.

    --
    When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
  3. Lossless capture solution by Samir+Gupta · · Score: 5, Informative

    Step 1: DVI (Analogue or Digital)->HD-SDI - XDVI-20s

    http://www.doremilabs.com/products/XDVI-20.htm
    http://www.onevideo.co.uk/xdvi20s-p-359.html
    (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/
    http://www.onevideo.co.uk/decklink-hd-pro-444-p-11 5.html
    (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

    --
    -- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
    1. Re:Lossless capture solution by sxpert · · Score: 1

      for step 1, you can also use a miranda DVI-Ramp
      http://miranda.com/product.php?i=235&l=1

    2. Re:Lossless capture solution by ickypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

      You really don't even need that many format conversions. Frame capture cards exist for a reason, and there are DVI-native capturing solutions available such as the Unigraf UFG-03 and the Foresight Imaging AccuStream 170.

      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.

    3. Re:Lossless capture solution by timeOday · · Score: 1
      I built a Suttle XPC with a Foresight AccuStream board and 3 hard drives, two of which are in RAID0. The included Intel ICH6 chipset was perfect, because RAID is built in and the SATA drives don't use any PCI bandwidth (you'll need it for the capture card!) The AccuStream captures both analog and digital at up to 1600x1200. (However for me 1600x1200 digital doesn't work - it gets noise from signal loss) The whole box was about $5k, maybe a little more, and most of that is the capture board. This was about a year ago, maybe a year and a half. Capturing DVI is neat, but the analog capture looks extremely good anyways. Using this portable, standalone box for capture is great because it places no CPU demands on the application box, the AccuStream has a passthrough circuit, so you put the capture box inline between the application box and the monitor.

      With the two SATA drives in RAID0, you can capture 1024x768 uncompressed RGB from a DVI or VGA output for as long as you like. It's about 60 MB/s. Then encode offline.

      Actually I've ended up making lower-res movies most of the time, because many computers cannot play back 1024x768 compressed video in real time anyways.

    4. Re:Lossless capture solution by Pfhor · · Score: 1

      Or just stick it in a G5 with a PCIe black magic card and drop it on an xserve raid with 14 250 gig drives over fiber channel... A little pricey, but it looks nice. especially if you put the raid in an xtrovert vertical rack.

      http://www.xrackpro.com/xtrovert1.htm

  4. No research done but.... by kahanamoku · · Score: 1

    I know I'm not adding a solution here, but I was attempting to think outside the box here:

    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.

    --
    ----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
    1. Re:No research done but.... by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 1

      PVRs don't have uncompressed HD input because it would require expensive real-time compression chips (like from HDV camcorders) and it would piss off The Man even more than PVRs already do.

    2. Re:No research done but.... by Sqwubbsy · · Score: 1

      and it would piss off The Man even more than PVRs already do.

      But, aren't you The Man?

      --
      $30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
    3. Re:No research done but.... by Peteee · · Score: 1

      Point a HD video camera at the screen

  5. Why do you need a hardware solution? by Guspaz · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you looked into FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com/)? 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.

    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.

    1. Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? by Cycon · · Score: 1
      Have you looked into FRAPS (http://www.fraps.com/)? 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.

      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 everything inside a VNC session and use VNC2SWF to output to flash - but VNC won't let me use OpenGL or hardware accelleration for the video.

      I'm not even concerned about resolution, something like 800x600 would be just fine.

      --
      Your Brain + EEG + LEGO Robots = Brainstorms
    2. Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? by prefect42 · · Score: 2, Informative

      For this sort of resolution I think xvidcap works pretty well.

      --

      jh

    3. Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      Absolutely worst case is you use XDMCP to forward OpenGL to a Windows box and use FRAPS from there ;)

    4. Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? by Viper_Viper · · 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 resolution than your 1280x1024 stated, as of version 2.7.0 (6th Nov 2005) it can capture video up too 1920x540 and 2160x480 resolutions. One think that can help with your video capture is a faster hard drive or setting up a RAID 0 array to record to.

