Decent video capture for ~$30

[noglin]

I'll write down a few notes on what I did to get pretty decent video capture as it wasn't obvious.

1. DB15 -> VGA. This is well documented.
2. active VGA to HDMI adapter. I used "FOINNEX VGA to HDMI Converter Adapter with Audio 1080P" (https://www.amazon.es/dp/B072NCTBVP?)
3. HDMI capture card, take one with MS2130 chip, I got this one: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B0CL3H7PMF

Make sure to power #2 sufficiently or you won't get anything out.
Make sure to connect 3 using 5GB USB port/cables (or else you will get a USB2 video capture card, and low quality)

What I got up to this point was "ok" but with obvious artifacts. By default it will clip YUV to range [16..235], and the other format (MJPEG) that does not clip is a compressed format and causes the typical low res jpeg artifacts.

Fortunately, folks have hacked the firmware:

4. Flash its firmware: https://github.com/steve-m/ms2130_patcher
git clone https://github.com/BertoldVdb/ms-tools.git
cd ms-tools
go build -o /tmp/ms2130 ./cli
cd ..

make a backup
./cli --log-level=7 read FLASH 0 --filename=backup.bin
then flash:
./cli --log-level=7 --no-patch write-file FLASH 0 ms2130_patched_v1.bin

5. At this step, for me it worked on windows to get a perfect capture (uncompressed, YUV, no clipping) - compared pixel values. On linux I use:

ffplay -f v4l2 -video_size 640x480 -input_format yuyv422 \
-color_range jpeg \
-colorspace smpte170m \
-i /dev/video0

I did not retry on my macbook but should work there too.

 

[Mk.558]

How are you using this setup? How does the output look like?

I'm using an Extron RGB-300A, which is decent, and a Elgato HD60S. The Extron has to be configured to input 720x480p, which can also output back as 720x480p. It looks like this in OBS:

 

[noglin]

The HDMI capture card has usb connection, I connect it to the usb port of any of my win/mac/linux computers, and it behaves like if it was a webcam. On linux I use terminal ffplay or OBS, on Mac/Win I use OBS.

This is how it looks like, but it looks better than this when capturing on Windows. This is a Performa 5200, the vga cable is too long (on the todo list to fix) and I think signal degradation is what is causing the ca 10px shift - and the noise in the image.