Problem with capturing fast-paced FPV footage?
 

I'm afraid I'm going a bit cross-eyed in my searching. I've looked at PCI cards, PCIE cards, USB devices and I've been hitting dead ends everywhere because a critical feature is missing. Mostly due to either lack of knowledge or unavailability.

The solution I'm looking for should be as simple and compact as possible because I'll be bringing it outdoors inside a box.

With that out of the way, I'm hoping you guys can help out. I'm looking for a capture device that will let me record FPV footage from a 5.8ghz analog camera feed. The ground receiver side of things are already taken care of. The footage will be fast paced and with loads of motion, so uncompressed data is a high priority.

The recording side of things are taken care of already via either VirtualDub or OBS.

Recommendations?

The ground receiver is outputting the signal somehow, you didn't wrote what option do you have regarding video output, what connection? how many FPS? what resolution? you should start by answering these questions and then it will be easier for you to find a capture device that can meet these requirements.

It's outputting CVBS.

From the source, 60fps. I'd like to keep it at that rate if possible

800 TVL

So what's the problem you encountered with the card you've tried? you didn't write.

800 TVL is more common in the CCTV field I think, so maybe you should look into DVRs, but you sure the signal you're getting is really 800TVL and not a common 480/576?

That's just it - I don't have a card yet.

As far as I know from the manufacturer's specs, it's 800 TVL

VirtualDub is for capture.
OBS is for compressed streaming "capture"/grabbing, not analog capture. (Yes, yes, it "can" do analog, but it's a half@ss afterthought feature. I can also drive in screws with a hammer, or bang nails with the screwdriver handle, but it's really not the right tool for the task.)

TVL is a misleading gimmick measurement.
More reading: https://www.arcdyn.com/articles/what-does-1000tvl-mean/
So this 800 TVL camera really isn't that much greater than the standard 720x480/576 resolution. Yes, greated, but not by much.

However, if this is some sort of spy/surveillance setup, and every pixel can matter, then just get an HD capture card, and use a semi-lossless (technically lossy, but not really visibly lossy), and just be done with it. However, understand HD capture devices are not small or cheap. Ironically, this is probably one of the few times I'd suggest a Blackmagic, although the idea of it being composite gives me pause. This usage is not something I ever tested.

What exactly is this for?

You wrote:
From what you wrote I assumed you've already tried many cards, but anyway you didn't wrote what problem or dead end you've encountered, what is that critical feature that is missing and what is the reason you haven't tried the cards you looked at.

TVL is usually used as a specification of the camera's sensor, but it doesn't mean that is what you're getting in the output of the receiver(unless you got that value from the receiver's manual, and even then I doubt that specification), if the receiver is outputting composite I assume it's just a standard 480/576 signal and 29 fps interlaced which are 60 fields per second and not truly 60 fps, but that's just an assumption.

Is it for a drone or an RC plane? if it's really 480/29fps I assume any cheap USB capture device with a composite input will do the job of capturing in virtualdub.

Sorry for the late response, life was life.

I had a look at the USB capture devices, but the ones I've found so far are using hardware encoding and they output at a miserable bitrate. Something in the realm of 3000kbps or less, resulting in blotchy video. If there was something USB based that relied on the PC's ability to encode via software, I'd pick that up in a heartbeat.

Any "cheap" capture card like the VC500 or Avermedia EZMaker 7 is software based, but you need to use VirtualDub and not the software that comes with it in order to get good results and again, that is based on the assumption that you're just getting a normal composite signal.

Both look pretty good and both seem to be available where I live.

My go-to software for video production is OBS and from there, I take it to DaVinci Resolve.

Thanks for the response. How about a PCI-E option, in case I decide to go that way?

I don't know if you can capture lossless with OBS, at least I don't think it was designed to capture lossless, so I would recommend using VirtualDub with a lossless codecs like Lagarith or huffyuv, personally I prefer VirtualDub2 over 1, but that's me...after capturing you can deinterlace(if necessary) to double the frame rate for a smoother playback.

I can't recommend you of any lossless PCI-E cards, but maybe you'll find something in this thread: http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vide...ti-wonder.html

Also I have both the VC500 and the AverMedia, the VC500 Is a little better in my opinion, but if you buy it make sure it's says it's Windows 10 compatible since older versions isn't(older than 2013 I think).
And also, again, make sure your signal is composite before buying something.

That thread was the first thing I looked at, then I found out most of the links are dead or results with 'not available'.

Any of the Pinnacle Systems 500, 510, 700, 710 breakout or capture boxes all work over USB (capture Uncompressed) and have drivers that work with the Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 in 32 bit or 64 bit versions. They are no longer made but show up on eBay or Amazon as standalone or bundled in kits.

These are self powered by the USB cable, and you do not need the software or driver disc that used to come with them.

The device drivers can be downloaded from the new Corel Pinnacle legacy driver website and installed directly, separate from original Pinnacle Studio software.

They work with Virtualdub or OBS Studio.. but have a few downsides.