    5. Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? by Guspaz · · Score: 1

      Fraps can record at a much higher resolution than your 1280x1024 stated, as of version 2.7.0 (6th Nov 2005) it can capture video up too 1920x540 and 2160x480 resolutions. One think that can help with your video capture is a faster hard drive or setting up a RAID 0 array to record to.

      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? They're all about a megapixel. They're not significantly higher resolution than the other resolutions. They're also useless, since they are rediculously widescreen. 2160x480 is 9:1 widescreen. He wants 4:3, or 1280x1024. So they don't matter.

      A faster hard drive may or may not help. FRAPS encodes things as it records, so I imagine the bottleneck is CPU more than the hard-drive.

    6. Re:Why do you need a hardware solution? by Viper_Viper · · Score: 1

      Ewwwwwwwww, I totally thought it said something compleatly different, you are correct. I did not even read the vertical resultion, I just saw the horizontal resultion.

  6. AccuStream 170 by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2, Informative

    I can't vouch for it, but the $3,000 AccuStream 170 is the only DVI capture card I've seen. It looks like the cost is almost a tie between DVI capture and DVI -> HD-SDI capture.

    1. Re:AccuStream 170 by sxpert · · Score: 1

      wrong...
      ncast has an offering that's 1/2 that price..
      http://ncast.com/telepresenterDigi.html

    2. Re:AccuStream 170 by threephaseboy · · Score: 1
      $1500:
      Up to 30 fps. XGA and 25 fps. SXGA

      $3000:
      For example, a video signal of 1600 x 1200 x 60 frames per second is 162 MHz. AccuStream 170 achieves a maximum video streaming rate of 30 frames per second from this video format.

      Hrm. Maybe there's a reason one is $3k.
      --
      .
    3. Re:AccuStream 170 by sxpert · · Score: 1

      yeah. possible.
      also the cheaper one works on linux.
      the more expensive one, well... they're in bed with MS apparently

    4. Re:AccuStream 170 by Sardaukar0 · · Score: 1

      I'm quite familiar with the Accustream 170 - my company specializes in webcasting and this is the card we use, built into a Shuttle XPC, at conferences to capture Powerpoint presentations. It's pricey, but image quality is very good. That being said, there are drawbacks: 1) The card's software in its current release isn't so good at automatic format detection. You need to run it through a calibration routine every time you feed it a new signal/resolution. Switching sync during capture throws it off if resolutions are different. 2) It's a 64-bit PCI card. It is backwards-compatible with 32-bit PCI, but don't expect to get over 15fps in a 32-bit slot. 3) It's bloody expensive.

      We've been experimenting with a USB device that captures a DVI signal, the DVI2USB from Epiphan. Nice image, and much better format detection, but the device is still very much in its infancy and its driver release shows. Their DirectShow driver was only released last week and is still buggy (stops serving frames randomly after running for more than an hour), and their proprietary capture interface is extremely feature-thin. Also, even on a relatively fast machine (3ghz P4 HT, 1gb RAM), it wouldn't pass 11fps.

      Hope this helps!

  7. the solution is readily available by Trouvist · · Score: 3, Funny

    There is a way to do this where you don't have to write a single line of code, it is full resolution (up to 1600x1200) and can be done on the same machine you are creating the stuff on through hardware (not recommended because of bandwidth issues). I have done it. My NDA says I can't say how. Sorry.

    1. Re:the solution is readily available by stinerman · · Score: 4, Funny

      Then log in as AC you fool!

    2. Re:the solution is readily available by Trouvist · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I am of the opinion that ideas and thoughts should be shared. Patents have their uses for mechanical and not easily-copied materials, but while I am a programmer I feel that software should not be patentable. I am allowed to say that I did it, I just can't say how. I wish this boy some luck, though I think he should have searched Google a little more thoroughly.

    3. Re:the solution is readily available by hubie · · Score: 1

      On a related note, it is impossible for a cube to be the sum of two cubes, a fourth power to be the sum of two fourth powers, or in general for any number that is a power greater than the second to be the sum of two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition that this Slashdot comment box is too narrow to contain.

