Review: Magewell XI100DUSB-HDMI Capture dongle

[cosmowe]

Update: Till now I had 9 jobs with this device without any troubles...knocking on wood! knock knock

greetings
cosmowe

[najrock]

recently purchased one of these guys

I am having an issue capturing the signal from a retina MBP on my pc computers

the signal comes up for about a second and then goes black...

this only happens going from my mac into a pc... pc to pc works fine as does pc to mac...

am thinking hdcp may be the culprit here...

about to do some tests with a detective as well as some other cables but figured I would post up here to see if anyone is having a similar problem



edit: throwing a edid detective inline does the trick... still a little bummed that it needs to be there... not sure as to exactly why mac likes to mess with displays so much... any insight to that would be awesome

[najrock]

recently purchased one of these guys

I am having an issue capturing the signal from a retina MBP on my pc computers

the signal comes up for about a second and then goes black...

this only happens going from my mac into a pc... pc to pc works fine as does pc to mac...

am thinking hdcp may be the culprit here...

about to do some tests with a detective as well as some other cables but figured I would post up here to see if anyone is having a similar problem



edit: throwing a edid detective inline does the trick... still a little bummed that it needs to be there... not sure as to exactly why mac likes to mess with displays so much... any insight to that would be awesome

edit 2: latency is pretty bad... unusable for situations where you are going to be capturing incoming vj's and mapping their signal to a LED array... unless there are some settings I do not know about this is not anywhere near the quality of say a datapath card


k so actually... on a different pc there is like NO latency... double checking to see if my ss usb3 ports on my tower are hooked up correctly because on the laptop with the edid this is working great...

[cosmowe]

Hey najrock,
did you updated to the latest firmware? ...They fixed some HDCP problems.

Support Page Magewell

edit 2: latency is pretty bad... unusable for situations where you are going to be capturing incoming vj's and mapping their signal to a LED array... unless there are some settings I do not know about this is not anywhere near the quality of say a datapath card

What is your composition size, what your output resolution....and what resolution is shown in the magewell input in resolume?
What would you guess?...how many frames delay do you have?


Best regards
cosmowe

[najrock]

Hey najrock,
did you updated to the latest firmware? ...They fixed some HDCP problems.

Support Page Magewell

edit 2: latency is pretty bad... unusable for situations where you are going to be capturing incoming vj's and mapping their signal to a LED array... unless there are some settings I do not know about this is not anywhere near the quality of say a datapath card

What is your composition size, what your output resolution....and what resolution is shown in the magewell input in resolume?
What would you guess?...how many frames delay do you have?


Best regards
cosmowe

have not updated, will check right now thanks!



all my comps are 1920x1080 with output resolution the same. The Magewell is coming in at 1920x1080

I think my latency issue is somewhere in my towers usb config... because when I run everything on the laptop I get excellent results...

I would say 2 or three frames... really impressive actually when it is working... colorspace leaves a little to be desired... but its bus powered and smaller than a pack of smokes so who cares

I will report back after I have my tower looked at... but after I got the edid detective inline and hooked it up to my mobile rig I was very impressed... my solution before this was a external mini pcie housing with either a data path or blackmagic card installed... thing was basically as big as my laptop and needed power and cost over 2 grand... this little box is perfect

if the firmware strips the encryption and i can leave my detectives out of it I will be extremely happy

[Andy_Funktioncreep]

We've also just grabbed one of these guys to run alongside our BM capture cards, but have noticed it behaves a bit erratically. Just wondering if anyone else has experienced this issue:

Running on a Macbook Pro (2013) - If we boot the MBP with the capture card plugged in, the image is rock solid at 1080p60, and processor usage is really low (the XI100DUSB-HDMI is the only device plugged in). However, if we boot the MBP, then plug the capture card in (again as the only USB3 device), we get a lot of horizontal banding in the feed, and the processor usage goes through the roof.

Tried with a few different HDMI sources, two Macbook Pros, different USB3 and HDMI cables, and Resolume and Quicktime for capture. Even tried running through a powered USB3 hub to eliminate any power issues. Same thing every time...

Any ideas?

[cosmowe]

Hey Andy,
on page 2/16 of the dongle manual you can find the following

Recommendation: In actual use, first plug HDMI cable, then plug the USB3.0
interface. Because an HDMI signal sources are often not reliable grounding, Ground
and the computer will be relatively large voltage difference, it may cause the signal
source or capture not working properly.

Just an idea....maybe that helps


best regards
cosmowe

[Andy_Funktioncreep]

Cosmowe - Cheers for that. Had tried every combination, but no luck.

Seems we have managed to fix the banding issue though - By flashing the firmware. It was already running the current 1.4.11, and the updater reported that the card was up to date. However, it gave the option to reflash the current firmware and voila - No more banding.

I've gotta say, this is one seriously good capture card for the price!

[cosmowe]

Great news.....!!!!!

[asperi]

Anyone ever run two of these into one laptop?