New Hardware Announcement: Mobile Capture with Digital Foundry HDScope

March 22nd, 2009

Digital Foundry is pleased to announce its new entry-level unit, designed for ultra-mobile, quality-focused high definition capture. Primarily aimed at video games media outlets, HDScope is a portable computer with an integrated 7″ widescreen touchscreen display, measuring just 30.5 x 20 x 18.5cm and weighing around 5kg. Simply plug into the mains, connect to any component or unencrypted HDMI source and you’re instantly recording superb quality video.
HDScope works best with 720p, but also supports 480i/576i and 1080i. Video and audio passthrough allows you to use HDScope as an intermediate ‘bridge’. Connect your source to the unit, and the unit to your HD display and you have full realtime gameplay on the main screen while HDScope’s touchscreen is used for preview and recording functionality.
Digital Foundry’s customary support for CineForm HD is included, along with two lossless codecs - the freeware UT Codec Pack and the shareware AMV Codec.  AMV also includes multiple lossy options; not quite in CineForm’s league for ultra-precision capture, but still remarkable. All recorded clips can be played back in realtime on HDScope’s integrated touchscreen.

Digital Foundry HDScope, capturing Dead or Alive 4 on Xbox 360. All recording functionality can be carried out via 7″ LCD touchscreen, with AV passthrough options allowing you to retain gameplay on the big screen. Keyboard, mouse and monitor can also be attached, transforming HDScope into a powerful small form factor PC.

HDScope’s performance on 720p video is akin to TrueHD in its YPrPb 4:2:2 mode. The new hardware lacks signature Digital Foundry 24-bit RGB support, as this is an entry level product with a corresponding feature set, but the quality level is still exemplary. Here’s a quartet of Dead of Alive 4 shots. DOA’s lack of anti-aliasing, it’s mind-melting strobing colour schemes and ultra-fast v-locked 60fps gameplay make it a nightmare to compress - ideal testing material. Click on the thumbnails for full 720p screenshots taken directly from the captured video.

The top shots show CineForm compression at work, revealing that even in this ultra-stress test, it’s still the best quality vs filesize codec in town. The shots at the bottom are extracted from lossless captures acquired by the HDScope in the same session.

Some random HDScope facts: universal power supply means it’ll work anywhere worldwide… CineForm compression means optimum quality and at least 20 hours of 720p60 video at ultra-precision quality on HDScope’s 1TB hard disk… includes typical Digital Foundry variable frame rate selection - why capture a 30fps game at 60fps and waste valuable hard disk space?… use HD Fury 2 to capture from any HDCP encrypted source…  inexpensive adaptor available to capture Wii 480p… carry case also available!

Should HDScope prove to be popular, expect a TrueHD 1080p capable unit to be introduced.

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New Hardware Announcement: 1080p Notebook Capture with TrueHD Mobile

December 17th, 2008

Take a custom-built notebook, an ExpressCard to PCI Express interface and the Digital Foundry TrueHD Express capture card and this is what you have - 1080p video acquisition in a complete package that weighs just 3.2kg. They say that a picture’s better than a thousand words, so let’s up the ante a touch with a hastily put-together, but quite illuminating video.

A welcome return to our old friend Ridge Racer 7, capturing directly into the CineForm codec at 1080p via TrueHD Mobile. To give some sense of scale, that’s a 13.3″ sub-notebook.

No hardware has been altered here. You can remove the TrueHD Express card from the enclosure, and run it in your PC for all the benefits outlined here. But card performance on the notebook is reduced from PCIe x4 bandwidth down to PCIe x1. In real terms, that’s 720p60 and 1080p30 at 8-bit YUY2 (courtesy of CineForm compression) and 720p30 and 1080p15 at 24-bit RGB, via the lossless codec. Bearing in mind speed limitations on notebook hard disks, you can’t really ask for much more. While the notebook can run from batteries, the enclosure itself requires mains power, that’s pretty much the only major limitation.
Otherwise, as it’s the same hardware, there’s support for component, VGA, DVI and HDMI and crucially, the quality of the assets between desktop TrueHD and the mobile iteration remains identical.

A selection of Ridge Racer 7 1080p screenshots taken directly from the TrueHD Mobile captures encoded in the CineForm codec. Quality level is identical to the standard-setting desktop version. Click on the thumbnails for the full-size shots.

So… obvious question out of the way first. Why custom-build the laptop? The short answer is that my Dell XPS M1330, using the same core parts, didn’t work properly. I’d expect the same to be true of many different notebooks, depending on the BIOS. Right now I’d also rule out using Vista for the OS too. It drains too much power, particularly on the graphics card. Our realtime scalable preview window needs all the juice it can get there.
Things might (probably) change with the new Centrino 2 based notebooks - higher FSB, faster CPUs, more memory bandwidth. You’re looking at a Core 2 system of 2.6GHz or better, integrated GPU, and a nice, fast SATA notebook drive to allow the hardware to truly flourish.

