I have a question about direct capture of video from Stern. I ordered two of the AliExpress LVDS to HDMI adapters as well as 2 of the cables. I have installed in my FooFighters and the good news is that the video on the computer through my capture card looks perfect! The bad news is that the video to the actual pinball machine display has a decent amount of artifacting/loss of color bit depth especially in moving scenes with finer color gradients. Is this a normal limitation of this solution? I have tried both adapters and both cables, I have the S1 jumpered (it looks like crap on computer if it is not). It this just the non-superior quality of the LVDS passthrough? If so, no biggie, I will just have to swap a couple cables when not streaming as I wouldnāt want the video on the actual pinball screen to be that distorted. (Yes, it looks perfect again when I go directly to the monitor from Stern board). The video linked shows this issue the best near the end where you can see a purple-ish blob on the thing on top of van and also in the background in the corners. On the computer, this looks perfect. I must say, Jersey Jack and Spooky were so much easier. Stern really needs to add HDMI outs to their system but I would imagine that wonāt come until Spike 3, if ever.
check the quality of the HDMI cable you are using and make sure the cable from the screen into the board is tight. The board will get lots of interference piped in from the HDMI cable that affects the screen, if you have any outside LED flashing lights or anything that generates noise turn it off.
+1 on the HDMI LVDS adaptor from Stern being made available it would solve this as its much better made than the geekworm one.
I basically give up. I have checked all connections multiple times. Used two different LVDS to HDMI cards. Used two different LVDS cables. Used two different HDMI cables. Heck, I even tried it with no HDMI cable but the display on the machine still has artifacting and color bit depth issues. Strangely, the video through HDMI to the computer is PERFECT though. So the inputs to the LVDS converter board have to be correct. It is the output side that is screwing something up. So, I guess it is doing the job for streaming but when I am not streaming, I will have to swap cables to bring the quality back to the machine. A big bummer.
Here is a video that shows both the computer with perfect video and the machines display with the artifacting.
So I get this on my deadpool and Elvira occasionally and itās usually fixed with the cable that normally goes into the motherboard needing to be reseated but Iāve also had one LVDS board that just wouldnāt generate a stable signal back to the screen.
There is a LVDS splitter board that might help here itās mentioned in one of the threads Iāll try and track it down.
So when the ānewā single out board was the only option for a while I used this in my mando without any issues other than its more complex / it may help with the artifacting. But most of my issues (JP2 and GZ) were solved by a better HDMI cable and turning off my crazy LED lights in the shed.
I picked up a ZV-1F when it went into āpre-black fridayā sale. I broke my xc405 that I was using as a DMD camera, so I needed to pick up a replacement. I thought I would test it as a playfield, DMD and LCD camera quickly. These are not fine tuned, it is just quick and dirty.
It was not clear how the fixed lens would perform in these tasks, but the 2x zoom you get at 1080p60 (because it is a 4K sensor) seems to be plenty for the 4 scenarios and the wider angle is probably a little more convenient for some things. Overall, it works fine for anything except trying to zoom in on a game the rig is not on while you are trying to move it. I have not compared them in low-light.
I am barely streaming right now, but I will probably pick up a second one to get rid of my super hacky c922 ri4 HDMI camera.
Judging from the sound, thereās no glass on? One benchmark of a PF camera is how well it handles the āflaringā that occurs around bright lights. Regular glass and a cx405 looks like ass while any higher tier camera is pretty gracious about it.
Iām on the market shopping around for a 2160p60 capture card and came across a brand Iāve never seen before, ACASIS. They have the most impressive line-up of Thunderbolt video capture solutions Iāve ever seen, well in the ātoo good to be trueā category and I wonder if anyone has kicked the tires on these? I mean, 4x1080p60 in an external TB powered chassis, like come on?! ACASIS Thunderbolt Capture Card ā ACASIS Electronics
Ok, that looks pretty damn good if thatās the case. I canāt see the glass anywhere, but I guess this is not a low light environment, as you mentioned.
