How to make SUPER SMOOTH videos the easy way! - Adaptec GameBridge User Guide

[_kSo_]

As per requested, here it is:
How to make super smooth video recordings

Hokay so you will need 3 things to make super smooth videos

*Note: If you have a TV out option on your TV, then just take your RCA A/V cables and connect it from your TV to your GB and you should be all set. (Hence, skip the y-splitter setup section)

1.) GameBridge AVC-1400 or AVC-1410

a. Looks like this​

2.) RCA Y-Splitters x 3 (~$4 a piece at radio shack, but people have told me that they have seen it at wal-mart for cheaper)

a. These may be labeled as TV audio cables or phono Y-splitters, however they are all the same. Just make sure they aren’t stereo audio cables. Those are different.​

b. Looks like this​

3.) A decent computer (your computer is probably better than you think; my computer is not too good and my recordings come out fine)

4.) (optional) RCA A/V cables and couplers for a longer connection

a. Connect the couplers to the said male ports and one end of the cables to the other side, and one to the TV. Repeat on other male side of Y-splitters to connect to GB.​

b. RCA A/V Cables:​

c. Triple RCA coupler (may be sold in single sections rather than three all together. Also, may be referred to as phono plugs – it’s the same thing)​

​

Once you have your GameBridge (from now on it will be referred to as a GB; not to be mixed up with gameboy which is not at all what this thread is about), install the program that comes on the disc and follow all the instructions.

If for some reason, your GB did not come with an installation CD, Cruise has taken the liberty to upload the CD as an ISO file online so that you can download it

Here is the original quote

reuploaded the installation CD as an ISO for convenience.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=04PE4WM2

*Note* You may ONLY download this file if you own the gamebridge and either A) lost your cd, B) purchased a gamebridge that did not come with this CD, or C) corrupted or otherwise damaged your CD. Downloading and using this file without owning the licensed gamebridge IS considered illegal


Before we move on, we must now set up your wiring.

Ok, so you should have gone out and purchased three RCA Y-splitters.

As you can see, there are 2 male ports and 1 female port. Your GB is equipped with 3 female ports, your N64 wires are equipped with 3 male ports and your TV is equipped with 3 female ports.
It might make it easier to mark each of these wires with colors (yellow, white, red) to differentiate between the wiring.

Now, your N64 wires will go into the female port. 3 of the male ports will go into the TV and the other three will go into the GB.

Ok, so your wires are set up and your GB program is installed. Now plug in your GB and turn on your N64 (and your TV of course). Open up the program you just installed and click the “Gamebridge” button. It will go directly to a “movie” screen with controls at the bottom (record, stop, play, etc). On this screen, you should see everything and anything that your N64 is doing. It should match your TV screen.

Please take note under the "settings" tab, you will find different qualities you can record your video at. (Thanks to Doggalina for the stats)

[QUALITY]: [# MBs per second]. [VIDEO SIZE (pixels)]. [ASPECT RATIO]

BEST: .74 mbps 720 x 480 1.37:1

BETTER: .50 mbps 480 x 320 1.37:1

GOOD: .17 mbps 320 x 240 1.22:1

whenever you are ready, hit "record" and start making videos!

Now, after you finish recording your videos, there are a few things you may want to do. One of them is to edit your videos. An easy way to do that is to use EASY MPEG LITE to edit your clips and just take out the parts of the video that you want. It is perfect for handling the file type that is exported via GameBridge, which is evidently an mpeg type format, one that Windows Movie Maker is not very friendly with. If you still insist on using WMM, then you may want to convert your videos first.

I use the free version of stoik video converter, which can be found here. The free version works fine, I convert my vids into WMV's. And Windows Movie Maker can load the videos after the conversion.

Please feel free to PM me or just post in this thread if you have any additional questions or any suggestions on making this guide better.

 

[Roman.]

This looks like it's too good to be true. This would really replace buying a $70 capture card?

 

[Cruise]

gamebridge and a capture card perform exactly the same function

and if its good enough to be used widely, then I'm sold.

thanks for the guide, now i can finally record some videos!

also, do you know how the MLG series were recorded by any chance?
im mainly wondering about the commentary and the player shots
is it like a capture card for the gameplay footage and then a camcorder for the commentary and player shots, then editted together?

 

[Doggalina]

Wow, good job. Thanks. I've always wanted to record videos, buy my only means of doing so was recording it to VHS, and then capturing that on my computer. This process will get rid of the middle man and have better quality.

Holy crap. The Game Bridge is less than $10 on Amazon.

