Question / Help What device can capture old/low PC resolutions?

Marscaleb

Marscaleb

New Member
I'm looking to capture/stream some older games, and I'm looking for a capture device that can handle resolutions like 800 x 600, 1280 x 1024, and 640 x 480.
I can send these signals across an HDMI cable no problem, but my device wigs out when I try to send anything that isn't a standard TV resolution like 1080P. I'm looking for a new one that can accept these older resolutions, but I'm not finding one.
Does anyone know of any capture devices that work with these resolutions?

If not a different capture device, then I would need a device that could upscale these resolutions to a standard 1080p signal. That could work for me. But I haven't seen anyone make a small standalone device that just upscales/converts a signal like that. If you've seen something like that. please let me know.
 
Since you're writing in the OBS Studio forum, I suppose you intend to use your capture device with OBS Studio. With OBS Studio, you don't need a device that's upscaling its signal, since OBS is able to rescale any source to any size. In the preview, just drag the handles at the edge of the source to the desired size or right-click the source->Transform->Fit to screen to make it as big as the canvas allows.
 
Sorry, you're right, and I should have prefaced my question better.
I am streaming with OBS, and I know my question isn't really related to OBS specifically, but this one of the only places I can find where people might know about this kind of thing.
I can scale the image within OBS itself, sure, but the issue is that I can't even get that video to my computer, much less to OBS. The capture device I already have can't handle these resolutions, and doesn't send any signal at all (even to its pass-through) when I have something running at one of these resolutions. I need a new capture device that actually use resolutions like the ones I mentioned.
 
Where are the signals coming from that they are already on an HDMI connection, but aren't a standard HD signal?

Most of the devices I can think of that support older modes support them because of physical media they support-- devices like the BlackMagic Shuttle Intensity, which accepts component, composite and S-Video signals as well as HDMI.

But I honestly don't know what it would do if I sent it a 480i or 525i signal to it over HDMI, I never tried.
 
From a computer.
HDMI itself supports almost any signal a computer can send; it's just another computer video cable afterall.
But the games I am trying to play don't support widescreen TV resolutions. A couple do; the bigger and more famous ones do, but most of them can't.
 
It's difficult to talk about something you didn't describe enough. Could you describe all hardware components you intend to use, including the type of machine where you play, the machine you're streaming from, the capture device, the type of the connectors and the wiring that's all connecting together?

It may be that you're trying something that has a different solution than you imagine. For example, if you're trying to capture a legacy computer game, and no legacy kind of console or standalone game, you don't need any capture device. Instead, you run OBS on the same machine as the game and simply capture the game with OBS's game capture, window capture or display capture.

It's a wrong assumption that a capture device is needed only because the game has a different resolution than your desktop. It's only a matter of configuring OBS correctly.

It's also a wrong assumption that you need a capture device to make a 800x600 resolution fit for widescreen streaming. 800x600 is 4:3 aspect ratio while streaming resolutions are 16:9 aspect ratio. You will always get vertical black bars if you try to fit a 4:3 to 16:9, regardless of the capture method. This is because 4:3 is more "quadratic" than 16:9. The black bars are placeholders for missing image information. Only by stretching (and distoring) the image you will be able to make them fit, but distorting the image is bad. Instead, use the space and add (for example) a facecam or some overlay graphics.
 
OK.

The BlackMagic Intensity shuttle supports these resolutions:

SD Video Standards
625i50 PAL, 525i59.94 NTSC, 625p50 PAL, 525p59.94 NTSC

HD Video Standards
720p50, 720p59.94, 720p60
1080p23.98, 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 1080p30
1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080i60

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/intensity/techspecs

I have not tested the SD resolutions on the HDMI input; what I am saying is that it is possible that because of the way the makers assumed people would use the device, the SD resolution capture may ONLY be available on the component, composite and S_Video inputs, and I do not know for sure that the SD resolutions are supported on the HDMI port because I have not tested it.

I note that 480p is not mentioned at all.

What capture device are you currently using? Does it claim to support SD resolutions?

Capturing of legacy PC games is usually done in a single PC configuration with game capture, so no capture device is needed-- that's why I asked where the signal was coming from, I assumed it was a legacy device of some sort.
 
Okay; the full set up is that I have seventeen computers that I set up for a gaming convention. Sixteen old computers that run the various old games, and one more for dedicated servers and that will be doing the streaming.
I am setting up a number of them to duplicate their output to two monitors; one will go to the monitor that the player is using, and one more will go to my my streaming pipeline. Ultimately, that streaming pipeline will be displayed on a jumbotron in the convention hall (when they are not showing one of the other tournaments.) To get it to the jumbotron, I'm streaming to twitch via OBS, and they just put the twitch stream on their big screen.

