A Captivating Experience.
Progressing to the slightly better news, reducing the input resolution to 2560×1440@60hz allowed XSplit to execute a stable capture with no compromise in either frame rate or size, in other words, the recording generated was legitimate 1440p@60fps footage.
Surprisingly, even when aided by such a generous side order of pixels, the Datapath’s colour reproduction did not quite match that of the Black Magic, this could well be accounted for by XSplit’s frugal encoding rates which, even with the “ultra high” profile applied, never exceeded 25Mbps.
Datapath DVI-DL Unigine Test
Get the Flash Player to see this player.Switching to VLC player and the older MPEG-4 codec and dialing in the values to effect a 1440p output, raised both the bitrate and image quality, though file sizes began to boarder on the unpalatable and recordings would occasionally stall, depositing a steaming mound of digital junk and invoking sonorous cries of anguish.
Note that MP4 files recorded with the Datapath card using VLC player refused to stream when loaded into the flash based plug-in I have installed on this site. I tried several alternative HTML 5 players without success.
Uploading the files to Youtube allowed them to play without issue though any meaningful comparison thereafter was impossible in light Youtube’s unavoidable re-encoding process.
The files did play in Safari on an iPad/iPhone via HTML5 fallback, hence the reason for leaving the player active.
For all others wishing to inspect the original files, as with the Pegasus, please feel most welcome to download the RAR archive(s) below!
Unigine 720 & 1080p Crysis 720 & 1080p Cinebench 720 & 1080p Colors 720 & 1080p
Unigine 1440p Crysis 1440p Cinebench 1440p Colors 1440p
The only way to achieve an bona fide 4k recording with the Datapath that could then be edited, re-encoded and published without the worthless process of up sailing was to turn to VirtualDub and utilize exactly the same codec (x264), version and configuration as for DXTory, ensuring that audio was ensnared in uncompressed form.
Sadly, the DVI protocol’s limit of 30hz at this resolution precludes games from being run at anything above 30fps, frustrating to the casual gamer and wholly repugnant to the expert.
Pros.
- The closest to a genuine hardware based rendition of FRAPS
- Accepts the widest range of resolutions and refresh rates of any solution on test.
- 4k capture possible
Cons
- Quality entirely dependent on third party software and codecs, setup could be complicated
- Very expensive.
- No hardware assisted encoding.
- Only 30hz supported at 4K by virtue of its DVI input.