Let's take a look at the Micomsoft XCAPTURE-1
So if you have been reading my blog lately, you know I sold my SC-512. Why? I moved to a laptop so it was useless to me. The solution? The external version!
I'm in a picture taking mood so have all the pictures you could ask for. Click to enlarge all pictures.
The back of the box gives us information about the card. You might get lost if you don't speak Japanese but the basic principle is this: A USB3 capture card that captures everything from Composite 240p to HDMI 1080p at 60 fps.
Before we open the package, I'd like to discuss where to buy this and what the shipping is like. Currently the only place to buy this is Solaris Japan as the Yuan UB530 this is designed from is not an OEM manufacture and has been tweaked. The box as you can see from the pictures was slightly damaged but this is probably the delivery service.
Since most people are importing this and don't live natively in Japan, the customs charges should be discussed. I chose the 2-5 day option for delivery. As promised by Solaris, the item is dispatched within 24 hours but it took exactly a week to arrive as it was held up by customs. The total import charges was £40.00 (approximately $63). I chose a customs invoice of approximately £132 which was just inside the "Safe" declaration according to the Solaris website. The import charge itself was approx £20 but it's the VAT that bumps it up significantly.
So after evaluating the customs choice, I would use a value inside the orange (but closer to safe) so that you give the customs department something rather than nothing. They are likely to let something pass without question if they get a decent amount rather than getting nothing from a very low declaration like £20.00.
Now let's take a look at the inside.
On top is the instructions and an install CD including drivers and software. Never use this as it's out of date, get the latest from the Micomsoft website. Below is a picture of the unit itself after being taken out of the red bubble wrap.
For a size comparison, it's about double the size of an Elgato Game Capture HD.
The left side houses the USB3 cable which is of decent length. The right side contains 2 sets of Composite and S-Video breakout cables.
Most of my capture quality comments for this can be read in my SC-512 review but I'd like to discuss Component capture. I was very interested to see if the Component breakout cable supplied with the PEXHDCAP works and unfortunately it does not. The device will give a "No Signal" message.
 |
| Direct component does not work |
Capturing HDMI - HDCP Enforcement
If you have ever captured HDMI before, you probably know HDCP exists and all HDMI capture devices need to enforce it. This device is no different.
However, you also know that HDMI splitters exist to bypass this. There is a weird issue I encountered when testing it. The self powered Lenkeng LKV312N that works with other cards such as the Elgato will not work on this device. It maybe has some higher level of HDCP enforcement that other cards do not have. This is kind of a let down so you'll need to buy one of the older 1x2 or 1x4 powered splitters for capturing HDMI PS3 content.
Drivers
 |
| Click to enlarge |
There is a lot of boxes and configurations but you don't need to worry about them. The only one worth talking about is Auto Resolution Scaling which scales an image to a specified resolution. This means you can input for example a 720p source and scale it to 1080p by choosing 1080p in the AmaRecTV device settings. I prefer to capture what I input at so this setting should not be enabled unless you really want it. Even then it's best to scale video in post processing.
Latency and preview delay
Let's look at the preview vs passthrough delay as I've been asked to look into this for future devices.
I have uploaded a video of what you can expect from this device.
It's approximately 3 frames but does slightly vary and gets closer to 2.5 frames at times. The Live Gamer Extreme was always 2 frames in 1080p mode using AmaRecTV but it's so close it shouldn't really matter. You can probably get away with playing via the preview window depending on how sensitive you are. Personally I feel its bad for any fast paced action or fighting games but anything else should be fine.
Should I buy this?
If you have a laptop then the choice of capture card is of course very limited. Desktop users should almost always look at an internal card unless there is very special circumstances where this is not feasible.
If we are being honest the only cards to consider for laptop users right now are the following:
1. Elgato Game Capture HD
2. Elgato HD60
3. Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle
4. Micomsoft XCAPTURE-1
I would have added the Live Gamer Extreme to this list but until AVerMedia understand what the words "correct frame rate" mean, I can't add it to the list. So let's think about our options here:
1. The Elgato is overall really solid but the USB2 connection might be troublesome for you, especially when live streaming and syncing up microphones with delay.
2. I'm not a fan of just a one input connection device and the statement in 1 also applies here.
3. The question is if you can even get it to work on your chipset. I'm pretty sure the inbuilt Windows 8.1 USB3 drivers fix most problems but it's still probably hit and miss. Not to mention the configuration is more than some users would be comfortable with.
4. Is there really anything wrong with this device? I guess having to buy D-Terminal adapters is a negative as well as extra cable mess but that's about it. It ticks every box you could ask for and is the closest match to the internal SC-512 that you will get.
No comments:
Post a Comment