Previously, I had just one computer with an HDMI output run through my capture device, and so that one computer could stream its output. But I want to have multiple computers that I can switch between.
My plan was to use an HDMI switch that supports five different inputs, and have five computers output duplicate signals (one to the monitor and one to the switch) and the switch feeds into my capture device, which connects to my main server, which streams the feed to twitch.
I was going to buy some devices to convert VGA to HDMI because most of my old computers don't have HDMI outputs.
Then I can switch on the fly between five different video feeds, so I don't have to worry about terminals that are vacant, newbs who suck and have boring streams, etc.

But there was one big problem with that. My capture device can't handle non HDTV resolutions. When I was testing out a machine at the last event, playing a game that was not playing at 1920x1080 killed my screen and I couldn't even see the passthrough on the device.
Most of my monitors aren't even able to support 1080p; to run the set up I first thought up, I would need to buy several brand-new 1080p screens (which is more money than I can put to this) plus those stations could never run a game that could not be set to run in 1080p.

But if I could buy a new capture device that could handle these older resolutions, that wouldn't be a problem. I could continue with the set up I envisioned.
I will take a look at that one you posted a link to; thank you. Maybe that will work out.

Or if I could buy several (cheap) devices that could convert the low-res signal to a 1080p signal, that would work too. I was looking around last night and I did find some devices that will convert and upscale a VGA signal, so that might work. But the ones I saw would stretch the image instead of pillboxing it. I guess I could set up OBS to change the aspect ratio, but that would be an extra step when I switch inputs that I would prefer to avoid.
I'm also thinking of adding an old KVM switch I have into the mix, so I could switch between four different VGA signals that get converted and then sent to HDMI switch, giving me eight different computers I could see in the stream.
Oh, and I don't think I could use OBS on the computers themselves; they are older and may not be able to handle using OBS while gaming. Besides, I want to have just one master controlling the final stream.
 
What OS is running on the old machines?

What is your current capture device? It might be helpful to recommend a device that does not suffer the same limitation if we knew precisely what the cause of the limitation was.

Also, most capture devices connected to OBS aren't going to be able to change resolution on the fly. So if you set it up in one resolution, and then you run a full screen game that doesn't just display in a window, but changes the display output resolution, that capture device will lose sync until you reconfigure it in OBS for the correct resolution.

Some devices may have an "auto" setting that works, but I am not sure if all do.

Hold on, I think I may try and test something.
 
OK.

My other capture device is this, an AJA UTAP HDMI:

https://www.aja.com/products/u-tap-hdmi

I have just tested it connected to a machine running Windows 10 and OBS 23.2.1, with the input coming from an old Mac Pro running MacOS 10.13 (High Sierra) with an output resolution of 640x480 and a refresh rate of 60hz.

The device picks it up in OBS immediately. Even if I change resolutions, the device adapts to the new resolution after a brief interruption.

I imagine this is not as good a test as using a VGA-HDMI adapter, but I don't think I... hmm....
 
UPDATE:

The BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle (USB3) can also be used with OBS under Windows 10 and accept signals from another PC over an HDMI connection as low as 640x480. OBS can configure the device to autoconfigure itself so it will adjust to changes in resolution.

Again, I'm not sure this truly approximates what you'd be getting from a VGA-HDMI adapter, so YMMV.

The Blackmagic also has options to upscale or downscale on input or output and has HDMI passthrough.
 
The old computers are running a mix of Windows XP or WIndows 7; they are not all identical and some are more powerful than others. I also use a couple laptops that run Windows 10; those ones might be able to run OBS while playing these games, but I don't know how optimal they would be.
My capture device is a Hauppage HD PVR 2.

Okay, so that's two devices you've suggested that seem like they could handle these lower resolutions. Great! $240 is a bit more than I wanted to spend for this project, but at least it looks like a viable option.
Also, having OBS automatically accept a change in resolution is good too.

As I really think about it, I would not expect a lot of changes in resolution at the event; we wouldn't switch between terminals too often, and I don't think we'd ever stream something other than one of the games that can run at 1080p. The real linchpin is that if I have to stream a 1080p signal, then I need the computer to be running at 1080p, and I only have so many 1080p monitors. (Most are either 1280 x 1024 or 1440 x 900.)
I guess this is really going to come down to: would it be cheaper to buy a new capture device that can accept the lower resolution, or cheaper to buy more monitors that can run at 1080p?
 
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