Question / Help Support for older Game Capture Devices

A

aspears

New Member
I have a Windows 10 computer with a PTZ Optics camera connected to it. Using OBS I'm able to record just fine. I would like to add a 2nd video source so I can do picture in picture (this is for a church btw). We have a 2nd computer running PowerPoint and its 2nd monitor is connected to a projector for the congregation. What I'm trying to do is send the 2nd monitor's feed through an old Diamond GC1000 Gaming Capture box, connect the pass-through output to the projector and have OBS detect the capture box and use it as a 2nd source. I installed the Diamond drivers and using the DMCap software that came with it I was able to verify the 2nd monitor output is visible on the computer running OBS.

When I add a new video capture device in OBS, the two options I have for sources are USB Capure SDI (PTZ Optics camera) and Fujitsu H5x Video Capture (Diamond video capture box). After selecting Fujitsu, all I get is a black screen.

So I guess this is a two part question -
  1. Is using a game capture box the best approach for capturing video output from another computer?
  2. Any ideas on why OBS can't see the video from the game capture box?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT:
Here is the log entry when adding the game capture box as a source:
16:17:15.961: User added source 'Diamond' (dshow_input) to scene 'Big Mac Only'
16:17:15.963: Diamond: DecodeDeviceId failed
16:17:15.963: Diamond: Video configuration failed
16:17:16.062: ---------------------------------
16:17:16.062: [DShow Device: 'Diamond'] settings updated:
16:17:16.062: video device: Fujitsu H5x Video Capture
16:17:16.062: video path: \\?\usb#vid_1b80&pid_e001#5&1eb34b28&0&1#{65e8773d-8f56-11d0-a3b9-00a0c9223196}\{9cbcb401-4d80-4b32-885a-43e9686b811f}
16:17:16.062: resolution: 720x480
16:17:16.062: fps: 59.94 (interval: 166833)
16:17:16.062: format: H264
16:17:16.062: using video device audio: yes
16:17:16.062: sample rate: 48000
16:17:16.062: channels: 2
16:17:16.062: audio type: Capture
 
Older devices may not show up as standard UVC (webcam) devices, which OBS needs in most cases.
Does the capture device show up as a webcam in other programs like Discord or Skype?

As a workaround, you may be able to Window Capture the device's software and Crop it down (either with a crop filter, or holding the ALT button and resizing).
The fact is, a lot of older hardware is non-standardized, and the OBS dev team may not be able to put in special handling for older bits of kit that only have a small subset of users... there are only a handful of core devs, and prioritization of features is pretty tight.

Another possible workaround would be installing the OBS-NDI plugin and NewTek NDI redistributable on both the Powerpoint and streaming systems, if they are both on the same LAN, and just send the video from the powerpoint box across as an NDI source instead. It tends to be a bit bandwidth-hungry, and both systems need to be running OBS (one just to capture and send the video to the 'main' OBS machine) but it might work better than window-capturing the Diamond software.
 
Thanks for your quick reply. I wasn't expecting OBS to be updated in order to accommodate this device (it runs on .net 3.5...ouch). The OBS-NDI plugin sounds very promising, however another hurdle that I'll need to overcome is the fact that our other computer is an older Mac running Yosemite v10.10.5 and we can't upgrade it due its hardware. Getting a new Mac should happen this year, but in the mean time I installed OBS v19.0.3 as recommended here: https://obsproject.com/forum/threads/whats-the-latest-version-compatible-with-macos-10-10-5.95347/. The latest plugin you referenced requires OBS 21, any idea if there is a version that is compatible with v19? If so, would it work if the PC and Mac were running different versions of the plugin?
 
Yep, probably not. But best to explain why extensive legacy device support generally isn't in the cards. :)

You might try checking older versions of the plugin on the GitHub, I'm not sure how far back the OBS-NDI plugin really goes.
NDI is NDI though... you can also try the NewTek standalone capture client; I'm not sure if they make one for Mac, or supporting MacOS that far back, but it's worth a try.

I'd also suggest maybe a more modern capture device as an option, if you have a few bucks. Prices have been coming down; just make sure that if you get an external/USB one, that it's USB 3.0; 2.0 devices tend to have significant capture delay which can make sync'ing things up difficult. People also tend to upgrade and pop their old ones up on eBay.
 
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