while I work on more involved LGR things for the upcoming near future.

And this is just going to be talking about VGA capture solutions for older PCs, and newer-ish

PCs because I capture a wide range of systems.

I'm also getting questions about it.

But more recently I was getting very specific questions because of the MCE2VGA box.

This is a converter for video signals.

It takes TTL RGBI right there for like old computers

running CGA, EGA, and monochrome and such.

And sends them to the other side here for standard VGA output.

It's pretty great but it also doesn't work with every capture device that I have, and

I mentioned that in the video and people were like “well what do you have?”

Anyway, my setup is always changing its gonna change again, but for now this is my basic setup.

So I've got a newer Windows 10 PC capturing things over there and then over here is where

I do most of the actual capturing.

And I like a separate station for this because not only do I get a nice CRT that feels appropriate

for a lot of the stuff I cover, but it also is just actually passing through and being split.

So that I can play and mess with software over here as it's intended and it feels

right and nothing is getting weird because of, you know, delay or anything like that.

What happens over here to make that happen is I've got several different PCs down here.

At the moment the main ones that I use are the LGR Woodgrain 486, that's a 66 megahertz.

Got the Lazy Green Giant running Windows 98 and 95.

And most recent one is the XP machine.

I've just had a bunch of problems capturing VGA directly so now I do a lot of conversion.

So let's talk about all that stuff!

Right, so.

Main capture area, got the computers down there and whatever I'm plugging in goes through

these splitters right here.

I have a powered VGA splitter and also some audio splitters to take the sound and the

video over to whatever capture device I happen to need.

And I'm pretty much never satisfied with these things, I've gone through a bunch of them.

There's always interference problems.

So I'm not saying these are the *only* ones that will work for you or anything.

None of this stuff is, it's just what I'm using at the moment.

In fact, there's also some ground problems I've had and of audio capture.

I've eliminated that as much as I can, you know but sometimes you just have sound cards

that are noisy.

Other components that are interfering, getting in the way, or the wiring in your house or

whatever like, I've done what I can.

But using some of these ground loop isolators or eliminators or whatever, these filter boxes.

They actually work pretty darn well, at least for certain types of ground loop hums.

So that's the first step in the process is just sending everything through some splitters

and filters and stuff to make sure that I don't have any lag

and I get as clear a signal as possible.

And then at that point it goes along in between here to get to my main capture PC.

And that goes through one of these StarTech VGA2HDMI Pro version one boxes.

I think this is a rebranded Micomsoft device.

But yeah, this is the version one of it, it's unfortunately discontinued.

And there are later versions but as far as I know this is the only one that handles some

of the weirder lower res and strange refresh rates and aspect ratios.

Say you've got something running at like, I dunno, 320x200 at 70 hertz or whatever.

This'll handle that just fine and upscale it to 720p or 1080p or whatever you need, really.

The only thing I don't like about it is that it puts an annoying little status notification

in the top left anytime the resolution changes.

It's also not the quickest at changing resolutions, so that's a problem sometimes.

And it also washes out the signal a little bit which I have to correct in Adobe Premiere

CC, which is what I use to edit stuff.

Now the nice thing is that it actually does capture the audio as well and sends that to

HDMI so I don't have to worry about plugging in

another audio cable over in my capture device side.

Speaking of the capture device I've used this for a very long time.

Another discontinued product, this is an Avermedia Game Broadcaster HD.

I do plan to replace this at some point because it doesn't actually capture really high resolution,

higher framerate stuff.

Like I want something to capture 4K 60 and I just haven't gotten anything to do that yet.

But the old Game Broadcaster still works.

I used to use the VGA capture part of it actually, but that's the thing -- the part of it that

doesn't capture the weirder resolution stuff, which is why I need that StarTech scaler box

in the first place.

So in a way yeah, this card is kind of redundant.

Another thing that I use though is this AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus.

This is an external -- actually a standalone capture solution, if you want it to be.

It just uses USB power or you can plug it into USB and use some software to capture things.

But if you just power it by USB it has this internal Micro SD card interface and it's

really nice because it not only has built-in pass-through for HDMI, but you don't have

to rely on a computer or software or anything to get your capturing done.

The only thing I don't like about it though is you can't actually see precisely what's

going on in terms of like, the settings or anything.

In fact all the settings are just internal as far as I know and it only captures at a

set kinda lower bitrate when you're capturing to the SD card.

But yeah, totally fine for capturing low res older game footage.

I'm still having to rely on that StarTech scaler though, because of course this doesn't

capture VGA, much less anything lower res than that.

I do have one other solution and this doesn't require the use of the StarTech scaler at all.

And that is the Epiphan AV.io HD.

Ay-vee-oh, I don't know it's this thing.

And it actually captures using DVI, but of course you can also capture HDMI or VGA with

a simple adapter.

It doesn't capture audio, but the video that it does capture is absolutely fantastic.

In fact you can plug this straight into a VGA card, like a DOS PC, and run CGA and EGA

things all day long and it'll handle them.

This is great if you just don't want to mess with a bunch of adapters and whatnot.

A couple things that I don't like about it, I mean it doesn't capture audio, that's kind

of a pain.

You have to route that into something else.

And it doesn't have any of its own software, which is both a blessing and a curse.

It's nice that you don't have to deal with anything proprietary but it's also annoying

because a lot of the different software I've used that is compatible with this thing, it's

just kind of irksome.

It doesn't handle the different resolution changes and scaling like I wish that it would.

And you know old PC games and software, they're changing resolution and refresh rates all the time.

So anytime it does that you're usually having to move things around in the software and

that's just kind of a crappy thing.

Whereas if I'm using the StarTech it just handles all that on its own, it scales all

the things internally and then sends it out HDMI in one standard resolution and refresh

rate all the time.

But again AV.io HD, it captures the older systems as long as it's got VGA of course.

And it'll also accept the MCE2VGA box just fine.

You don't need to do any kind of other conversion with it.

So if you just plug this straight into the AV.io HD it works.

Otherwise I have to plug it into my StarTech device to get it to working on my Avermedia

stuff.

And I wanted to start trying some other things too, because again I want something for like

4K and really just a newer card than that old Broadcaster HD that I have internally

over there. It's fine, it works.

But I hope that this was helpful in some ways, a very scattered kind of video but it's a

scattered kind of process.

I will have some coverage of some stuff pretty soon, more of a normal LGR fare.

But yeah, till then thank you very much for watching!