Hi Kadano,
You seem to be the most knowledgeable person out there about this, so I'd like to pose it to you. I'm looking to start recording my own Melee matches from my CRT for future viewing whenever I'm at tournament or in friendlies and stuff. I recently ordered a
PVM-14M4U for a decent price and am probably going to use that to carry around. I've read lots of good things about the Xcapture-1, both on other websites and by yourself, and the fact that it can also record other consoles if need be is an excellent feature, so I'm thinking of springing for this one.
Is this all that I need? I know GIMR uses a BMI Shuttle with the Xcapture-1, but I'm not sure for what reason. I use a Wii with component cables at the moment, so I think I need the D-terminal to component adapter as well. How might the setup look like? I'm not sure how to output the video to the CRT as well as to record it onto my laptop. Would it be Wii → component cable to D-terminal adapter → Xcapture-1 → laptop via USB-3 and CRT via additional component cables?
So to summarize, I have:
A Wii with component cables
Sony PVM-14M4U
Retina Macbook Pro that has two USB 3.0 ports
I want to:
Record Melee at the highest resolution I can get, and 60 fps is mandatory.
Thanks for your help!
First, let me explain why GimR needs the BMI Shuttle in his signal chain.
As you can read in the OP of this thread, Gamecubes and Wiis support 480p output. Recording this gives considerably higher video quality and frees up the CPU because it doesn’t need to deinterlace 480i video. (The highest quality deinterlace filters can’t even be rendered by top-of-the-line consumer CPUs of today in real-time, so 480i always implies a quality loss for your stream.)
However, almost all CRT TVs only support 480i. The same is true for PVMs, as you can read in the OP: “
Models known to support 480p YPbPr: PVM14L5, PVM20L5, PVM20M7MDE”. The PVM-14M4U is not within this list, so it has to be expected to support 480i only. You can very well use it directly in your signal chain, but both the player’s screen quality and the stream quality will be below maximum due to 480i.
So what GimR does is set the console to 480p and connect it to the Xcapture with the D-terminal-component adapter, then use the pass-through D-terminal with another D-T-comp adapter. The video forwarded to the PC and running out of the second adapter is still 480p, which most tournaments he’s at don’t have monitors that support this. So he pushes the 480p output of the X-capture into a BMI Shuttle, which has the feature of downscaling 480p to 480i-composite (with sub-ms lag, don’t remember the exact amount, probably a few µs). This composite output can be connected to any CRT TV, which are abundant at smash tournaments.
Your PVM-14M4U likely doesn’t support 480p, so you will have to do the same as him
if you want 480p quality on your stream. If you think 480i quality is enough, you can just set the Wii to 480i mode and deinterlace in OBS with Yadif2x, avoiding the need for the BMI Shuttle. (Yadif2x is the best efficient deinterlacing filter that uses little CPU, but its result are considerably below high-end filters like QTGMC or native 480p. For real-time processing, Yadif2x is the best option you have.)
Note that both of these setups only have 480i quality for the players. Everyone who’s ever played Melee in 480p on a non-laggy CRT knows that this is a different experience altogether. The video is a lot sharper, in fact at first it is hard to believe that the Gamecube (and Wii) can have that amazing graphics. While VGBC and other streams have 480p as well on their stream output, these are encoded. Playing in 480p means that your video is lossless and thus much higher quality.
As soon as I found out about 480p, my goal was to have at least two 480p CRT setups. I have five by now.
The first one is a Sony PVM20M7MDE (bought this for 160€), fed by a Wii with component cables and 480p. The PVM’s pass-through outputs are connected to my StarTech PEXHDCAP directly.
The second one is a set of high-end PC CRT monitors (I paid 5-15€ for each) that do 480p and higher and are fed by a Gamecube with DAC cables that are modded for VGA output, which is connected to a 4-way distribution amplifier (that connects to 3 CRTs at once and my StarTech PEXHDCAP capture card). This is my main setup, and between the Gamecube-VGA and the distribution amplifier there is a 4-way video switch that also has inputs for Wii-VGA (cables are 15€) and PC-VGA. The output of the switch (bought this for 1€) is run through an Extron 164xi, which is only necessary technically for Wii-VGA since that has unclean sync that cannot be dist-amped (as mentioned in the OP). I paid ~45€ for the 164xi, it’s cheaper in the USA.
The third, fourth and fifth ones are additional PC CRT monitors with Wii VGA cables, but without any recording connected.
In other words, to reach your goal of recording Melee at the highest resolution you can get (480p), you need to either replace your PVM with a 480p-capable PVM (or a PC CRT, Wii-VGA cables / converter and possibly an Extron 164xi, which should still be much cheaper altogether) or use the BMI Shuttle as well.