PEXHDCAP aka Micomsoft SC-500N1 Capture Card Review

A big thanks to SDA forum user Tranquilite who originally discovered that these capture cards were identical.

StarTech PEXHDCAP aka Micomsoft SC-500N1 - Image courtesy of Amazon.com

This will be a really short review as most of the points I make have already been said for the upgrade model. To put it simply, this is an amazing capture card.

You may not have or want to invest the money in the SC-512N1-L so let me go over what this card lacks compared to its bigger brother.

1. No 1080p60 support. This is simply because the card runs at Gen1 PCI speeds.
2. No Composite or S-Video support.
3. No pass through feature. It's back to the good old splitters and distribution amplifiers.

What some people might find good about this card is the inclusion of a proper HDMI input instead of relying on a HDMI to DVI adapter like the upgrade model.

If you actually think about it, you aren't sacrificing too much features in getting this capture card. Trying to capture 1080p60 in a normal scenario is still out of the question for most people. Ideally you would want to be capturing your retro consoles with SCART RGB so the lack of Composite and S-Video is not that big of an issue. If you already have splitters/amplifiers then you don't have to worry about the no pass through feature.

You basically have two choices here. Either buy the PEXHDCAP now or save that money and invest in the upgrade model at a later date. Both choices I highly recommend but it is up to you to figure out if the missing features of this model are going to hurt you down the line.

Micomsoft SC-512N1-L/DVI Capture Card Review

Updates since the review was posted:

Check out the histogram for this card here. Current HDMI, Component and VGA capture settings included.

I get asked about locations to buy this card so here is a table which I'll try and keep updated.

Location	Available?	Price	Has passthrough?	All adapters?
Sabre PC	Yes	$200	No	Yes
Ebay via sintronusa	Yes	$229	sintronusa does.	Misses the DVI to HDMI adapters
Solaris Japan	Yes	$287	Yes	Yes
Star Tech (PEXHDCAP60L)	Yes	$210-220	No	Yes

Also about the 100% CPU bug mentioned in this review, I eventually figured it out. Read more here.

Below is the original review with updates where necessary.

Micomsoft SC-512N1-L/DVI

First, let's talk about the video inputs of the card. Composite, S-Video and Component are handled by breakout cables. You will receive two of each (more on that later).

DVI is inbuilt on the card while HDMI and VGA are handled by adapters. I should also note that the HDMI to DVI adapter also carries audio (only stereo sound is currently supported).

Connection wise, that is pretty much everything you will need. The card also operates at Gen2 PCI speeds so it is able to capture 1080p at 60 frames per second. It also supports 15kHz-31kHz over VGA which is very useful for SCART RGB capturing from retro consoles.

The driver is only compatible with Windows 7 and 8 but for most people that won't be an issue. The latest drivers can be downloaded from the official Yuan page here. The driver itself is one of the easiest I have ever used.

Choosing between the different video inputs is a breeze. The driver comes packaged with a program called VideoKeeper2 but don't bother to install this as much better alternatives are available. The driver is fully DirectShow compatible and Micomsoft even suggest that you use AmaRecTV. Of course this obviously means that the card works effortlessly with XSplit and OBS for your streaming needs. If you look at the driver screenshot, you will also see it has options for video deinterlacing. Although it is nice to have, I always set it to "Weave (None)" because it is typically better to deinterlace in post processing or use AmaRec's built in deinterlacer.

If you look at the capture card, you will notice it is a two slot design. The top slot is for video and audio pass through. Unlike the Blackmagic Intensity Pro, this is actually lag less and does not alter the image in anyway. This will save you having to use splitters or distribution amplifiers. This was a big selling point of the card for me as it cut down on my cable mess significantly. I will say that I can play perfectly fine from the preview window. Tests I've done show the preview latency is under a frame.

Now let's discuss the most important aspect of any capture card, the video quality. Luckily the YUY2 (YUV 4:2:2) color space is used so many of the best lossless codecs will work (Lagarith, Huffyuv, x264vfw, UT Video).

Update: I discovered that RGB capture is now available in the February 2014 driver. See the driver changelog here. However, RGB capture has some serious capture issues. Stick to YUY2 for now until it is fixed.

Below I will talk about each video input and give advice along with a sample video so you can see the quality for yourself. Due to bandwidth issues these have been slightly compressed. Please make sure your media player can play 4:2:2 encoded files.

Composite: This card has the best composite capture quality I have ever seen. This is probably because it has a 3D comb filter. There is little to no dot crawl and very little rainbow effect. One thing to note is choosing the correct black level for your console. Most of the time you want to go to the driver and select NTSC_M_J under the Video Decoder tab.

720x240 is supported over both Composite and S-Video but the capture frame rate is always 30 fps. You must capture at 720x480 and deinterlace to get the proper 60 fps.

