Capturing VGA/TTL Video Footage From Retro PCs 

As part of my channel lineup, I'd like to do some commentary while playing old games that meant something to me... specifically on a Windows 98 machine. You had a lot of various equipment in this video for options... but what's the simplest and/or cheapest way for a novice like me to capture the footage?

@@inkshock Still relevant, so thanks for responding! How much do one of those bad boys cost?

Have you tried the open source scan converter for PC VGA? It allows for specific refresh rate timings. I'm currently looking into the box for using old PC's on modern displays, but it converts a signal to HDMI. You would be able to capture that easily.

@@30AndHatingIt a year late, but a video card with DVI-I or DVI-D out and a DVI->HDMI cable provided you can push at least 720p minimum would be an inexpensive option, not accounting for capture card. Failing that, you may have to add some kind of scaler box in there like the OSSC, as previously mentioned, and use VGA as the OSSC should be able to scale things to a resolution/framerate current capture cards can accept. Cheapest of the cheap would be to hope FRAPS had a version that works on 98 and hope your system can cope :) A one-stop shop thing would be to find something like the Epiphan DVI2USB 3.0 (if you can find one used for a sane price as they retail for ~$800 USD) or an Epiphan DVI2PCIe (sometimes you're lucky and they pop up for ~$100 USD and work pretty well, at least the one I have does). You'll have to use an audio cable splitter to go to your recording PC's line-in and your speakers, and you'll have to find a VGA->DVI-I cable/adapter which isn't hard since there's plenty on, say, Amazon (just make sure its DVI-I or DVI-A). You've a choice of using Epiphan's Capture Software (needed at minimum to configure the device, so you're installing it anyways) or something else like OBS since it just shows up as a video capture device to that kind of stuff. The DVI2USB SOLO probably won't work, before you stumble upon that, as the product brochure says it uses a DVI-D setup despite the port looking like DVI-I so unless you toss the OSSC+adapter in between that's a no-go (but an option if you go that route) Video splitters can be added if you want

Welcome to an LGR thing about the things I use to make LGR things

I sometimes wonder what Clint would say in bed... "Grrreeetings! And welcome to my LGR thing!"?

Say, LGR I use ReLive for screen capture. It's limited I know but its affordable it's built-in with drivers and allows for live streaming from desktop capture. With two MSI RX 460s crossfire, it's possibly one of the most affordable alternatives vs a capture device.

Yeah I think that uses the same underlying chipset. Tricky to get set up but great results.

Yep, I used Adobe Audition to remove the hum until I got the hardware filters that do it for me.

Wow, thank you for the reply :D, been a fan for about 4 years now. It put a huge smile on my face when I saw that you replied

A Sims 4 review :P

Didn't know you followed this channel. Regardless, I am waiting in anticipation. ;)

Valve News Network ditto

Wow didn’t know that you watch lgr

It's not like there's gonna be any anniversary coming up :P

Brings back a lot of memories

i've spent my childhood playing it, mindblowing back then..

I really miss the original menus for Half-Life & Team Fortress Classic... The Steam versions' menu text are way too small on a high rez display.

A wave of nostalgia hit me while watching that screen.

Nice avatar o3o

Optical is best when applicable.

@@Obie327 Yea, with cards as recent as Live! or Vortex 2, optical is available, but anything older and not so much.

So a solution that'd only work for his XP rig or anything newer? (Or with even more adapters, converters and fiddling.) Going digital is great, but seeing that both HW and SW from days of yore aren't exactly blessed with it, and/or have some weird quirks in their implementation, I'd personally want to see a quality allround ADC solution, like Clint mentions alternatives to. VGA is such a prevalent standard over time, so if you can capture those signals well (even in weird resolutions and/or refresh rates - niche market at best), that'd be so much more versatile than a digital setup. Always great to see you and Clint brainstorm in both comments and videos though, you both inspire retroists a lot!

PeTTs0n88 I use DVI to capture Windows 98 and DOS. Nvidia cards seem to work best for this. Vortex 2 and Live! also work great with Windows 98 SE, and to a certain degree with DOS.

@@philscomputerlab I tend to find the optical output on my Live not to work properly in all games, especially in DOS (zero volume, if any sound at all, despite mixer and Win9x settings) - the Vortex 2 is pretty great apart from the FM synth. Agreed on the DVI output though - GeForce 4 for instance works absolutely flawless with everything I throw at it, from DOS to XP. But I have had some bad experiences with digital audio in old rigs - and when it comes to some awesome old school stuff (3DFX especially), digital video isn't an option either. That said though, there are ofc PCI cards with digital video outputs, unsure how compatible they are in general with older HW and SW? (Say, a 486 with a PCI card modern enough to output DVI?) Analog audio quality compared to digital though... I definitely won't argue there, the DAC and amplification components used on old sound cards weren't always that great. 😛 nor how the signals were handled.

gooooood

What do you think of the rumors of an upcoming HL2 prequel/HL1 Sequel? I personally won't believe it until it is available for purchase, but I find the idea interesting.

@@Dr_Andracca tha will be very goooooood

**screams at the headcrab plushie, runs from room**

Maybe it's Lamar and is debeaked? ;)

HL , CS1.6 fraps can capture that if you have a lot free space on hdd

The feeling mutual!

Oh dear, sounds like integrated audio to me. Very annoying when you work with audio, but also kinda funny when you'd load something up from a CD and you could hear the drive ramping up through your headphones. Sounds you'd only hear in an old arcade game haha. (: Oddly enough though, it was only the front panel that'd be affected. The rear panel sounded fine to me. Might've been some weird interference that caused that.

Hi All. Yes one of my older machines does it, i cant recall if it is the Dell 2400 when using win98 ( it triple boots dos , win98 win 98 ) or the Gateway 2000 Pentum 2 - 233 in 98, i am not sure if that machine has built in audio, as i am still running SB16 and the SB propritory 2x cdrom, everytime i move the mouse it makes a noise

That was like my SB live 24bit. I could loudly hear the frame rate and boy was it high pitched when playing ut2004 hitting 600fps in some parts back in the day lol. SB - frame rate too high ! "autistic screeching!!" Turned out to be a dodgy AGP slot so I fixed it by modding my case's card slot screw hole location so I could mount my 6600GT at a angle to make proper contact with the pins in the slot. It also fixed the weird missing textures and BSOD I used to get in some games lol

@@pierdeer that is not limited to integrated audio. A lot of old systems can have noise on the ISA bus, that gets coupled into the analogue portion of soundcards. To mitigate that you have to plug the soundcard in the farthest slot from anything else and then shuffle around or replace cards until the noise is either gone or at least weakened enough to be satisfactory.

i had that using my 1979 pioneer receiver connected directly to my pc integrated audio, a little ground loop transformer disabled the noise.

I found mine in pretty bad condition in the flea market. After a cord swap and a deep cleaning it was back to life, still alive after almost 10 years.

First thing I saw!

LGR already did a review of a pink woman body mouse. It was a very funny video

Thumbs up for MX518. Mine died too...

Luna Tulpa That's cropped porn I bet

@@nap8187 sure is :3

Currently a Ducky One2 with Cherry MX Blues