This note describes the use of two compact USB2.0/3.0 video capture devices for different purposes:
(1) An analog composite video/audio capture device to convert analog video sources (such as VCR video) to digital form (e.g. MP4, MPEG etc)
(2) An HDMI capture card to capture HD video to digital files MP4 etc
Problems with audio-component capture are discussed. The results apply to Win11 OS.
UCEC USB 2.0 UVC Video Capture: Win11 Config
VHS video capture from a Toshiba SD-V383SC DVD/VCR combo player using OBS Studio 27.2.4 on Win11 Dell Studio 15 XPS 15 9510.
The hardware driver for the video capture device and the default Win11 System/Sound input system settings are:
On Win11, these default sound settings on the XPS 15 laptop caused severe sound dropouts in the captured
audio, even with all audio settings in video capture app OSB Studio disabled except the USB captured audio, as recommended.
It was found that the Realtek Audio Microphone input device in device manager (even though not selected in the System/Sound settings as
shown above), needs to be completely disabled in the System/Sound settings (click the Microphone device and click "don't allow").
After this is done, the Device Manager and Sound Settings change
and the Realtek Microphone device doesn't appear in these settings.
(The Microphone device can easily be renabled in the System/Sound/Advanced/All Sound Devices settings)
:
This fixed the audio dropout problems in the captured video recording. This noise problem also occurred in
the simpler capture app VHS to DVD 3.0 SE and was also fixed with the input sound device settings described above.
The Microsoft Camera app in Win 11 can also be used with the UCEC USB 2.0 UVC device. This app is fairly basic
and automatically detects this device connected to a USB jack. The pict below shows capture of a home VHS NTFC video
at 480p and 30Hz:
VCR Loading/Mechanism
(Toshiba SD-V383SC)
DIDAWE 4K Video Capture: Win11 Config
Video capture from HDMI input to USB3 with Win11 Dell Studio 15 XPS 15 9510 Laptop.
Using different suggested Win11 apps, the captured video worked well (the maximum video output resolution of this capture card is
1080p) but the captured audio was intermittent and choppy with
all applications tested using the basic direct setup with this capture card. The example below used a Samsung S9 smartphone
USB3 to HDMI adapter as the HDMI source, but similar poor audio capture results were obtained using other HDMI input sources
and several video resolution settings in the capture apps:
To capture audio properly as a recorded MP4 file using the basic Win11 Camera app, an approach that works well (but can only capture stereo PCM audio) is to send the HDMI source to a receiver,
in this case a Pioneer VSX-9140TXH
AV receiver and extract the audio using the receiver capability. In this case, the analog audio stereo preamp outputs of the Pioneer
receiver were used. The video HDMI signal from the receiver was connected to the video capture card input (using an HDMI output
of the receiver). The stereo audio preamp output was connected to the mic/line-in of the Dell laptop and in Win11 this allowed that audio input to be the selected input for audio capture. The example below shows this approach being used. Results were reliable capture of audio with negligible latency between video/audio in the original HDMI
source (in this configuration, the audio in the original HDMI signal is converted twice, first by D/A conversion in the receiver followed
by A/D conversion at the laptop line-in). With this receiver, the preamp audio output level was set using the master volume on the receiver, which controls the preamp levels (with the receiver speakers muted). To obtain preamp output line-level signal strength (~ 500mVrms), the receiver
volume level needed to be set at near maximum (0 dB). A useful feature of using an AV receiver is that the input source can be
easily switched at the receiver (including any HDMI inputs as well as analog receiver inputs which are upconverted for HDMI output)
so video capture from essentially any source connected to the receiver is possible:
S9 smartphone HDMI connection to Pioneer receiver HDMI input
Receiver HDMI output and audio preamp stereo outputs
Receiver HDMI output to capture card HDMI input
Receiver preamp output to laptop stereo line-in jack
Capture card USB3 output to USB3 laptop input
