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24/01/2011 17:26

temew

Joined: 14/04/2009

Posts: 2

Video Capture

Hello.

I would like to know about the latencies of video capture in sm. I have a basic pinnacle video capture card in my pc and I was thinking of using the video capture clip to add live camera feed on my show.. Does this work without noticeable latancy? I would like the speaker on stage to be shown on the big screen.

30/01/2011 14:24

owaits

Joined: 30/12/2005

Posts: 601

Re: Video Capture

The latency of the live video within Screen Monkey is very much dependant on the capture hardware that you are using. If you use a high spec card such as the Blackmagic DeckLink then the latency will not be noticable. If you use a cheaper card with large buffers then you would expect to see a delay. The Screen Monkey software has been highly optimised to give much lower latency than comparable software. It is often a comment which I hear about how little delay the software has.

In some situations the latency achieved through Screen Monkey is less than the equivalent hardware simply because you do not get the compounding effect of multiple hardware delays.

07/02/2011 00:53

Magus

Joined: 10/01/2011

Posts: 135

Re: Video Capture

Hi there

I see you seem to be recommending a BlackMagic DeckLink card. What about other cards? I found some and wondered if you had tested or had some recommendations for cards. Presently I'm using a laptop with a USB capture and there is a bit of a noticeable latency. Additionally, it seems to take a long time to sense the capture device. The resulting video is a bit "off" in that it's nowhere near as clear as the composite feed from the camera.

My goal is to use Screen Monkey instead of the dreadful A/B switchbox and resulting momentary screen jitter that occurs. But I'm getting complaints that the screen appears a bit "out of focus" from our live camera feed guy. He's also sending 16x9 signal and I'm guessing it's getting scaled to 4x3 and causing distortion.

So I'm wondering if we were to switch to a desktop PC and acquire a video capture card that installs into a PC slot if we would see better results.

Cheers... Rick

07/02/2011 16:07

owaits

Joined: 30/12/2005

Posts: 601

Re: Video Capture

The fuzzyness is probably caused by low resolution. Allot of the cheap converters will only capture at something like 480 rather than the full SD resolution. Sometimes they have settings to change this and sometimes not. Try playing with the capture device settings.

The 16x9 to 4x3 is again dependent on the capture device although SM does have a letterbox setting. I sometimes resort to resizing the layer to give me 16x9.

I focus my attention on the Blackmagic cards as I can not afford to purchase and test more than 1 capture device.

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