    4. Re:the solution is readily available by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pray, tell us the patent number...
      This certainly wouldn't violate your NDA, since patent documents themselves are in the public domain.

    5. Re:the solution is readily available by uglyduckling · · Score: 1

      Me too!!!

  8. SGI SGC by dwater · · Score: 1

    http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/manuals/4000/007-4 663-002/pdf/007-4663-002.pdf

    "
    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 programmed for use by
    applications, video ingest from external DVI sources, or it can be used directly by
    OpenGL Vizserver to support a Visual Area Networking (VAN) environment. Multiple
    cards may be configured in a single system to support multiple input streams in an SGI
    Reality Center or multiple remote VAN sessions. Note that the SGC card is required
    when OpenGL Vizserver is used with the hardware compositor.
    "

    I guess you need an SGI computer though :(

    --
    Max.
  9. Nvidia sdi video card by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of the nvidia cards have sdi output. Plug that into a sdi capture card and you are done.

  10. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  11. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  12. Find a post house by sam1am · · Score: 1

    Unless you're doing this a lot, you probably can find a facility that will have the appropriate scan converters. The easiest way is probably going to be DVI->HD-SDI->Capture Card. There are lots of places that have this (expensive) equipment. You're going to need very fast disks - uncompressed HD is huge.

  13. Capture solution by Matrix2110 · · Score: 0

    -According to the 'experts'-

    Well, It just so happens that I am an expert and I do have an easy solution for you but I might add that your experts don't know what they are talking about when they say to scan convert to 1050P when in fact the best HDTV signal is 1080I. I=interlaced P=Progressive scanning.

    Having said that my solution is to purchase a medium end HDTV prosumer camera and shoot the picture off of your biggest and best monitor. All you have to do is tweak the monitor and camera (Color temperature and scan rate are the biggies but not that difficult) and you will be amazed at the results. Also you will know exactly how much you are cropping because you can look at the camera output while you are recording and not be at the mercy of a expensive post-production house because the "scan converting" was not done right on the first pass.

    After all Lucas did it for years shooting hi-res monitors with 35mm film at ILM and those films at least looked good. Todays HDTV cameras are the very close equivalent of 35mm film.

    1. Re:Capture solution by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Informative

      That was possibly the least informed comment I've ever read on Slashdot.

      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.

      --
      A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    2. Re:Capture solution by Matrix2110 · · Score: 1

      ...airtight, blacked out inside, and highly susceptible to vibration.

      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 can tell that you have been there because of the detailed discription!

      I loved attending those ILM seminars in the 80's.

      It's all about innovation and the fact is that George Lucas would give his left nut to have todays consumer toys available back then.

    3. Re:Capture solution by Matrix2110 · · Score: 1

      Yo, Andy!

      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.

    4. Re:Capture solution by greg1104 · · Score: 3, Funny

      > That was possibly the least informed comment I've ever read on Slashdot.

      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.

    5. Re:Capture solution by Andy_R · · Score: 1

      Sadly I threw out my QCR-Z when data projectors took over from 35mm slides, since the maintenance costs were higher than the profits. It required .tiff or postscript files as input, not a video stream, so it's not really relevant. The other poster is right about air-tightness, we used to seal ours up to prevent dust getting in, but that wasn't a standard feature.

      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 silly to go to all this trouble to capture images to a computer when they are already on a computer!

      --
      A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    6. Re:Capture solution by littlerubberfeet · · Score: 1

      With all due respect, Avid products are shit for handling formats, especially when loaded on a Windows box. Avid on XP can't recognize pre AIFC AIFF formats, whereas Avid on 2K can. Have you ever gotten files from a Mac user, where extensions are optional? the Avid shits its pants over those. The only completely usable Avid setup I have used has been Adrenaline on a Mac. That being said, maybe one of the DVI to SDI convertor boxes and an Adrenaline box would suit his needs, probably for an extra zero in cost though.

      Final Cut Pro does marginally better with formats, but is mac only. A purpose built solution is probably the best.