EDIT1: Maybe this should go in the Videography section.

EDIT2: I found a video review of the Gamebridge. It has footage of an NES game, an SNES game, and a PS2 game, if anybody's wondering what the quality is like. The Review

That's my post from the topic in Computer Café. And Elran, yes this would essentially replace it. I'm considering buying it and I already have a means of capturing video; I like the fact that you can just screengrab without capturing video. That'll make it much easier for me to get images of every Brawl move.

 

[Roman.]

Nice, I'm sure to get recording soon now =)

HERE is the link to the GB on amazon, if you just search Gamebridge AVC-1400 then you won't go to the right page.

 

[Rapid_Assassin]

By good computer, depends what you mean... you don't need it to be incredibly fast, or to have a good graphics card. My computer is about 5 years old, and has a kind of crappy graphics card. What it does need is hard drive space. Like, 100's of gigs of extra space if you plan on doing any serious recording like me and Tich do for OAK. I had to get an extra hard drive, just to have enough space. Keep in mind that a computer will record things uncompressed, which means an hour's worth of matches can take 50 gigs or more. You can delete the uncompressed files after compressing them, but you still need huge amounts of space to hold them until you do compress them.

FYI, my computer has 2 hard drives, one of them for the sole purpose of video editing and storing large sized files...

 

[Xanskarr]

Anyways to get this in less then 2 days? <_<

 

[_kSo_]

If you buy it off Amazon then it won't be delivered in less than 2 days i dont think. but if you go to your local radio shack you'll definitely get the y splitters and such right away. If you guys want to see video samplings, check out my latest match videos on my youtube site. (just click the picture in my signature) The ones that are crappy obviously arent recorded with GB. lol but the good ones were all recorded on a GB on my laptop

 

[Roman.]

Anyone else having trouble finding the RCA Y-Splitters? RadioShack and Wal-Mart don't seem to have any with 2M and 1F.

 

[Eaode]

Now, if you want a longer connection (My computer and TV are like ~15 feet away) you use extra video cables and couplers? How does that work? The picture of couplers you have looks like it has female ports on both sides. How is that going to connect video cables together?

 

[_kSo_]

Sorry if that wasnt clear.

The couplers will connect two sets of RCA wires together. So if you have RCA extension wires with 2 male sides, the coupler will turn one end of the RCA wires into female port. therefore, you will be able to either

1.) extend the wire further with another RCA wire
2.) directly input your system into the other side of the coupler.

and elran, usually the Y splitters come in clear plastic bags, and are located where all the audio wires are. But make sure they aren't stereo wires - make sure they are TV audio wires

*edit*
You may also use a 2 Female/1 Male Y splitter if you can't find with one with 2 male/1 female. then you need to use the RCA wires and Couplers.

1.) Take your game console and connect each of its wires to a side of the coupler
2.) Take the 3 Y-spltters (2F/1M) and plug the males sides into the other side of the same coupler.
3.) So now you have 6 female plugs on the other side of the coupler (2 from each ysplitter). Plug a set of RCA wires to 3 of the respective female plugs (make sure the colors match up) and plug the other end of the RCA wires into your TV.
4.) Plug another set of RCA wires into the last 3 remaining female ports on the y-splitter, and connect the other end to your GB.

As you can see, this way is a bit more expensive, but I think it's the cheapest way to do this if you can't find the proper y-splitter

If anyone needs additional photos, let me know, and I'll try to get them up asap. (i'm at work right now, otherwise i'd do it now lol)

 

[Budai578]

I can't confirm this yet, but I have heard from someone who has apparently done it before:

If your TV has A/V out, you can plug the game console directly into the TV, then use a male-male RCA cable from the TV (A/V out) to the GB (A/V in). This will allow you to see the game on the TV screen as well as have it record on the computer. This can be done with just an RCA cable and without the splitters, but your TV must have A/V out.

I haven't tried this myself, but I recently ordered a GB w/ TV tuner (before I saw this post, actually - just seemed like a decent product to record with), so I'll be able to confirm whether or not this works within a week or so.

If you don't care about watching/recording TV on your computer, then just get the AVC-1400 for $10 (+$6 shipping). If you do want TV compatibility, then go with the AVC-1410 for $25 (+$6 shipping). They also have them both at Computer Geeks. You can use the coupon code "GOTTADEAL", among other promotional codes from different websites to get 10% off your purchase. This is where I got mine before I realized Amazon had the same thing for the same price.

