Question / Help About to order a Micomsoft SC-512N1-L/DVI Advice on smoothness and audio!

[FerretBomb]

Yep, the HD60 Pro exists. You were asking about the SC512 though, not a 'which card should I get'.
The HD60P also only does YV12 color sampling, while the SC512 does true RGB24 (32 includes alpha channel, and is a waste). Also only does HDMI input, instead of the range that the SC512 can handle.
It's a solid card though, colorspace aside. A few people *have* been reporting problems with them lately, but I've had none.

No idea on XS. Grab a copy and try it out? I'd still advise against it other than on a troubleshooting basis. Less capable, and more CPU usage.

 

[yanis31]

Well - if its better in some way i suppose all is well! - It finally arrived! (while i was not home :) )
so i will be picking the card up in next 2 hours from post office and will let you guys know how it all goes!

 

[yanis31]

Everything worked plug and play but ... there's a BIG BUT:

which version of drivers/amarec should i use and how can i game capture it in obs?

Im running driver 1.1.0.140 from http://www.micomsoft.co.jp/sc-512n1_download.htm
amarec 3.10 and it definitely stutters once every 10 seconds or so..
better than OBS vidcapdev but its definitely there... as reported by other users.
- you might not notice it at first but let's say get in a boat in FC4 and start doing 360's and you'll see it immediately!

i am going to check if i can find a cracked XS somwhere to test... (not going to pay for something before i see if it works)

In case there is no solution for this i would Highly Highly appreciate if users of the HD 60 Pro could report how are they doing in this regard!

 

[Boildown]

16:20:53: x264: MB rate (311040) > level limit (245760))

I just researched this for another thread. MB in this context stands for MacroBlocks. 245760 is the limit for H.264 Level 4.1. The level needs to be at least 4.2 for your resolution and framerate (or you could reduce the resolution as Sam686 suggests, but unless you need playback on a device that doesn't support Level 4.2, you should just increase the level).

I would fix that and retest. All kinds of things could have gone wrong if the level was set incorrectly and it still encoded... no idea if OBS ignored the level limit, decimated the framerate, or what. In reality it should have refused to run. Is the level manually set to 4.1?

I ran OBS on a GTX 560 Ti for a long time with great results. I moved to a GTX 750 Ti on my encode PC, which is actually a slower GPU than the 560Ti in most tests, because of the reduced power consumption, quieter noise levels, and most of all, the addition of Maxwell-quality NVEnc encoding.

I run two instances of OBS at the same time, and the NVEnc instance never crashes. I save as .MP4s and don't lose files. The x264 encode that streams to Twitch occasionally crashes (maybe once every 20 streams). If that happened on the NVEnc encodes to my hard drive, I'd have to switch to FLV recording, but it doesn't. For this reason alone, I think its worthwhile to spend the money for a GTX 750, or whatever the least expensive Maxwell-quality NVEnc capable GPU is today.

 

[yanis31]

Thank you @Boildown
- i will look into this .. for now - the stream seems to run fine with the message still present in log file!


( i got a 1 month xsplit premium licence and it for instance can automatically pickup Amarec same way as game capture works, havent yet figured out if using cap card directly worked any better than in OBS, need to do alot of testing first) - also i must say after using obs for a year xsplit feels like a massive pain in the bum, but it does have some interesting settings in it i will do more experiments with! and interestingly its cpu usage seemed almost lower than OBS using same settings, but there were some fluctuations, so i wont make any hasty judgements on that, hard to tell just by looking at it for a few minutes... it probably had something to do with the fact that by default it has variable frame rate and i noticed in the video it sometimes dropped it from 60 to 40-ish fps ... plus the preview doesnt run in 60fps which is a pain... so nothing too exciting there.

- yesterday i streamed with OBS vidcapdev using the latest startech driver, stutter wasnt too harsh but still there,
but i was suffering from major audio desync.. it got delayed by half a second at times and then synced back up randomly etc. - changing the audio bitrate on both gaming pc and in obs from 48khz to 44.1khz (still keeping 160bitrate) seemed to fix this! - but i will do more testing, just havent had enough time,
i am running the gtx650 2gb on the encoding machine but so far no issues, i will probably have figured out more of this over the next days!

 

[yanis31]

Also i am a bit confused on the correct approach to color range - while i like encoding in full range, just can't deny the image looks a bit too dark! - is it because my monitor is set to full color range too ... i am not sure, but i have had reports from other people that on darker games its not a good viewing experience, atleast in daytime, alien isolation was a good example (on single pc adjusting game's brightness didnt actually change it in game capture) - ofc i can just do those adjustments now with 2pc's but games will look abnormally bright on my screen then..

is making sure game pc's monitor(capcard) is set to full range in nvidia control panel and encoding in full range in OBS still the correct approach to not lose any colour information?

