A.P. Lawrence

Comments /Forum/anonymous18.html


Tue Jun 21 18:44:00 2005: Subject:   TonyLawrence
I know nothing about Xboxes or any games at all, but if I'm supposed to infer that somehow the game is visible on the Mac then Shift-Alt-4, spacebar on the window and click is the method..



Fri Jun 24 10:15:15 2005: Subject:   drag
For the hardware part you'd probably can find a high-quality tv capture device that can interface with the USB port on your Ibook. Since the USB 2.0 high-speed stuff is aviable it's now fast enough to be able to do things like that. Also you could probably find ones that interface thru the firewire port.



There are a couple downsides to this though. Some tv capture stuff will add visual artifacts or compression to the stream, which may be undesirable. Also unless you have a newer Ibook it's likely that I won't have enough cpu to be able to do images at high resolution. Then you have colors and brightness/darkness and such to deal with.

I used a old ATI Wonder VE capture card that I used with my PS2 in Linux.. I had issues with the colors being muted and dark. Not enough contrast.

If you have the ability to try out a few different cards or find reviews it would be very helpfull.

Another thing to think about, I figure, is that with the Xbox you have the ability to run in HDTV mode on many games and I am pretty sure that it would be difficult to find a consumer capture card that can run at those high resolutions and I have more doubt that even a newer Ibook would pack enough punch to realy get the benifit of it. But I would expect that you'd want that so that you'd get the best shots aviable.

Not that I have much experiance with this sort of thing, just that I play around with tv capture cards a bit and I know that some will work with usb high-speed stuff/firewire and some will work with OS X.. but I can't give a recommendation on a specific model or whatnot. But it would be a relatively inexpensive solution (50-200 bucks I am guessing, depending on the model of capture device and features).

For superior results you'd probably want some professional equipment for this sort of thing. People commonly use Apples for non-linear editing and compositing and will resort to powerbooks and iBooks so that they can have mobility. I don't have the foggiest clue about these sort of things, but I'd bet they would work the best. I wouldn't even be suprised if you could rent them or at least find out more about them from a video equipment rental place.

Fri Jun 24 11:28:53 2005: Subject:   TonyLawrence
Ahh, so Xbox is some sort of game thing that normally hooks to a TV.. OK, now it all makes more sense.







Tue Jun 28 21:42:57 2005: Subject:   Nicsmix
Hi drag, thanks a lot for your suggestions. Probably I simply have to spent more time on searching such a high quality tv capture device. Till now capturing the PAL signal would be enough.



If there is any user out there who has made good experiences with a specific device, please give me a hint.

Cheers & thanks again,
Nicsmix

Tue Jul 4 18:18:39 2006: Subject: I am about to try the same thing for the same reason   anonymous
I too, am a freelance writer and was just last week asked to do an article on a new PS2 game for which there were no (or very few) decent screenshots from. I have ordered a TV capture card (USB type) and I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. If you would like to contact me to find out how it works out and what I am able to accomplish with it, please feel free to contact me at tonycipriani (at) northsearesearch (dot) com. I'll be happy to help in any way I can.



--Eric

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