1. They are not ATI or Texas Instruments based so the noise immunity and overall signal handling will be different.

2. You have to use a second application like GraphEdit or Crossbar Thing to set the Input away from Composite to S-Video if you do not plan to use the default "Composite" Input.

3. Virtualdub "automatically" pulls the audio from the capture device, so it can capture sound. OBS studio claims to have this feature, but it seems either it does not or keeps getting disabled in subsequent builds.

So while its not a "perfect fit".. it is kind of close.

I'd mention that the device driver has a "checkbox" for VCR Input.. which seems to perform some kind of frame or field "lock" that is demonstrably more effective on poor VHS tape signal input. The side to side motion and up and down jitter "stop" when its engaged. Even when its only in Preview mode.

One thing to be certain of is to put the View into Preview mode with USB capture devices because they cannot perform hardware compositing with the Graphics card since they are not on the same bus.

Also do not engage any "fancy" Preview modes because most PCs can't do capture, preview and pre-process the preview for the current preview at the same time. That's like 4 or 5 PCs worth of processing muscle and most just cannot do it.

Thanks for that large bit of information. I won't worry about the audio capabilities because the source audio will be removed seeing as it will be distorted propeller and wind noise - nobody wants to hear that. :laugh:

Capture devices tended to be designed towards "compression" be they USB, Firewire (IEEE1394) or PCI, AGP, PCIe

Only the early ones in the cards (PCI, AGP, PCIe) were capable of Uncompressed capture.. because very little could be done with such a huge datastream before frames were lost from the continuous stream.

As soon as they could they started adding hardware chips to compress the stream and make it smaller, and to give the CPU more time to deal with the firehouse of video and audio data.

By the time Windows Media Center came about, for "compatible" cards it was declared mandatory that they have default hardware compression "only". Only the sloppy frame drop Preview could be accessed "Uncompressed". So there were definite downsides to using a "card" in Uncompressed mode.

USB were "cheap" and came later when CPUs were stronger and faster, so they could perform compression in software.

To keep them cheap they designed the USB capture devices as "Uncompressed" only until the GO7007 and later hardware compression chips started being added to the PVR generation of USB capture devices. (Major problem was they "de-interlaced" automatically to produce "progressive" video for HD or the Web.. which was a major de-generation of the picture quality).

Ironically the "Expensive" USB capture devices which used "software" compression actually captured as "Uncompressed" first and got that to the PC over the USB cable.. where the stronger CPUs could use software to compress the video.. usually (lightly) into DV or something like Huffyuv.. so you could edit it frame accurate later..

Those same "Expensive" USB capture devices are no longer made.

But when they show up (used) they are a bargain if you know you can use them with Virtualdub or OBS Studio.

You don't need or want the premium Editor/Capture software that originally came with them.. it probably only worked with Win XP and probably can't be "Activated" as the company activation servers are long turned off and shutdown.

As was said OBS Studio is for Progressive (de-interlaced) capture and streaming. You can input many formats but the output is restricted to streaming formats.. Uncompressed is not one of those. You could take a compressed format and decompress and save it.. but the damage would be already done. Unless you "want" to capture to a compressed format, OBS Studio is not the right tool.

People tend to underestimate the amount of hard disk space Uncompressed video capture takes.

Even today with 12 TB drives, and Helium drives that tend to leak.. its very costly.

Eventually your probably going to "Store" the video capture in a compressed format.. the Uncompressed format is only for "perfecting" the video.. even only for cutting out commericals.. which are not "Jump cuts" back and forth like a Star Wars movie. So Uncompressed can be "overrated" for things like commercial broadcasts.. versus Weddings and Child births.

The simplest capture and store method "might" be to capture and compress to MPEG2 right away with something like an old DVR recorder. There are about 60 recorders you can capture to and extract from the hard drive without burning a DVD first... its an option that only became available last year.

Well, I don't think we'll have any issues with a quality video input. The ground station that I will be using is called a Quanum Half Overlord ground station, which will feed an analog signal to whichever capture card I end up buying.

Next time, start with that information...as far as I can find this receiver outputs NTSC/PAL like I assumed from the start, just buy the VC500, but use VirtualDub, not OBS, and deinterlace the capture afterwards with doubling the frame-rate, for an high movement capture like an RC plane/drone it will result in a much smoother video.

Just a quick memo for you, Eyal, in the FPV world, when you talk about the camera, everyone is working with the understanding that it starts at the lens and ends at the analog output, before its output arrives at the video transmitter. The ground station is what we consider just a signal converter.

When I was younger I flew RC planes, not with FPV though, but I'm familiar with the subject, right from the beginning I haven't asked you about the camera, I asked what is the output signal you are trying to record from the ground station:

Will the video signal be continuous ? what happens when there's a break in the received signal ? will the ground station keep the video signal in sync ?

(isn't Runcam Split an option ? or you really need the live feed ?)

btw you name the specs of the FPV camera, while the specs from the groundstation could be different, camera could have a crop factor, resolution wise this could also matter, you are recording from the groundstation i guess.

Note: there are also FPV monitors/goggles (with 5.8 reciever) with build-in DVR, or stand alone (FPV) DVR's i guess, recordings are made onto (micro) SD cards.