Image quality for videogame footage

[Deleted User]

Hello,

Yes On the Sony Playstation 2 this is standard defenition. I also found that it is in fact 4-3 not 16-9 aspect ratio as well. I think the Microsoft X-Box 360 outputs into High definition modes, but I have never used one so I am not sure if you configure the frame sizes/rates in the unit’s configuration or if it auto detects ont the monitor which it gets connected to.

When you said recording to 1280x720p does the X-Box 360 and Sony Playstation 3 native output at these sizes?

Rafael would be right that you are blowing up the images to a framesize that is not native to the consoles.

Have you tried capturing as I presume you are in the US to

NTSC Un-compressed 10 bit 4:2:2 SD you could probaly get away with MJPEG or the 8 bit as I think the bandwidth is small for the graphics and are not gaaining anything in 10 bit mode.

Thanks,

Leo

[Rafael Amador]

Yes Leo, the new PS3 is based in the new BlueRay format of SONY and support MPG2 with bigger size and 422. I’ve never extracted images from a PS game but when I picked things fro DVDs (with MPGStreamclip) I’ve exported them in 8/10b Unc. The quality used to be really good. Just keeping the original size.
salud,
rafael

[Deleted User]

Hello,

Yes I thought that was the case. If he captures to Pal/Ntsc/HDv res he should be fine then depending on what model he is outputting.

Thanks,

Leo

[Jim Leonard]

While this may be unrelated to your capture situation, I noticed that the “good” capture you’re referring to is a promotional shot provided by Microsoft themselves — developers usually dump shots like that directly from the framebuffer, ie. no capture at all, just the framebuffer to disk. So a promotional image is not a decent comparison.

That being said, I did notice the second capture you posted had chroma bleed. Did you ever test with a different unit to try to rule out the cause of the problem? (ie. was it the decklink or the xbox)

[Blimblim]

Hi!

I used this shot as a comparison sample because some sites in the US actually get almost the same quality with their videos. I don’t know what hardware they are using, but it’s very very close to how a framebuffer capture looks like.
I’ve done some more testing in the last few days, and I tried switching my 360 to 1080i to see what it would look like. To my surprise, 720p upscaled to 1080i by the 360, captured by the multibridge then deinterlaced and resized to 1280×720 looks *much* better than a straight 720p capture. Take a look:
720p: https://images.xboxyde.com/misc/testcapture/1.png
1080i: https://images.xboxyde.com/misc/testcapture/2.png
No chroma bleed, much more precise capture overall. It looks like capturing in 720p with the Blackmagic Multibridge Express isn’t such a good idea. With the 360 I can output 1080i all the time so I guess I can live with this, but some PS3 games are stuck to 720p max.

As for trying to switch with another unit, I didn’t try it but I’ve seen other captures done by other companies with the same kind of hardware, and it looked the same.

[Stuart Trevor]

I capture uncompressed 720p from PS3 HDMI into a DeckLink Pro and it’s absolutely pin sharp, so I’d guess the weirdness with the Xbox capture is to do with its lack of a digital output and the signal conversions going on before it hits the card. Odd that the progressive capture looks interlaced and vice-versa, again it sounds like a problem internal to the Xbox image processing/output and nothing to do with the capture end of things.

The N3 capture could well have been dumped uncompressed over the network from a 360 dev kit. This’d give them a sharp, uncompressed, in-game capture (look at the aliasing on the ‘wings’) that would be 100% digital.

[Blimblim]

I thought the PS3 only outputted footage via HDMI with HDCP?
Interesting then, I guess I can buy an Intensity card 😀

Anyone knows if the intensite and the multibridge will work together well?

[Stuart Trevor]

Correct, PS3 retail hardware only outputs via HDMI with HDCP very firmly enabled.

[Blimblim]

I forgot to add that I get the exact same video quality with the PS3 720p/1080i output (using RR7), so it’s not a Xbox 360 issue.

[Blimblim]

I see 😉