Click to enlarge

Sample video here. AmaRecTV's retro game deinterlacer was used.

S-Video: The S-Video quality is amazing. Just like composite, this is the best S-Video capture I have ever seen. It actually makes other cards like the AVerMedia C027 a joke in comparison.

Click to enlarge

Sample video here. AmaRecTV's retro game deinterlacer was used.

Component: The best thing about the component input is that it supports 240p. This means you can actually capture PS1 games on the PS2 using component video.

For my testing I used the Nintendo Wii with 480p Virtual Console titles. Lots of other cards mess up Component capture in some way, usually in brightness (e.g. AVerMedia). This card lacks somewhat in color reproduction over Component (reds lack vibrancy etc) and cards like the Intensity/Elgato are slightly better in this regard. However, to call the capture quality of this card bad would be a vast disservice. It's in the top 3 cards for Component capture.

Click to enlarge

Sample video here.

HDMI: Obviously amazing since HDMI is digital and you can't really mess it up. However, it has a feature that is missing on most other HDMI capture cards. You can also toggle between limited (16-235) and full range (0-255) capture. For proper 16-235 and 0-255 capture please click here. There seems to be a bug where if you are displaying Full range content you need to select 16-235 and for Limited you need to select 0-255. Maybe a mislabel in the driver?

Since most people are probably curious about it, I wrote a whole separate article on 1080p60 lossless capture. Due to bandwidth and playback concerns, I will just host a 720p sample.

Click to enlarge

Sample video here.

VGA (SCART RGB): You will need a sync stripper like the XSYNC-1 or Sync Strike to capture SCART RGB from your retro consoles. There is a small issue with color shift when capturing from these sources. This can be fixed by ticking "Color horizontal Adjust" and setting it to Type-C in AmaRecTV's Advanced tab. I've made a screenshot comparison of Type-C on and off here. It's hard to see the difference from that comparison but trust me, use Type-C. I enabled AmaRecTV's scan line doubler for the screenshot (remember to choose 720x240 in the Device tab).

Click to enlarge

Sample video here.

The only thing that could make this capture card better would be the ability to capture Composite and S-Video at 60 fps while in 720x240 mode. This would bypass the need to deinterlace and you could simply use the scan line doubler. There is however one small issue that many users have reported from the SC-500N1 that also happens with this capture card. Whenever previewing video or just being in the driver, the C1 state of your CPU gets disabled which will increase the temperature until you leave the driver or the capture program. This can easily be fixed by going to the power options in Windows and resetting the power plan. It does get slightly annoying having to do this all the time though. Update: As said at the start of the review, this bug is now fixed.

If that feature was added and that small CPU issue was fixed, this really would be one of the best capture cards on the market. The card isn't exactly cheap (as of writing it's about $350 total).

In conclusion, if you do just want an all in one solution and want to forget about capture cards, get this and never look back. The Bugatti Veyron of the capture card world for people who want the absolute best.

Blackmagic Intensity Pro Capture Card Review

This was one of the first capture cards I ever owned. Let me explain what it does good and why it left me looking elsewhere.

Blackmagic Intensity Pro - Image courtesy of Amazon.com

The device will accept Composite, S-Video, Component and HDMI. The composite connection gets connected to the Green Y plug of the supplied breakout cable. One thing to note is that the device is aimed at the camera market, so non standard resolutions used by retro consoles (240p) are not supported. It will only handle resolutions of 480i or more. However, 480p over component is not possible (only over HDMI) so if one of your main consoles is a Nintendo Wii you should really consider something else.

The drivers are just plain annoying to use. You need to go into the "Blackmagic Control Panel" and select what input you want to capture from. No other capture card I own requires you to do this. It's not a big issue but something I think needs to be said. The drivers are DirectShow compatible and thus work with any program you would need (AmaRecTV, XSplit and OBS).

The composite capture quality is average and nothing special to talk about (there is no 3D comb filter). The component quality is very near to what the source outputs and as expected, HDMI is excellent. The real downside to the card lies in its color space. For SD the card uses UYVY (this can easily be worked with) and HD uses HDYC. No freely available codec besides UT Video will support HDYC natively (make sure to choose ULH2 in UT). This pretty much leaves you with 3 capturing options.

1. Use the Motion JPEG encoder supplied with the driver (unless you are very limited by disk space or processing power avoid this). The quality is very bad.

2. UT Video. Delivers very good CPU load and compression for a lossless codec.

3. Uncompressed capture (the data rates with this are just way too high without having to invest in RAID0).

So out of the 3 options, only UT Video is really viable for great quality on a single hard drive. The problem is that other lossless codecs like Lagarith and x264vfw don't support HDYC but can perform better (in regards to CPU load and bandwidth). HDYC is basically YUV 4:2:2 with 709 levels for the U and V. This means it is identical to other YUV 4:2:2 color spaces like YUY2. You can read more on the subject here. There also exists a Huffyuv HDYC build but users have reported it has color space issues so don't use that.

