Help with Magewell USB Capture HDMI 4K Plus in Resolume Avenue

[Lumenarius]

We have a permanent installation that makes use of the Magewell USB Capture HDMI 4K Plus with Resolume Avenue to provide live video input from other source devices like a laptop.

The system is using the latest Avenue with the latest Mac OS and is on a Mac Studio with Resolume feeding signal into MadMapper over Syphon.

We have been experiencing issues with the reliability of this setup and would like to explore potential solutions.

The main issue is that the link between the Magewell and Avenue "decays" after an arbitrary amount of time or system restarts.

We will get it working great, for months at a time, and then for whatever reason the next time it is opened the Live Input is no longer working. It is just blank and most notably the resolution setting is missing for the Live Input in the clip settings. We can confirm no changes to the file have been made as it all automatically loads and starts at system boot.

The initial work around was to instruct the client to drag a new instance of the USB Capture from the Source panel onto the previously working clip itself and then manually select the correct resolution.

This has been work around has been suitable for some months but now it is no longer working either.

We have also tried clearing/deleting the Live Input clip and then dragging in a new fresh one and that does not seem to be working either.

We are currently trying every combination of restarting, unplugging, replugging, and nothing seems to be working anymore.

We can confirm that the Magewell capture device is functional and that it can be picked up by the Magewell Capture Utility. The status lights are on, the source computer recognizes it is being plugged in, etc.

Here are some specific questions:

1) Is this a known issue between Magewell devices and Resolume Avenue?

2) Are there better capture cards available that are known to work 100% with Resolume Avenue?

3) Would another program, such as MadMapper (even though not using the Magewell at all), conflict with Resolume Avenue trying to read from it?

4) Are there other troubleshooting steps we can perform in order to diagnose the issue and fix it?

Thank you for any input on this subject.

[Lumenarius]

If anyone other than the above bot has anything to add that would be very valuable. Thanks!

[Lumenarius]

After much troubleshooting the only solution we have been able to find is to manually unplug the Magewell unit, plug it back in, and then rebuild the Resolume file from scratch.

This is of course a lot of friction and for a $500 HDMI capture device and the world's best VJ software we will continue to look for a better solution so our client does not have to manually do this ever 24-48 hours indefinitely.

If anyone has direct experience with these HDMI capture cards inside of Resolume, including alternative models, that would be great to learn about.

[cosmowe]

I don't know exactly what your installation should do...
So therefore I don't know if my suggestion is suitable for you or not.

Did you think about getting rid of the HDMI capture card and trying to achieve it with an NDI input instead?

Bring the devices into the same network, install NDI Tools on the laptop,
set up Screen Capture (incl. autostart capture),
and add the NDI source into your composition.

And sorry, I don't have another suggestion for your Avenue/Magewell situation. I own two older Magewell HDMI dongles from the first generation, and they're still working fine. I have to admit, I haven't used them in a permanent installation.

Best wishes
cosmowe.

[Lumenarius]

Hi Cosmowe,

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. Troubleshooting is the nature of this realm and it's good to know you have had success with these devices in general in the past.

NDI input is definitely something I am considering recommending though it does add a little bit of complexity to the setup. Also, in my experience, there can be a little bit of lag with NDI though it may be negligible and ultimately I need to do more testing to be sure.

Okay after doing some testing...

I think that the NDI approach is actually more robust. Especially as it can capture windows on the host computer.

More testing will be necessary at scale to ensure reliability and performance.

Ultimately as long as the NDI source does not decay or disappear such that the show file needs to be amended each time we are good to go.

[Zoltán]

Are you changing which USB the capture card is connected before it breaks?

[Lumenarius]

Thank for the reply Zoltan.

I can confirm that no cables are being unplugged or re-plugged to trigger this issue. It's all in a server rack and the client never reaches in to change anything. There is also no USB hub in the way it's direct to the computer using the OEM USB C cable.

The only thing I can think of currently is that maybe it's static electricity?

We're exploring a few other solutions like NDI but that just means more client training and it would be great to see this Magewell device run stable as it used to in our testing lab.

When I get back to the office I am going to try 100 ish power cycles of a similar system we have and see if I can get it to trip up on my own.