 

[yanis31]

Just a heads up - it starts to look like this card is not capable of 60FPS period. but there are a few things to consoder and test still:

me and another user that owns the same card (990fx chipset) have been experimenting with it extensively over a few days/nights,
and for me atleast there is no solution at all to get rid of the stutters, but his results have been somewhat better than mine altho not perfect.

have tested it both in the X99, and AMD FX (970a) systems, with and without overclocks, with GTX650 or GTX780 in the encoding machines

tried every possible pci-e slot from the lowest ones up to the top slot on x99 that's pci-e 3.0 x16 (the card of course links as x1 according to bios) - only time there were issues was when the gpu in encoding machine was linked as x1

have tried obs, obs multi, xsplit, wirecast, mishira, vmix, amarec ... maybe smth else i dont quite remember,
multiple versions of drivers, amarec stutters as well and sometimes even freezes .. atleast on the x99... so its unusable

have tried limiting the card to max 1536x864p custom resolution input through the driver settings and using that as canvas... no change

for me the best result is to put 70fps (or jsut something above 60) in the device settings, -OBS (not driver) panel.
then the small random stutters turn into longer but more rare ones, making the card run perfectly smooth for up to a few minutes at a time until the stutter come,

have tried inputting more HZ into the card, handles 80ish no problem but (can get visual errors when going towards 90 etc.) - its doesnt change a thing it seems ( a 70 70 combo seems to get rid of major stutters by replacing it with a constant sort of "wave" of non-fluidness...

(also the previously mentioned audio desync only happens if i restart the source machine or reinstall nvidia driver mid-stream stuff like that ... works great otherwise)

NOW:

on dec 8 micomsoft site was updated with the 160.5 driver
http://www.micomsoft.co.jp/sc-512n1_download.htm

if you google translate the changelog there is something interesting in there:

"When intel Corporation X99, X79, P67 used by connecting to a computer or motherboard that was equipped with a chip set, or the operation is unstable, it may not work properly. 　Therefore, intel company X99, X79, operation guarantee of P67 in equipped with a personal computer or motherboard will not do. • If the AMD's CPU (FX type of CPU) used by connecting to the equipped with a personal computer or motherboard, or operation is unstable, it may not work properly. 　Operation guarantee of these CPU in equipped with a personal computer or motherboard I can not do."

-that sounds scary since i have a x99 and a AMD FX 970a chipset system and both act identically....

any thoughts?

 

[Boildown]

Sounds like a motherboard incompatibility.

You can return it or sell it and get this instead: www.ebay.com/itm/Datapath-Vision-RGB-E1-DVI-1080p-60-Capture-Card-PCI-E-Premium-Full-HD-PC-Apple-/121756494901

Of course, that card needs a PCIe 4x instead of a 1x, and you need to route your audio separately, and you need to use DVI instead of HDMI. And for Ebay, that's not particularly good price for that card (but I haven't seen any cheap ones lately either).

 

[yanis31]

I have a big favor to ask:

could any users with Datapath cards ... and actually the SC512 itself
or any other 60fps capable ones record a minimum of 10 minutes of following video, directly through capture card -> OBS without any 3rd party software and post it somewhere for us to download and review?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXsupMuik4

this thing is excellent for spotting the tiniest of stutters!
(just have to watch it carefully because on random occasions (very rare) it can actually stutter on the source machine!
once settles its usually fine from there)

 

[FerretBomb]

I'd advise against recording through the OBS vidcap device source. I do get performance issues (microstutter, latency, etc) that way with my SC512. It's one of the big reasons I swapped to the Amarec (2.20c by the way; 2.31 and above have an audio warping issue from my experience) method.

I also have the other cap card Boildown mentioned (the E2 anyway, which is just a two channel version) and have been less than pleased with it for a few reasons (mostly lack of config options, and the video coming in upside down on a few resolution modes with no option to vertical-flip it in the drivers; and the aforementioned lack of embedded audio capture).

That said, depending on the severity of the stutter, could what you are seeing possibly be a framerate matching issue? As in, the video source and capture are running a fractional frame apart, and that delay is drifting slightly so you sometimes get a doubled frame, and sometimes miss/skip a frame. It's one reason that studio-grade capture tends to use a capture rate double that of the input source. So that even if the framerate 'teeth' aren't meshed completely, it still grabs every frame.