The last thing I want to talk about is the pass through feature of the card. What Blackmagic won't openly advertise to gamers is that the pass through is not lag free (input lag is introduced). One of the cool features is that you can input say component video and output over HDMI. This will add more lag (analog to digital conversion) than inputting and outputting component video (I even directly asked Blackmagic about that). However, I was able to play perfectly fine going from component to HDMI (but I am not very sensitive to input lag) so you might want to do further reading before you commit. The pass through is also processed and not what your source device is outputting. I also noticed that there was about 2 or 3 black pixels at the top of my 720p image when looking at the pass through image. This seems to be a common issue with the Intensity Pro but it was fixed with the Intensity Shuttle.

I always like to have a choice of what codec I want to use and that is where the Blackmagic ultimately falls short. There is very limited uses for this capture card. If you are just looking to capture HDMI video from a console then buy yourself the much cheaper AVerMedia C027/H727 with a HDMI splitter and put the spare money to something else. The only real resolution the Intensity Pro is good for is 480i over Component and for the price, not exactly worth the money.

AVerMedia HD DVR C027 (H727) Capture Card Review

Please note that the C027 is exactly the same as the European model (H727) but that has an aerial attachment for TV. If you are interested in the H727E model then read the update at the end.

AVerMedia C027 - Image courtesy of Amazon.com

This offering from AVerMedia can be considered good and why shouldn't it be? It offers a connection input for just about anything you could ask for; Composite, S-Video, Component and HDMI. Couple that with DirectShow drivers (fully AmaRecTV, XSplit and OBS compatible) and support for the YUV 4:2:2 (YUY2) color space and you have everything you need... right?

Well to put it simply, no. Although on the surface it seems good, once you actually compare it to other devices you begin to notice the weaknesses this capture card has. I am personally very picky on video capture quality so I will explain what you should consider before purchasing this.

Composite: Don't get me wrong, nearly all composite capture cards will look bad but this one is strange. When I previewed the intro to Zelda: A Link to the Past on SNES, I couldn't help but notice the water was not properly being displayed. I compared it to other composite capture cards such as the Dazzle DVC 100 and EzCAP. Both of these capture cards were able to show the water properly so I can only blame the Aver card. The inclusion of a 3D comb filter would have helped massively for composite sources but this is nearly always neglected on capture cards of this price.

S-Video: Moving up the quality standard does help but it brings me onto the next point. The Aver is able to record from retro consoles (240p) such as the NES, SNES and Genesis. One issue of retro consoles is that they do not output a proper frame rate. This leads the Aver to briefly jump up and down about two pixels every so often. It's not a big issue but again other devices such as the Dazzle and EzCAP do not show this. This is one thing to consider if you are primarily looking at retro game capturing.

Component: On the surface the component capture seems good. However, when I compared it to other component devices I know to be accurate (such as the Blackmagic or Micomsoft products) you can tell the capture is just too dark. You can fix this in post processing (or even by tweaking the driver) but I do not believe in that sort of stuff. The capture card should be able to handle everything on default settings.

HDMI: The original H727 model (with capacitors) only accepts 16-235 (Limited range) input. The H727E model was changed to accept 0-255 (Full range) input. It looks great, just like any other HDMI capture card.

The last disadvantage to discuss is the lack of a video pass through to play lag less on a monitor (as the preview window has noticeable lag). This means you will have to invest in splitters or distribution amplifiers. There are very few capture cards that actually offer a pass through feature so it can't really be a big reason for not buying this capture card. What is a good reason for buying this capture card is that it supports 480p over Component which more expensive cards like the Blackmagic Intensity Pro do not. This is very useful if you are capturing video from a Nintendo Wii.

I know I just spent pretty much all of the review criticizing this device but I do have really high standards for video capture quality. If you are just looking for a relatively inexpensive capture card and don't mind not having reference quality video, this card will do just fine and you should buy it.

Update: While doing more research I actually discovered that in early 2013, AVerMedia changed the PCB of the H727 to a "Version. E" (which is called H727E). This new model is easily identified as it has no capacitors on the PCB and the grey FM tuner chip size has been reduced significantly.

I discovered that the Component capture is very dark but also has some severe colour bleeding that is not present in the older model. I contacted AVerMedia about this and in May 2014 they recognized the problem and will release a new driver to fix Component capture. I keep a look out for new drivers every few days and I'll update this if a driver comes out to fix it.

Update 2: AVerMedia allowed me to preview some beta drivers to see if the problem was fixed. I am sad to say that the attempt was very bad. As of November 2014, no new drivers have surfaced. There exists so much better alternatives that I would only buy this capture card if you only needed HDMI capture ability.