New Yuan/Micomsoft Drivers (February 2015)

Didn't even know Yuan had drivers available for download until today. I quickly checked them out here: http://www.yuan.com.tw/en/market/software/vidblasterdriver/vidblasterdriver.htm

The date is about 2 months newer than the Micomsoft drivers but from my testing they appear to be no cosmetic changes to the driver layout. The only changes from other sources seems to be that high data levels from 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 will no longer hiccup at 720p and multiple card support numbering has been fixed. I'll update this if I encounter anything over the next few days.

Micomsoft Driver Changelog (November 2014)

So days after I wrote about the small driver update from Lumens, Micomsoft come out with a driver that is 5 months newer! Since the Micomsoft website download was really slow for me, I've mirrored the download here at my Google Drive. These drivers work for the SC-500N1, SC-512 and PEXHDCAP. They also released XCAPTURE-1 drivers but I cannot test them as I do not have that capture card.

Here is the new driver window.

The eagle eyed user will spot 2 main differences: Color Range has been changed and HDMI/DVI EQ has been added.

I don't see much point in going over the EQ setting. You will never need to change this (default is 10). The most interesting (and only noteworthy) driver change is Color Range.

From my testing, the Bypass option works perfectly when dealing with a 16-235 source. However, with a Full range source the colors become much more vibrant and thus incorrect. In order to get proper Full range capture you must apply the Shrink option. I don't currently have the means to test VGA capture but I quickly checked Component capture. It seems correct to choose Bypass. Shrink made blacks look grey (as expected) and Expand looks like Bypass but no reason to pick it.

The only other small things to note is they added support for the X68000 and of course, the 100% CPU bug still exists. :(

Micomsoft/StarTech Driver Changelog (February 2014)

Micomsoft have not released a new driver since October 8th, 2013. I decided to do some hunting at StarTech and I got lucky. I checked the driver date and it was from February 2014.

Click to enlarge

So... what's new?

1. They worked with the SC-512N1-L and Composite/S-Video worked (even when the PEXHDCAP does not support this). I get the feeling these are somewhat universal drivers for Yuan products that will work for anything if the hardware supports it. This is probably why there is an SDI option even though it has never featured on any Micomsoft hardware besides the more expensive models from Yuan.

2. RGB support in Amarec at both 24 and 32 bit.

YUY2 Screenshot:

YUY2 Click to enlarge

RGB Screenshot:

RGB Click to enlarge

Both of those captured via Lagarith in the respective modes. The RGB capture is actually wrong in colors so stick to YUY2 until it is fixed. However, even if ti was fixed the difference in bandwidth for capturing lossless RGB vs lossless YUY2 is very significant. For the above scene, the bit rate peaked at 407 Mb/s on RGB but just 240 Mb/s over YUY2. I even doubt if 1080p60 RGB is possible with x264vfw.

3. Finally we can toggle between 0-255 and 16-235 (Do not ever use Enhance... you have been warned). For more information on this please click here.

4. NV12 and YV12 selectable in Amarec (although why would you want this when Lagarith/x264vfw can do it). If you do not know, these are 4:2:0 modes.

5. Some new ticky boxes like "SOG" which stands for Sync on green. I don't know much about this but it might be useful for some people. There is also a new "Auto" option which will auto detect a video signal and switch to it.

The driver version on StarTech's website was 1.1.0.5. The driver link is here. Just click the Drivers & Downloads tab.

The old 2013 Micomsoft drivers should be updated soon and you can check that here.