Anyway, I can't wait to start recording Smash matches on my computer, and thanks for posting this information for everyone. I hope the info I gave helps and I look forward to sharing my experiences in the future.

 

[_kSo_]

*Note: If you have a TV out option on your TV, then just take your RCA A/V cables and connect it from your TV to your GB and you should be all set. (Hence, skip the y-splitter setup section)

already mentioned that. let me know if there are further questions. actually if you have more knowledge on the subject would you mind writing an extension to this guide by adding a portion with "tv out" in it? I don't have a tv that does that so I don't have that much knowledge on it. if you write it, i'll include it in the guide and give you credit, of course. thanks

 

[Budai578]

Wow, not sure how I missed that. I must have just skipped straight to the first step of the guide instead of reading the text in the bright orange font, haha. One of my TVs does have TV out, so when I get my GB (hopefully sometime in the next couple days), I'll let you know how it works out. If you think it's worth it, I can write something up to help people do the same thing I'm going to be doing sometime in the future.

 

[_kSo_]

yea, it's up to you, but make it in depth and meaningful, unlike my bright orange sentence that only can be predicted to have been written by an orangutan lol

i hope we can get this stickied

 

[0m3n5150]

to my knowledge, the GB basically turns your monitor into a TV for playing right? so instead of buying all those other cables, why not just get HyperCam. (records what is seen on the monitor to a .avi file)
it would cost much less...

 

[Budai578]

to my knowledge, the GB basically turns your monitor into a TV for playing right? so instead of buying all those other cables, why not just get HyperCam. (records what is seen on the monitor to a .avi file)
it would cost much less...

Unfortunately, HyperCam is useless if you don't have a way to get the audio/video from the game console to your computer. The GB allows you to connect your console to your computer so that you can use software like HyperCam to record it. You still need the GB or another capture card (or a video/sound card with A/V in) to have a use for HyperCam for recording Smash.

So yes, if your computer already has A/V in, then all you really need is video capturing software to record the game. However, if you don't have A/V in, then you need a capture card or GB. Also, all the extra cables enable you to play the game on the TV while also recording on the computer, therefore not differing from your normal gaming experience.

Hopefully I understood your query and didn't just describe something completely different from what you meant.

 

[_kSo_]

hypercam is used on emulator, usually from what i've heard. however it requires somewhat of a good computer to run well.

if i get what your saying is that use hypercam to record gamebridge directly with your system hooked into the computer? so without the ysplitters and stuff?

ok that's good and all, however the problem with that is that the "watch as your record" thing on the computer is pretty slow and it'll lag. the purpose of the y splitters is to get real time playing while you record and then it'll be perfect when you playback

 

[GameAngel64]

i hope we can get this stickied

I agree, as I found your guide to be very useful Thanks for posting such a detailed and money-saving method for recording Smash matches.

 

[0m3n5150]

thats true, would it have less lag if i were to hook my GCN to my vcr's inputs, then have my vcr hooked to my TV, then on the vcr's outputs, put an RCA cable to the gamebridge?
i would think that there would be no lag because its somewhat of a direct connection... what do you think?

 

[_kSo_]

Yea, that sounds ok, although the tv color may be reduced a lot because of all the splitting and the wiring. But I suppose it'd be about the same effect as the ysplitters

 

[Doggalina]

Kso, what quality do you use? I'm still trying to decide, so I compared the three. Here's what I got:

[QUALITY]: [# MBs per second]. [VIDEO SIZE (pixels)]. [ASPECT RATIO]

BEST: .74 MBs per second. 720 x 480. 1.37:1
BETTER: .50 MBs per second. 480 x 320. 1.37:1
GOOD: .17 MBs per second. 320 x 240. 1.22:1

Well, it appears that "Good" has a funky aspect ratio; however, it's also the smallest by far. I think I'll go with "Better" considering I compress these in Premiere anyway, but Best is still tempting.

EDIT: Hmm, it would appear that the "Best" quality video has desynched audio. Meh, I'll go with "Better."

 

[_kSo_]

Under "Best" your audio will only desync if your computer can't handle the high quality. (it's like when your game system can't handle a high def TV - the sound will desync) but I use "Good" and it works fine for me, no desycing or anything. but if you have a good computer (unlike mine) better should work well. doggalina, can i use your stats for my guide? i'll credit you

 

[Doggalina]

Sure, feel free to use them.

EDIT: My funky "Best" quality might be due to Windows Media Player, but it doesn't matter; I've decided on "Better."

 

[0m3n5150]

where do you go to access these files?
i record them, but where are they located on the hard drive?
or, how am i supposed to open them in a different program?