Iām looking to buy a black friday/refurb PC or laptop for my pinball rig. I (currently) have the following hardware connected to a 2015 MBP which the CPU has basically overheated itself to the point the CPU canāt keep up:
Playfield: logitech brio (4k/30fps, 1080p/60fps)
Player: logitech c922
Score: logitech c920
Mic: blue yeti
So the rig is all usb + wired power. Not really looking to do the wireless thing just yet due to cost and my primary use is rolling the 8020 rig around the garage and inside the house.
I have a nice portable rolling cart
(sort of like this: KUNGSFORS Kitchen cart, stainless steel, 235/8x153/4" - IKEA )
that could potentially lug around a PC with space for a keyboard and monitor on top with the umbilical usb C cord attached to the rigā¦ or I could go with a laptop mounted to the rig. Primarily looking for as cheap as possible to work with what I have, but Iām open to paying incrementally more if upgrading from USB is imminentā¦ So what are some min specs for CPU/GPU/possibly other things like a thunderbolt connection? Iād have at least 8GB of ram which I think would be plenty for just running OBS, but probably drop the few extra bucks for 16GB.
Iām not a total newb about building my own PCs, but I did that for gaming and I donāt know if streaming requirements are similar or significantly different. Thanks so much! (if this is already answered in this huge ass thread I apologize, but anything older than a few months may not apply to current black friday dealsā¦)
This is what Iāve been looking for for my mobile rig!
Iāve ordered one well actually two - they have a Mac supportable version and a windows one so Iāve ordered both as apple silicon is nuts when it comes to hardware video encoding. Will report my findings.
It will be fine but I might add more memory to 32G
Also add a high capacity regular disk if you want to keep local archives of your streams. These are cheap.
However - you might want to grab a second hand Nvida P2000 - most of the top end gaming video cards have some encoding limitations where as the quadro cards do not and if you do stuff like action replay it will put a load of load on the CPU.
RE: memory. Why would I need more memory? Assuming I use it only for streaming I could easily run OBS on my 2015 MBP w/ 16GB, I presume even 8GB would be sufficient? Maybe some people use other helpful programs in tandem to OBS? I used streamelements so all the extra stuff was offloaded to online servicesā¦ please educate me!
RE: disk. Thanks for the suggestion! I have ~40TB NAS so no worries there.
RE: video. Interestingā¦ is this the preferred card for streaming? I could certainly build my own PC as thatās not a common video card to come with a prebuilt specā¦ or maybe with these deals I buy a prebuilt and flip the 3050 for a P2000?
NOTE for the prebuilt above:
PCI Slots (Available/Total)
(0/1) PCI-E x16
(1/1) PCI-E x1
(1/3) M.2
Or were you suggesting getting a mobo with 2 PCI-E x 16 slots? I havenāt built a PC for at least 5 years, do they exist/are they necessary? Iād assume no, and itās easier to buy external video processing, but please correct me as thatās why I made this post.
Iāve found with OBS and Xsplit the more memory the better they run. Also yes often have other stuff running like sound app or web browser etc. 16G is probably fine but they usually use 2x 8 for that meaning if you upgrade you bin those two sticks.
If you are going to use a desktop PC you should definitely use a 4 port encoding card ideally magewell. Iām no expert on gaming systems motherboards but I assumed youād be able to put in a quadro card over a 3d gaming card and that youād have a slot for the PCI capture card?
This is my setup rather than what other folks use and it works well for me (UK Open was shot with a Xeon / quadro workstation setup with 32G of ram and at home I have a Xeon / quadro card setup also).
I would still get a cheap dumb disk for your straming box and have the NAS sync it when you arenāt streaming - last thing you want on streaming is any I/O bottleneck.
Also donāt cheap out on the cables - they are always the root cause of any issue I have!
