A lot of the younger crowd here have tried some bad YouTube method before they came here. We got bad results or just nothing worked right then you come here and figure out why and then you go from that to getting really good captures.

I have now just one bug in my workflow and it's elgato :D

I bought used VCR JVC HR-S9760E and it's working great, I bought broken ES-10 that has so much broken stuff on it but I manage to fix it and get it work like a charm now. And last that bug capturing card Elgato, which I didn't test before in VirtualDub, and yesterday I did, and it was working very shitty in it, most of the time it wasn't working at all. I didn't try in other softwares...

Do so. Try AmarecTV. My guide here.

And I hope you didn't uninstall the Elgato software as suggested above by VWestlife because you need the driver.

Will do today. I didn't uninstall anything, but software and drivers are separate from each other, so even If I did it should work.

It's not working I set it up by your manual and I got this message

Arrr... you've come across the comma vs fullstop-decimal point issue. It appears some digitisers have trouble with AmarecTV if Windows is set to use/display a decimal point as a comma instead of a fullstop. This DigitalFAQ topic refers:

https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/vid...g-gv-usb2.html

This may also be causing the problems with VDub.

Try changing your Decimal symbol from a "comma" to a "fullstop" in Windows Settings:

Windows Settings>
Time and Language>
Administrative Language Settings>”Formats” tab>
Additional Settings>
Change the Decimal symbol to a fullstop/period.

Did you disable sound in VirtualDub? (right-click video window and deselect sound if memory serves right) It will lag/drop frames if sound is enabled for some reason.

I have both an Elgato and a Diamond VC 500 (which is generally recommended over the Elgato in these forums, but I personally can't tell much of a difference after extensive testing) and they work fine in VirtualDub.

Even if you don't want to replace your Elgato, if you remove the Elgato SOFTWARE application from your workflow that would help a lot. Here's a simple test I did last year using the exact same hardware (the elgato) and comparing the included software with LordSmurf's VirtualDub/Huffyuv instructions:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1GQXEsKsYg

Hi, thanks for the tip. I think I saw your videos before, you are the one with two beautiful haskies :)

I'll play with it this weekend and test a bit.

Btw support from elgato gave me trick to force elgato to use 3.5Mbps bitrate instead of 0.75 by default.

they send me this on mail

The value used by the Elgato Video Capture software is the default that is useful in most situations. That said, it can be changed by doing the following:

1) Quit the Video Capture software if it's running, via the tray icon.
2) Start File Explorer and enter the following path in the address bar: %appdata%\Elgato\VideoCapture
3) Edit the Settings.xml file with Windows Notepad or other text editing software.
4) Replace <VideoBitrateScale>.075</VideoBitrateScale> with a higher value, up to 3.5 maximum.
5) Save the Settings.xml file.
6) Relaunch the Video Capture software.

Please note the recording file sizes will be larger after doing this.

As for the audio and de-interlacing, please reply to this email with a sample of what you're getting after making the above changes.

Hope that this helps others who still use elgato.

That is very interesting news. Thanks for sharing.

That might quieten down @VWestlife.

Pity they haven't put in a bitrate option into the GUI.

Product support. Pretty impressive for cheap chinese junk. :wink2:

I told them to rework that software a bit and put that option inside and some other, I bet elgato is capable of some other options too, and wrote me some generic answer... they will forward my ass :D

We appreciate your suggestion, I will forward this through the appropriate channels, so it could possibly be implemented in future releases of the Elgato Video Capture software!

Is that a high enough bitrate? I’m capturing to Huffy in Vdub with a Pinnacle 710 using windows 10 and I’m using 8.6 Mbps and Huffy is compressing losslessly at 2:4:1 so it is compressing the video in half.

What codec are you capturing to? The way codecs compress is important. It’s not just the bitrate.

Pinnacle 710 is another story it's like comparing Mclaren with Opel :D

3.5Mbps is highest that device can give apparently. Don't know about codec because you can't choose what codec to use, I'll try to find out these days and check everything out.

Not so. HUFF is "compressing" from "Uncompressed" by 2.4 times. You have no control over the capture bitrate, which is around 58Mbps, not 8.6.

The Elgato would be capturing to MP4 (probably H264). 3.5Mbps is more than ample for SD video in H264.

