Topic: Gamecube on computer via s-video

[starkat2k]

Hi everyone,

I don't have a TV, and I want to buy a Gamecube, and connect it to my computer with an s-video cable. My video card has s-video inputs and outputs on it.  It's a Gainward GeForce4 Ti4800 SE, with VIVO s-video.

My question is: how will I be able to view the image on my computer? Is there a program or utility I can find that I can use to watch it on my computer?  I searched the installation CD that came with the video card, and there's nothing on it that I could use.

Please help! This will influence whether or not I buy a Gamecube.

thanks
starkat  

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

First, check to make sure that your graphic card supports things like "video capture" or "tv tuner".  If so, then yes you can connect a GameCube via the S-video-IN port.  But the audio cables will have to be connected to the "line-in" port of your sound card, or connected to an external speaker system.

The program "FreeVCR" (or Free VCR) will let you watch the video that's connected to your capture/graphics card.  Bear in mind that video images that are meant to be seen on TV don't look so good when viewed thru a computer's tv tuner/video capture hardware.  You will lose image clarity and color vibrance.

[jalman64]

Quote
 First, check to make sure that your graphic card supports things like "video capture" or "tv tuner". If so, then yes you can connect a GameCube via the S-video-IN port. But the audio cables will have to be connected to the "line-in" port of your sound card, or connected to an external speaker system.

The program "FreeVCR" (or Free VCR) will let you watch the video that's connected to your capture/graphics card. Bear in mind that video images that are meant to be seen on TV don't look so good when viewed thru a computer's tv tuner/video capture hardware. You will lose image clarity and color vibrance.

When you do have some way of inputting the video into your computer, look into a program I've read much about called DScaler; what DScaler does is takes the interlaced S-Video signal, which is fine for normal TVs, but not that good for computer monitors, and can covert that signal into a progressive signal for your monitor.   Unfortunately, I haven't really used this as I don't have a TV Tuner yet so I can't comment on any kind of picture quality.

Hope that helps.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

DScaler is great if your video input hardware presents that interlacing problem.  But if your hardware is like mine, say something made by Matrox or Pinnacle/Miro, then your video feed is already processing in an interlaced format via a special video overlay layer, so the scanline/interlace display problem is eliminated and there's no need for DScaler at all.

But if DScaler IS necessary for your situation and is used, videogames running at 60fps will experience quailty degredation:  either it'll get cut to 30fps, or there'll be a mess of scanlines since I bet DScaler won't know what to do with a 60fps feed.  This is due to a 60 fps video feed only displaying 60 unique interlaced fields each second (provided that you don't have expensive video capture hardware that accepts component video with progressive scan capture).  Since the fields are unique, there are no progressive frames to recover, which means DScaler can't do its job: recovering progressive frames.

[THE_BLINK_EFFECT]

or you could buy a TV tuner card then you could play it on your PC.

[NinGurl69 *huggles]

TV tuner, video input: practically the same thing.