 

[CutMet]

For my gamebridge the videos go to a folder called "recorded TV" you can find the folder in "My Videos".

 

[Proud_Smash_N00b]

A decent computer (your computer is probably better than you think; my computer is not too good and my recordings come out fine)

does it apply to laptops or just desktops

 

[0m3n5150]

ok i found it, thanks =)

 

[SCOTU]

For my gamebridge the videos go to a folder called "recorded TV" you can find the folder in "My Videos".

I presume you can change where it saves it to?
I'm looking into buying one, but i don't actually have any room on my hard drive, i always use my .75 TB external for vid stuff, and if it'll only save to your My Videos, i'd be kinda boned.

 

[_kSo_]

I presume you can change where it saves it to?
I'm looking into buying one, but i don't actually have any room on my hard drive, i always use my .75 TB external for vid stuff, and if it'll only save to your My Videos, i'd be kinda boned.

You can most definitely change it. I have my videos saved in "Recorded TV" folder in my kso4351\downloads folder. So yea. I'll be sure to add that to the guide asap. I'm lookin to do some screenshots too...but then i might have to make the font smaller and harder to read lest I take up the whole first page with my post LOL

does it apply to laptops or just desktops

all my vids were recorded on my laptop using the gamebridge + ysplitters and on "good" quality settings.


Check out my latest video for a sample of the quality. (and to see some cool ssb64 combos )
ENTER 7H3 FALCON: An ssb64 combo video by KSO

 

[Budai578]

Well, I got my Gamebridge the other day, and I was happy that it recorded stuff onto my computer at first, but I'm having some trouble with certain things. Maybe some of you guys could help me out.

For some reason, I can't record on the "better" setting. If I do, I get audio but no video in the video file. I can record on "good" and "best" getting both audio/video and a noticeable difference in quality (as it's supposed to be). "Better", however, gives no video.

I recorded a bunch of matches from a practice session with my friend, and I was going to try to upload them somewhere at some point. The next day, whenever I tried opening the videos in any program or just open the folder than contained them, the program/folder crashed. I couldn't seem to open them in anything, so I just deleted the whole folder (which made me sad; had some good matches recorded). It seems to be working alright now that I changed the folder location; not sure what went wrong before.

One thing I noticed it that the files are technically mpeg-2 video files with mpeg-1 audio codec (or something like that), but the file type in windows is "IviVIDEOFILE.MediaFile". I looked this up and apparently it's a form of VOB file, which has to do with DVD-type files. I can't seem to import any files into Windows Movie Maker, and I don't know how to convert them to MPEG-4 or AVI or anything like that. I've tried a couple of random free converters I found online, but neither worked.

One question is - what software do you guys use, or what can I use to convert/compress my files? I'm assuming I can just use Windows Movie Maker to edit them once I get them in the right format. One thing I noticed about WMM though, is that I can't seem to use it to capture the video initially or it crashes the program.

Sorry for the long post with a bunch of questions, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. - I tried recording videos to a USB flash drive and it worked, so I'm assuming you can record directly to an external HD as well. Hope this helps.

 

[CutMet]

I use the free version of stoik video converter, which can be found here. The free version works fine, I convert my vids into WMV's. And Windows Movie Maker can load the videos after the conversion.

 

[GameAngel64]

Windows Movie Maker itself can in fact convert the videos to WMV. Of course, if you can't even import the videos into WMM, I guess that won't work for you. I just recently put together a combo vid using Gamebridge and WMM, and I imported all of my (huge file size) Gamebridge acquired movies into the project, picked the clips I wanted, put them on the story board, and here's where I ran into trouble. The storyboard barely played the clips at all - it ran very laggy and practically froze my computer. I learned WMM does not like MPEG very much. For the heck of it, I tried to save my project as a movie, and it said it was gonna take like 39999999 minutes to save!

I thought I would have to convert each of my full movie files to either AVI or WMV, which WMM likes, and downloaded Windows Media Encoder to do it. I converted one video, and it took forever, so I couldn't see myself converting every video that way - plus then I'd have to start over and extract the clips I wanted from these newly converted WMV videos. However, I found my solution. I cleared out my storyboard, but this was okay, because I had not put it in order yet, and I still had my clips in the Collections. I took each clip, one at a time, and, with only one clip on the storyboard, I did "Save Movie File." I let it convert it at the default ("What's best for my computer") setting, and within seconds it converted each of my clips into useable WMV format clips.

