TwinPact 100 Thread

[TriRyche]

Would this be the appropriate 'section' in which to start a thread about the TwinPact 100
or within the 'Desktop/Professional Users' - > 'ADVC Products' section?


TriRyche

[pjsssss]

I think either place would be fine (but not both). If not the Mods will move it. Go ahead.

[GrassValley_BH]

Here is good. Though the TwinPact100 is not named ADVC___, it is still considered part of the Converter family.

[TriRyche]

After double-checking the DIP switch settings, I decided to try to screen-capture using the TwinPact100.

The resultant .avi file (from the screen capture) is very low-quality looking,
so I'm quite certain I need to make some adjustments to obtain a better quality capture.
(I'm expecting something 'on-par' with the results I get using Camtasia Studio by itself, so...)

Here's what I am using system-wise:

WinXP Pro SP2
Intel P4 3.2 GHz
1 GB DDR2 RAM
WD Raptor Harddrives
ASUS P5AD2-E Motherboard (Intel 925XE / ICH6R chips)
BFG 6600GT Video Card (Dual DVI OUTS- using 1VGA adapter into Twinpact100)
BlackMagic Design Intensity HDMI IN/OUT PCIe card

Any ideas as to where I might begin tweaking?


TriRyche

[GrassValley_KH]

TwinPact will convert screen resolution video to Standard Definition Digital Video (DV) - this means that the results will always be of a 720x480 (or 720x576) resolution.

Camtasia offers more flexibility and higher resolutions - but requires actual diskspace and performance for good quality recordings. That's your tradeoff - I'm not sure what else to suggest to "up" the quality of your TwinPact captures..

[TriRyche]

TwinPact will convert screen resolution video to Standard Definition Digital Video (DV) -
this means that the results will always be of a 720x480 (or 720x576) resolution.

I thought perhaps I should change my color from 32 to 16 bit
and maybe the refresh rate as well. (it's currently at 75Hz).

Maybe some of my NVidia driver/display management settings need to be optimized as well?

Seriously, the capture I got was like that of an opaque (or fogged)
glass shower door, to give you some idea.


TriRyche

[GrassValley_BH]

Color depth and refresh rate shouldn't affect capture quality.

The key is that given the resolution of standard definition video, any screen resolution greater than 640x480 will become increasingly blurry, as standard definition video has an effective resolution of 640x480 (in square pixels).

If you're running at a higher resolution, the only recourse is to capture an area of the screen, and not the entire screen, to reduce or eliminate downscaling.

The downscaling is what makes things look blurry or fuzzy.

[Hitecrd]

Color depth and refresh rate shouldn't affect capture quality.

The key is that given the resolution of standard definition video, any screen resolution greater than 640x480 will become increasingly blurry, as standard definition video has an effective resolution of 640x480 (in square pixels).

If you're running at a higher resolution, the only recourse is to capture an area of the screen, and not the entire screen, to reduce or eliminate downscaling.

The downscaling is what makes things look blurry or fuzzy.

The specs say that the TwinPact 100 supports resolutions up to 1600 but if, lets say your monitor is 1280x1024 and the resultant output will be downscaled and look blurry, why support anything above 640x480? Is this not the right product to “capture” those non-savable streaming videos and create a “high quality” (or at least the quality that you are seeing on your monitor) NTSC output which then can be fed into NX for editing in Edius?

[GrassValley_KH]

The higher resolution support is more to do with the Track-and-zoom feature of the product, in that, within a 1280x1024 window, you can zoom in to a section of that window.

If you need higher resolution PC screen capture, you're better to look at a product like Pegasus.

Also, consider that non-saveable streaming media is probably that way for a reason..

[cook015]

VGA to firewire

I am wondering if I can use TwinPact100 to convert a VGA signal from one computer to a firewire signal into another computer. If you're wondering why anyone would want to do such a thing, I would like to send video from Adobe Visual Communicator (video presentation software that exports a VGA signal) on one computer to a videoconferencing application on another.
Thanks so much.

[GrassValley_BH]

Yes you can, assuming the videoconferencing application supports DV (Consumer DV format, like from a DV camcorder) capture.

Remember that the effective square-pixel resolution of Standard Definition video is only 640x480 so keep the computer resolution on the source as low as possible for closest-to-WYSIWYG results.

[Sebastian]

Hi Brandon,
I have just ordered a twinpack to be used for a show where we need to
downscale a computer output from 1024x768 to s-video pal for tv monitors.

Now I have read this post I get a little confused, I thought there was some
sort of build in prosessor to do some math when scalling.

Sebastian

[GrassValley_BH]

TwinPact100 will do the scaling, but it would be much better quality if you could feed it 640x480 or 800x600 instead.

[Sebastian]

Ok, got it today and the scaling is good enough for this project, it mean
from 1024x768 to standard pal size.
Thanks
Sebastian

[GrassValley_BH]

Good to hear! Err, read...