 

[yanis31]

But do other capture cards also have these problems with OBS vidcapdev?

if i could see some samples i could get amuch better idea on what's what, otherwise its just guessing,

-different resolutions wouldn't matter to me 1080p60 capture is all i need,

-amarec seems very unreliable and its been freezing randomly on me atleast with the live plugin installed so its unusable to run a reliable stream - but i will test it more!

- i would really really love it if i could run something directly into obs or any other stream software, also it increases cpu usage! 5820k @ 4.5 can take 864p 60 medium with me=umh parameter no problem
(just something im experimenting with, not sure it helps)
but with amarec running it can hit 100% sometimes.
(this could jeaopardise 720 60 medium streaming on the amd - havent tested properly yet)

-i also tried inputting 100hz into the card and streaming 50fps with obs (120hz just shows "no signal" and around 80 is max it'll do without artifacts)

... didnt notice the bigger stutters anymore but the video was a bit "wavy" all the time so still not perfect...

 

[FerretBomb]

The live plugin is indeed unstable. I don't use it. I use a game capture of the DWM process (Windows 7 monitor capture workaround). It's actually significantly *faster* and smoother than OBS vidcapdev. Even fullscreen 1080@60 video only raises CPU utilization by about 5-10% at most on an i7-920.

Here's a best-case capture latency test that I did between the HD60Pro (vidcapdev), Datapath Vision-E2 (native DP plugin for OBS), and SC512 (amarec via DWM GC):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znANnjC1QEM
The SC512 via amarec wins, though the E2 is a close second.

Here's all three via OBS vidcapdev:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO3CDpZcM0M
The SC512 gets rocked, and is in dead last for latency. The DPV still responds pretty well and keeps a lead over the HD60Pro.

 

[yanis31]

thanks! sadly latency is not the issue... doesnt matter to me much, the stutters are what im after!
and you cant really tell in the video samples, infact any game footage is just plain bad for this purpose...

so if anyone could just capture the video i posted and record at 60fps for a couple minutes it would be perfect!

(sadly you have to press repeat alot, or use some plugin that does it for you, or download the video and run locally)

EDIT: also i definitely appreciate the effort and all the help, i would be dead in the water without you guys!

 

[Boildown]

could any users with Datapath cards ... and actually the SC512 itself
or any other 60fps capable ones record a minimum of 10 minutes of following video, directly through capture card -> OBS without any 3rd party software and post it somewhere for us to download and review?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuXsupMuik4

this thing is excellent for spotting the tiniest of stutters!

I can do that but this video shows a tear line or two throughout when I play it on my gaming system's monitor. If this is a problem you're looking to avoid then my computer might not be a good test case. Do I need to play that video at 60fps? I'm just using Firefox and I don't think it plays back at more than 30fps, so maybe that's why, and my monitor runs at 120Hz.

 

[FerretBomb]

Yep, just playing back that video shows minor stutters for me through Chrome at 60fps. Could just be the YT video player, as I didn't bother downloading it for local play, just fullscreening it and making sure it was set to 1080@60 quality.

To do a better test, would need a local version of the video, un-processed by YT, on an independent machine with smooth 1080@60 playback. Would also need to discard the first few loops while playback was stabilizing, and to have someone watching and calling out playback-side video stutters on a mic track. Which would be mind-numbing to watch/do.

 

[yanis31]

yeah its kinda messy :) but ill try to upload my samples sometime in the morning and update this thread! atleast then you guys will see how it works for me and can make some comparisons!
for now it starts to look like adding another monitor to my encode pc and window/monitor capturing amarec will provide the smoothest result! (is there some solution to run it reliably on a single monitor?)

the test video runs smoothly for me on chrome without any extra plugins when source monitor is set to 60hz!

also our cards are REV 1.4 (small letters near pci-e connector)

 

[Boildown]

I played back that video with FRAPS running its framerate counter and it didn't even maintain a solid 30fps. But it does look less bad (but more blurred) when full-screened than in a window at least.

 

[yanis31]

-there are issues with obs too (or is it only obs?)

monitor capture stutters the same way even if you get the video smooth on your screen,

amarec itself stutters but less often than obs, but you still cant record that smoothly with obs,
(or any other stream software ive tested)

you can actually get a smooth capture with MPC player if you apply vsync filters... i hear virtualdub can do it too,
ill respond as soon as i can

 

[yanis31]

Better Site for testing:
http://www.testufo.com/#test=stutter&demo=smooth&foreground=FFFFFF&background=000000&max=12&pps=720

But for now we have settled on OBS Multiplatform! - It appears to treat this card a little better, but still minor stuttering all over the place, just less annoying! (stutters actually almost not visible in OBS multiplatform preview / but show up on stream / if you watch stream with livestreamer+VLC/MPC its smoother than in browser)