      --
      Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
    7. Re:Capture solution by Matrix2110 · · Score: 1

      Funny you should mention the Adrenaline.

      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 jets bombing the orcs in film quality and I liked it very much. The only problem with those resoultions is it takes an insane amount of storage and computing horsepower. One thing I noted is that the bottleneck for Avid is not in the realtime horsepower that the Adrenaline provides, but in the host computer that has to do the rendering. And Avid tech support is very hostile to any homebrew equipment. HP or nothing is the motto. I digress, the front end computer is more than critical to the expensive back-end DSP dongle such as the Adrenaline or the (Shudder) Mojo. Perhaps a total software solution is in order. I can safely say from experience that Avid's code could use a review or two and possibly consider a rewrite.

      Having said all of that, I am eager to welcome the dual Adrenaline system overlords into our shop next month.

      Bet you did not see that one coming!

      Regards,

      M

  14. They are called requirements for a reason by morie · · Score: 1

    It is because the spcs are what is required.

    This is a typical /. response:

    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.

    --
    Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
    1. Re:They are called requirements for a reason by Slashcrap · · Score: 1

      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.

      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 your part it may be a viable solution.

      You seem to be arguing for A, probably because you see the world in black and white. Have you considered moving to a management role?

    2. Re:They are called requirements for a reason by morie · · Score: 1

      What do you mean, moving to? I used to manage a marketing department (now I do Business Development, so no management in the hierarchical sense anymore)

      However, things have many shades of grey to me :-). I do not think the given answer was wrong completely, but it is taking to many steps at a time in my opinion. I would favor:

      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, what would be your new requirements?
      4 In that case, this product would meet your new requirements

      or

      3 This product comes close to the original requirements, could it be fit in your loosend requirements?

      This is a bit more respectfull to the wishes of the poster than just jumping to the last step without even asking.

      (Off course, don't forget
      5 ????
      6 Profit!)

      --
      Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
    3. Re:They are called requirements for a reason by aminorex · · Score: 1

      Requirements are often mis-stated. In this case they aren't even explicitly stated: The problem is ill-posed. It is always worthwhile, when a nearby solution is cheap, while a solution that mindlessly adheres to the specific expression of the requirements is costly -- perhaps prohibitively costly -- to ask whether the cheaper solution would be satisfactory. The question cannot be asked unless the cheaper solution can get on the radar.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    4. Re:They are called requirements for a reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For god's sake, don't try to reason with these fucktards.

  15. Use usb to video adapter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Simple:

          Output video through a usb2-to-video adapter and capture all the usb data with a hardware debugging tool to another computer, then decode the data back into video.

  16. Surprised no one mentioned yet, answer is obvious by blorg · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...use a Wiki.

  17. Scalable Graphics Capture by prefect42 · · Score: 1

    I know this might not be entirely useful, but we've got a card from SGI that does this:

    http://www.sgi.com/products/visualization/media/di g_media.html#graphics_capture

    --

    jh

  18. RGB Spectrum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out http://rgb.com/, they have this type of equipment.

  19. Direct to Harddrive. by mikelieman · · Score: 1

    IIRC there are a few manufacturers who have firewire attached standalone harddrives. Plug DV right into them and big-fiddle, you have files.

    Maybe peruse Markertek's website http://www.markertek.com/

    --
    Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
  20. Try the DGy system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    We recently had a similar situation. We ended up going with an all-software solution, but screen-scraping may not be for you. One hardware solution we looked at, however, was the DGy system made by RGB Spectrum. They claim 30fps at 1280x1024 resolution, plus these boxes will do sound as well, and you can just FTP the recordings off them afterwards. We ended up not going for them because they were overkill for our needs. I have no idea on pricing, but I'm guessing that's not your primary concern.

  21. Nvidia Quadro by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hopefully someone will mod this up.

    I ran into the same problem recently. All you have to do is get one of the latest nvidia Quadro cards, they support a daughtercard with HD-SDI output, and then you can use whatever flavor of HD video editing system you want.