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Digital Foundry on the Big, Bright Screen

September 19th, 2008

Question: how do you go about displaying real time PlayStation 3 gameplay on a screen the size of a wall? That’s the intriguing question posed by my new friends at Belgium big-screen specialists Brightboard. The obvious answer would be to use projection, but in daylight conditions, obviously this would be a complete waste of time.
Brightboard specialise in the use of LED screens - similar to the kind of displays used in football pitch ad hoardings, and also for displaying advertising in city centres. Such screens are absolutely enormous and require dedicated PCs to control the image. That being the case, direct connection from console to screen is not the solution - a capture card, interfaced with the LED screen’s controller is. Enter Digital Foundry TrueHD Express.
This was a great case to work on. Brightboard sent me a copy of their controller software and with just a couple of registry tweaks to the TrueHD driver I was able to get realtime PS3 gameplay working with no problem whatsoever. However, without an actual screen to work with, positive results could not be guaranteed, so it was with some trepidation that the TrueHD Express card was sent to Belgium…

Success! Click on the pics for some idea of just how massive that LED screen actually is. Multiple screens can be daisy-chained together for an even more colossal image.

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Pushing Back the Boundaries

July 19th, 2008

An exhausting week with over 800 miles covered across the UK, but plenty to get excited about. First of all, I recently upgraded to CineForm’s Prospect HD editing solution; loaded up Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, and imported a few 1080p60 captures into the timeline. Lo and behold, not only is Digital Foundry TrueHD the only high definition capture system on the market capable of the most extreme resolutions and frame rates, it’s also capable of doubling up as a realtime HD workstation.
Yup, 1080p60 streams on the timeline, playing back in realtime…. while conforming the audio at the same time. Bearing in mind that Prospect HD gives you change from $1,000, this is a pretty staggering state of affairs - especially as I believe that an overclocked Q6600 based system running in the region of 3GHz, combined with RAM running at 1066MHz will also do the job. It’s a theory I’ll put to the test sometime next week, but with Intel’s new Nehalem hardware coming along, I’m all but certain that mid-range consumer level kit will soon be outperforming the current top-end server-based technology. And that’s fantastic for HD, while posing interesting questions to those of us  in the HD hardware market.
Secondly, a brilliant meeting yesterday with the engineers behind the TrueHD hardware. I went in with a wishlist of stuff that can make the best HD capture solution bar none better yet, and I was amazed at the response. Plans are afoot to include the analogue component support currently absent from the hardware, improve precision 24-bit RGB performance, introduce hardware scaling, and finally, I’m very confident that an iteration of TrueHD will soon be available for notebook users. Bandwidth and CPU limitations prevent full-on 1080p60, but 720p60… 1080p30… some level of support for precision, lossless RGB capture, all the CineForm bells and whistles. It’ll all be there in a package you can fit in a travel bag.
And lastly, in a sleep-deprieved, non-stop week of action, I spent a fantastic day at Criterion Games this week installing their new TrueHD station, demoing its capabilities and helping out with their video encoding on the Crash TV podcast they regularly produce.
If you don’t know, these are the guys behind the Burnout and Black videogame series, pushing back technical boundaries themselves with each new game they release. Any way, check out that podcast on iTunes if you’re in any way interested in games development (search for Crash TV). In an industry increasingly obsessed with PR spin, it’s refreshing to see a bunch of talented developers letting the customer into their world, withholding very little and having some fun at the same time. Having spent a fair amount of time with these guys, a lot of the content is almost back like being in the room with them.

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TrueHD: The Proof of the Pudding

April 4th, 2008

So it’s been a while since I’ve updated with progress on Digital Foundry TrueHD. While the core of the product has been complete for quite some time, there’s been a fair amount of engineering work going on in the background to make the whole thing stable. I’ve been doing a fair amount of beta testing with a client since my January blog entry and I was surprised at how easy it was for me to work around bugs, but not so easy for someone who’s never laid hands on the hardware before. Thankfully now, the system is very robust and I’ve got some great feedback on how to improve the product still further.
Overall though, TrueHD is now good to go, so it’s time for a screenshot or two, this time with a difference. The left hand side of the shot shows a captured image using our lossless 24-bit RGB codec (which supports 720p60 and 1080p30). The right hand side shows the quality we have using CineForm HD (support for any resolution at 60fps up to 1080p). For a complete comparison download both images here. Yet another testament to the quality of CineForm HD, which makes 1080p60 capture possible.
If you’re wondering why I have an obsession with Ridge Racer 7, it’s because it’s a superb way to stress-test 1080p capture. And pretty much the only way we have right now until more advanced gaming hardware hits the market. First of all, it runs consistently at 60fps - give or take the odd dropped frame. Secondly, it’s full raster 1920×1080 while most PS3 titles that offer 1080p support actually run at 960×1080, 1280×1080 or 1440×1080 - if they support 1080p at all. Thirdly, it’s packed with detail, fast motion, and zero anti-aliasing. All of these details combine to make compression an absolute nightmare - in short, it’s the best way to put TrueHD through its paces.
So, with TrueHD effectively done and dusted, what next for Digital Foundry? News early next week. It’s gonna be big, or rather small.

Our old friend Ridge Racer 7 on PS3 versus Digital Foundry TrueHD, captured at 1080p30 in full 24-bit RGB (left) and YPrPb 4:2:2 CineForm HD (right). Click on the image for the full picture.

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