I don't know if this will help you, or if it even directly pertains to your particular problem, but I thought at least somebody might benefit from my experience and solution.

 

[Budai578]

The Stoik program didn't seem to work for me. Either it crashed or the computer crashed when I tried to use it.

I finally got 1 video to import into WMM. It was able to play in the player, but when I copied it to the storyboard, the video was lost but the sound was still there. I tried making a couple more videos and importing them, but they ended up crashing WMM. I tried saving my 1 video anyway, but it said it would take an hour, so I tried canceling it, but it crashed WMM and then my computer.

The only thing I can seem to do at this point is record decent quality videos and take up a lot of space and take forever to load onto Youtube, or take crappy quality videos that still take a while to load onto Youtube. I can't import/convert/edit any of my videos for some reason.

I seem to be having trouble with my Gamebridge, but I still have hope since others seem to be happy with it. If anyone still wants to buy one, you can get one for $3 at Buy.com (you need to use Google checkout as a new user; if you've used it before, just create a new gmail account or something. Don't do this too many times or they'll catch you though).

Thanks for your info and suggestions guys, but unfortunately I'm still stuck. All I want to be able to do is compress/convert my videos so I can upload them to Youtube/servers easier. Also, I want to be able to edit them in WMM or something so I can make custom videos. At this point I can't do either of them.

I tried reinstalling the hardware/software and it didn't seem to work. Also, this is a brand new hard drive that was completely formatted recently, so I don't know what could be on it that's messing with my videos.

Any other suggestions are welcome, as I'd like this to be as easy and convenient as possible.

 

[_kSo_]

WMM is a very inconsistent program. On my laptop, it will crash when I try to import videos such as the video type that comes out from the GameBridge recording program (It's called Inter-theater home recorder or something along those lines) my WMM crashes. But when i use my desktop, it works fine (thats how i made my previous combo video). i would recommend clearing up some disk space by

A) uninstalling programs
B) De-fragmenting your disk
C) Copying movies, music, etc. to an external hard drive.

Sometimes a program will crash when it doesn't have enough disk space to complete a certain function. In the WMM's case, it's a lot of the time so you'll just have to bear with it. Cutmet, I'm going to add your stoik converter reference to my guide and I'll credit you for finding it. It worked for me, so I'm going to vouch for it.

EDIT:

Budai, I updated the guide - this may help you A LOT

Now, after you finish recording your videos, there are a few things you may want to do. One of them is to edit your videos. An easy way to do that is to use EASY MPEG LITE to edit your clips and just take out the parts of the video that you want. It is perfect for handling the file type that is exported via GameBridge, which is evidently an mpeg type format, one that Windows Movie Maker is not very friendly with.

Let me know how that goes

 

[Budai578]

That MPEG Lite program worked for just letting me do very basic editing. I tried saving the movies as new files and then importing it into WMM, but it didn't work - same as before.

I've been getting these errors that say "COM Surrogate has stopped working" or something like that when I look at videos in folders. I looked this up and it's some kind of codec error, so it's possible that's what is messing me up so much. I'll need to look into this more later when I have time though.

Kso, you mentioning your desktop gave me the idea to try using WMM on my brother's desktop computer. I recorded the videos onto my computer and transferred them to his comp. I was able to easily import them into WMM, save it as a new movie, and upload it to Youtube with no trouble whatsoever. I used the "best quality for my computer setting", and it turned a 40 second video into a 10 MB file, which is great if it's decent quality (really only want to put it on youtube and stuff easily). I'm waiting for it to process on Youtube to see the quality, but I'm hoping for the best.

With that said, it looks like it's something with my computer. I'll need to look into that COM error later, and also possibly try uninstalling everything to do with videos and then reinstalling them. If anyone knows anything about that error, let me know, otherwise I'll be looking into it more later and possibly redoing all my video codecs/settings.

If you want to see some of my tests on Youtube, here they are http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=budai578. The WMM file that I uploaded isn't the greatest quality, but it just might do. I can probably change the output file from WMM next time to make it a bit better quality.

 

[_kSo_]

You'll probably just have to convert them to avi or wmv file or just do it on a different computer. wmm on laptops seem to be really uncooperative.

as far as i know, the computer recognizes the file as an mpeg so whatever converter you find that will convert it from mpeg to whatever, it should work on wmm

 

[Cruise]

does the gamebridge work with nintendo wii?

 

[Doggalina]

Yeah. It works with anything that has composite out (you know, those red, white, and yellow cables). If you have an S-Video cable, that works, too.

 

[Smilez]

Sweet! Smart guys ftw!