Capture MegaDrive via PCI analogue TV card

[Trapper]

Has anyone had any experience doing this?

 

I've got my MegaDrive and Acorn A3010 outputting via their TV RF tuners onto Channel 36 on my TV. Works great - especially for the Acorn A3010 as it allow's some older games to be played on a 32" TV.

 

I found an old Hauppauge WinTV 88x PCI analogue capture card last week in a pile of junk I pulled from my father-in-law's old PC (AMD Sempron vintage!). I've installed into my PC and Windows 10 has recognised it and installed all the correct x64 drivers. I was stunned.

 

Does anyone have any experience on configuring this sort of thing? Googling is throwing up zip as everyone else made the leap to USB S-Video/HDMI capture cards a decade ago.

 

Just a little side project that's taken on a bit of a life of it's own!

 

[sted]

I cant see any reason it shouldnt work as it should be able to be tuned to the right channel and record but i cant help but feel a composite output would give a better quality picture and iirc megadrive supports rgb scart which should be better again in fact found scart to hdmi adapters so a standard hdmi capture device would probably give you the best quality captures but again not tried

[Arthur]

Googling is throwing up zip as everyone else made the leap to USB S-Video/HDMI capture cards a decade ago.

It's been a really long time since I did any analogue video capture from a WinTV card, but I'm fairly sure I used VirtualDub or Virtual VCR at the time. The latter program would be better if Windows 10 downloaded WDM drivers (rather than VfW). VirtualDub is a little bit more complicated so you may want to refer to the following guide...

 

http://arstechnica.com/features/2003/03/vidcap/

 

In terms of quality: component > RGB SCART > S-video > composite.

 

Composite should be a last resort since the picture quality is absolutely terrible. It's a shame your WinTV card doesn't have component inputs since all you would need is an adapter such as the HD Retrovision to get the best quality.

 

A standard composite Sega Genesis/MegaDrive cable results in blurry text, color smearing, and the loss of some of the original detail.

 

[robk]

I don't know if this will work, but might be worth installing OBS on your machine and seeing if it detects the capture card. I it does it will record and/or stream for you.

[gshaw]

Was trying to do something similar the other week, got the capture card working but the software is Windows 98 vintage so had to find something else. Tried VLC and numerous others but couldn't get a signal on channel 36

[Arthur]

Alternatively ditch the WinTV card, play the MegaDrive games on an emulator and screen capture the gameplay. e.g.

 

Recording live gameplay in RetroPi's RetroArch emulators natively on the Raspberry Pi

[Trapper]

Alternatively ditch the WinTV card, play the MegaDrive games on an emulator and screen capture the gameplay. e.g.

 

Recording live gameplay in RetroPi's RetroArch emulators natively on the Raspberry Pi

 

Heathen! I banish thee from retro gaming forever. Emulate?! Pah! Why bother having the console in the first place

 

Sadly as I've got a MegaDrive Mk 1 (best one!) all it has is RF out and the old DIN connector for composite video: https://www.retrogamingcables.co.uk/sega-mega-drive-1-audio-video-av-cable-tv-lead-for-sale

[Arthur]

Heathen! I banish thee from retro gaming forever. Emulate?! Pah! Why bother having the console in the first place

I would normally agree, but there's no way I could stand the video quality with composite.

 

Sadly as I've got a MegaDrive Mk 1 (best one!) all it has is RF out and the old DIN connector for composite video

Another option: XRGB-mini Framemeister + MegaDrive RGB to SCART cable + HDMI capture device like the Elgato Game Capture HD60 or AverMedia LGP2.