marshcritter | capture setup

(originally posted 06.13.24 / updated 10.29.24)

composite splitter cable
RCA AV to HDMI Converter [480p and 4:3 compatible]
USB3.0 Capture Card
[generic USB2.0 capture cards also work, i just prefer the cable design here]

i'm using a composite to HDMI converter and capture card rather than just a composite capture card as they supposedly don't work well with Linux at the moment.

the converter defaults to 720p + 16:9 modes and doesn't save settings when unplugged, so it's required to press the button to switch to 480p every time after plugging it in. 16:9 mode seems to properly letterbox the 480p signal when resoultion is set to 720x480 in OBS, while 4:3 mode will letterbox properly in 1280x720.
--however, i've found that the original Xbox (usually, some games like JSRF output a different resolution) is only letterboxed properly in 720p 4:3 mode.

the capture card works out of the box using the OBS Flatpak as long as it's detected as a USB2 device. when detected as USB3 i couldn't get it to work properly, but thankfully (at least when using the included USB-A adapter) it's only USB3 in one orientation- so the USB-C cable can be plugged into the adapter upside-down to use it in USB2 mode. i also needed to manually set the resolution to 720x480, as it doesn't seem to auto detect the proper resolution (defaults to 1080p).

theres about a 4 frame delay between my LCD TV and the capture card, including audio- so if i need low latency audio then it'd be better to split the audio directly to line-in on the pc (however then i'd need to do some fiddling with sync in OBS)

Video Capture Device (V4L2) Properties
Video Format: YUYV 4:2:2*
Resolution: 720x480
Color Range: Full
Saturation: 70 (default is too desaturated)
*i've found that if the video format is set to anything other than Motion-JPEG, capture card resolutions higher than 480p are pretty much unusable (at least in this configuration).

i've also tinkered with capturing via VLC, but it requires quite a bit more manual setup and doesn't seem worth my time at the moment.