  22. Unigraf by ubermonkey · · Score: 1

    Take a look at http://www.unigraf.fi/?page=64 We've been using an earlier version to capture analog video at 1280x1024@67Hz. It does support DVI input; we just haven't needed to use it. It was the only board we found that supported Linux, and it has worked very well for us. A bit expensive, but it is a very nice board.

  23. Write a wrapper lib... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Chromium (http://chromium.sourceforge.net/) is an opengl wrapper lib that can intercept openGL calls and farm them out to rendering nodes - why not do something similar, but your wrapper lib lets the openGL calls go to the local hardware, and then captures the raw pixels coming back from the hardware?

  24. start at the end by bigmo · · Score: 2, Informative

    You really need to decide exactly what you want to end up with before you start talking about how to start. The point of all this is to have something to show people.

        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 company and rent a "Folsom ImageProHD" scan converter. Use that to dump it as Component, Standard Def video into a DVCAM or miniDV deck and then edit that as you would any other video. The ImagePro is an extremely high quality scan converter. You should be able to rent it for about $500 a day, plus about $100 a day for a good component input DV deck. The quality will be very good and anyone can look at the finished product.

    If you're really stuck on HD, the ImagePro will also output various HD formats. I rent these units regularly in my work (they go for between $8K & $12K depending on the model) and they are great.

    Don't get too caught up on theoretical quality issues. I see people do it all the time, and they waste a lot of money that would be better spent on beer. IMHO

  25. Me Tooo ( Mod me up ) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How the hell that becomes +4 Interesting ?

    It is enough to say "I solved your problem, but I can't tell you how" to get modded Interesting now ?

    Good, so mod me up.

    I've a working prototype of cold fusion reactor here just next my time machine. But I can't show you or tell you more because NSA is spying on me.

  26. High-def TV not ready for Net's prime time by immorak · · Score: 1

    High-def TV not ready for Net's prime time http://news.com.com/2100-1034_3-6058744.html?part= rss&tag=6058744&subj=news

  27. Perhaps a video stream would work? by Psiven · · Score: 1

    What if you used a multi-core system (probably an AMDX2) and streamed the output via gigabit LAN?

    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.

  28. 1080p TV? by n1ckml007 · · Score: 1

    Why 1080p? Is the display going on a 1080p TV?

  29. UltraVNC with video driver + UltraRecorder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I haven't tested it but I've heard that UltraVNC, with it's own video driver and the UltraRecorder program can do these things.

  30. E3 Style by The-Bus · · Score: 1

    Just show your footage on a huge LCD and get a room full of people to stand in front of a guy with a shaky camcorder. Then watch as every games newssite discusses your video, which is near-unwatchable.

    --

    Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

  31. Go look at ModsOnline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In the CoD/CoDUO tutorial section they have video tutorials. I don't remember the name of the software that they used, but you can see it in some of the video tutorials when they minimize programs.

  32. Ask your cube neighbor by billcopc · · Score: 1

    This is a job for those idiot coders in the geek pen 40 feet away from you, you know.. those funny looking guys with posters of scantily-clad night elves on their cube walls.

    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 too incompetent to do it), you could always contact the people who make Fraps and convin$e them to up the maximum resolution for your purpose.

    One thing is certain, this DVI to HDTV conversion is all wrong for you. The only reason a professional recommended this route, is because these "professionals" do many other things beyond capturing some in-house game engine's output, thus the DVI-HDTV capture is more versatile and polyvalent for their needs.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
  33. Re:Surprised no one mentioned yet, answer is obvio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Would that be a Wiki running on Gentoo (or is Ubuntu the default solution-for-everything fanboy distribution of choice these days)?

  34. Believe it or not...Matrox by sznupi · · Score: 1

    Look at Matrox, specifically at Matrox Axio product line on MAtrox Video page. Still strong in this market...

    --
    One that hath name thou can not otter
  35. It's already on your computer, dummy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why not just run your sequence at an artificially low framerate and use ffmpeg to encode it on the fly?

  36. Why hasn't anyone mentioned this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Simply put, in Soviet Russia, high res video converts you!!