Help, upgrading a stream.

[Dryillic]

I've been thinking lately of upgrading my stream and was wondering how streamers are able to have live 480p streams while still being able to play locally on CRT's. I have done some research but I guess I'm missing something.

My current setup is a Wii with component cables outputting to a distribution amplifier, which splits the signal from the CRT to the capture card. It seems that every capture card I put a 480i signal into looks garbage. Every card I have tried looks almost worse than the simple Dazzle I already use.

I want to get a component to composite adapter and hopefully record in 480p and play with 480i or less but I'm worried about lag that will occur.

How would one get 480p streaming with 480i output to a crt?

Edit: It's worth noting I have already tried the Elgato HD and the Avermedia Lite Gamer Portable but because I can't really see a good difference from a Dazzle, I returned both. I hope I'm just being stupid and there's an easy solution. As far as I can tell there is not..

 

[ValiantNorth]

It all depends on your capture card and the settings you use, what software are you running?

 

[Dryillic]

Thanks for the response man,

I tried the Avermedia Lite Gamer Portable and used the latest drivers with LGP stream engine making it compatible with DirectShow applications. I tried Amarec first but the video looked exceptionally bad (~480i 30fps. I might upload a video in a bit). Then I tried OBS with its de-interlacing and it looked exactly the same as Amarec. It took several days tweaking and changing settings before I ultimately returned it.

The Elgato Game Capture HD was no better. Couldn't figure out a way to avoid using their Elgato Game Capture software apart from OBS. The Elgato looked about the same in OBS and the game capture software. I began fiddling with every setting I could and even updated drivers. The result was the same and the card was returned...

With both cards I tried just about everything. That's why I'm starting to wonder if its hardware. I see other streamers achieving clean 480p melee with LGP and Elgato. Is there something I am ultimately missing from the setup?

Currently I have been using a Wii composite/s-video cable and running the composite to the CRT and the s-video to the Dazzle which is being output to Amarec for de-interlacing. Frankly, it looks better than the two cards I tried above.

Edit: The Elgato looked like this, and LGP looked like this

 

[Fenrir]

You might want to look into the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle. It has the rather useful property of being able to accept 480p over component while passing the signal out the other side at 480i over composite and s-video. The downside to the Shuttle is that it's rather specific about what kind of hardware setup you have in the computer that you plan to use for streaming with it. Generally you need an Intel i-series CPU, plus your motherboard needs to have USB 3.0 host controllers either by Intel or Renesas.

 

[Kadano]

http://smashboards.com/threads/355292/