What bitrate are you using for your MP4 exports, Gary?

It’s 68. Also this is digitalfaq not days of our lives chill out with the drama Hushpower.

"As the world turns, so do the days of our lives..." and that is literally all I remember about that show, as it was my queue to change the channel. :laugh:

I'm not closely following this conversation, but it really is as easy as
#1 = Elgato is a low end card, low end quality.
#2 = H.264 ("MP4") is a delivery format, never intended for capture. Much like DV, it has multiple lossy issues. H.264 specifically errs on the side of soft/mush, to avoid blocks.

We all deserve better quality.

Elgato does not deserve your money here. (They make several great products, but the capture cards are junk.)

That guy is low-knowledge video-newbie troll, and was banned multiple times from multiple sites. His videos are a mess of fact and non-fact, and only gullible newbies fall prey to his nonsense.

We truly do live in an age of misinformation. Vet your sources. Don't trust random people.

Just calling out unfactual information, Gary. Other people read this stuff and on DigitalFAQ it's (probably) treated as gospel, at least more so than elsewhere.

Just to confirm, this is correct. However...

Bitrate is never exact, not even on CBR. That also means that "3.5" for an Elgato isn't 3.5 either. It's a setting to constrain range-bound near that number. And even a "3.5" is based on the codec, as the same quality with MPEG-2, x265, or DivX would differ.

Huffyuv has no such setting, and defaults to file compression, not video data/content compression. For that reason, Huffyuv really has no "bitrate" in the normal sense. Lossless encoding is detached from the normal video usage of that jargon. You can refer to data bitrate, but it's not really the same.

Consider the Adobe definition of bitrate, as found as the quoted text in a Google search:
"Bitrate refers to depth of information, whether in video or audio" ... "It's often measured as the amount of information per second."

But there is no depth to the information here, as it's still uncompressed visually. The data is compressed, not the info. The info is 99.9%+ 1:1 to uncompressed.

The 3 of here surely know this, but I'm writing this here for the benefit of the lurkers, the site readers.

I would hesitate to call this "unfactual".

And to illustrate, consider an early episode of The Big Bang Theory. Sheldon tells Stuart that "wrong" is a binary state. But Stuart correctly illustrates that it's not an absolute.

- To say a tomato is a vegetable is a little wrong.
- To say a tomato is a suspension bridge is very wrong.

When you get into complex discussions like this, it's not fair to chastise for a minor point that needs a corrections. I agree, it needs follow-up for clarification. But not to the extent that the connotation is that the information is bogus. Because it's not bogus, just a wee off.

After all, tomatos (tomatoes) are sold next to the heads of lettuce, not the apples and oranges. :wink2:

Being a "little wrong" isn't a sin. And honestly, how it gets addressed almost matters more. We see this too much in politics, and the "us vs. them" seeps too much into video/whatever these days. You can't even have a civil conversation on a group that discusses fantasy robot toys. I try to not have that sort of discourse here, when discussions get into advanced nuance.

But again, you are correct on this nugget of nuance. :)

I don't consider 6.8mbps for HUFF a nuanced error. It's not within a bulls-roar of being right.

I was going to call those points I raised "furphies" but thought I'd be a little more diplomatic so as not to upset anyone. :wink2:

As for Sheldon, I saw him in Hidden Figures. His presence ruined the movie IMO. I cringed very time I saw him! :(

Yeah, I didn't quite understand "and I’m using 8.6 Mbps and Huffy is compressing losslessly at 2:4:1", but it was clarified to the apparent data bitrate for a file (68). But none of that matters anyway, for the reasons I stated. It's just too easy to fumble math, or misread analysis reports (MediaInfo, etc). Clarification needed.

furphies --- I learned a new word. :)

Yeah, Jim Parsons is really is not that great of an on-screen actor. He found a perfect role in Sheldon, but his other non-voiceover work is not easy to suspend disbelief. TBBT made him rich, so he probably doesn't need another role anyway. "He has a face for radio", and his voice work is good. I bet he'll stay in voice roles. But if you ever heard his interviews, he's an odd duck in real life, too.

But even that couldn't be right; That was the answer to my question: what bitrate he uses for his MP4 exports. Obviously not 68!