Capture card advice

[mrtc]

Hello 

I have a Marshall mini can CV365 camera running through a cheap USB video capture card on a 2015 macbook pro. The image should be HD and colour. Its fuzzy and jumps from colour to B&W. Could this be the cheap capture card? 

I've tried a different HDMI cable. Can any off any advice please. 

Thanks

 

[sandall]

Are you providing the camera with anything to sync to?  https://marshall-usa.com/discontinued/cameras/CV365-CGB.php

 

Edited September 25 by sandall

[Robin D]

My experience of USB capture has been largely unacceptable. The FireWire port on my tower computer failed. I tried several of these USB devices, none with an accept image. Hunted high and low for a 1394 card and got one from Holland. Back to capturing full HD through my Sony Handy am. It also allows me to use the Sony to digitise VHS at a very acceptable level. I use Nero for capture since Avid support stopped. 

[david.elsbury]

Plug it into a TV- what image do you get?

[timsabre]

Is this HDMI capture you're trying to do? I have had good success with this type of usb capture (10 quid on amazon) 

[ninjadingle]

Might be a case of you get what you pay for. I've used USB capture cards from Elgato, AJA and Magewell all with great sucess (we've deployed the Magewell units at scale and not had any issues with them @1080p 60), the only gotcha I've had is sometimes the card is plugged into a USB2 port, not USB3 (not by me!). 

[mrtc]

@sandall

no, but to be honest not sure how to. Videos not my area. 

[mrtc]

@david.elsbury

yes I tried this a while back and the image was good. 

[mrtc]

@timsabre

Yes it’s the same device. 

[timsabre]

So like David suggested, what happens when you plug it straight into a TV/monitor, do you get a good picture then?

What you are describing sounds strange for HDMI, which generally either works 100% or not at all.

[sandall]

On 9/27/2024 at 7:17 AM, mrtc said:

@sandall

no, but to be honest not sure how to. Videos not my area. 

Look up Genlock in Wikiped..  A stand-alone camera will generate its sync pulses (which tell it when to start each line & each frame) crystal-locked in some way. As yours is designed to be pulled into sync with others, from a common SPG (sync pulse generator), its free-running timings may be a bit "elastic", causing it to drift in & out of sync with your capture-card and/or Mac.  Beware - this may be a total red herring - I'm an analogue engineer in a digital world - my experience of digital interfaces is that they either do what they say on the box, or they don't, in which case you try a different one.

[timsabre]

4 hours ago, sandall said:

Look up Genlock in Wikiped.. 

This is not relevant to HDMI. HDMI is basically 3 digital serial data lines with a common clock line.

Can you post a picture of how you have it setup, and what the captured image looks like? I use several of those simple HDMI-USB capture wires with our church livestreaming setup and they always give a perfect picture, as you'd hope with a digital interface (except when Windows can't find the USB port but that's another issue).

[sandall]

47 minutes ago, timsabre said:

This is not relevant to HDMI.

I did say it was probably a red herring🙂. (I still remember when BBC1 used to be genlocked to various OBs on a Saturday afternoon - fine till the link went down).