50+ console capture card solution help planning

[gravatos]

Budget (including currency): $1500usd target. Can go higher if that is what is needed.

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: I am trying to capture a massive number of game consoles simultaneously. 240p/480i 60hz composite or S-Video is what each feed is. 

Other details: I already have all the consoles and a way to feed inputs to all of them. Main issue is how to capture and view this many screens at once. A slight secondary issue is how to flip on this many power sockets at once to sync the start time of the systems.

Capture info: 50+ feeds of 240p/480i 60hz composite/s-video. I have nothing for this at this time. Hoping to keep latency within several frames. I have considered CCTV capture cards but all the ones I find are very vague about what they support and what is needed to use them on the software side. It also doesn't need to be capture cards really, could just be a screen solution to view this much at once and then point a camera at it.

I currently have 1 computer that I could use for this although PCIE ports are limited so would likely need to come up with some way to split that. (ryzen 3700x and a 2070super)

The secondary concern of powering consoles I assume will be through a couple of power strips that are then switched on by some relay I can control. Total power draw of consoles is about 1700 watts so will be running off of 2 circuit breakers for safety sake as that is nearing the 15A load for residential.


Any recommendations or thoughts on this would be very helpful, Thank you.

 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Im not sure how to capture the consoles, but....

You need to make sure you dont run 1700w off one or two breakers. You also want fuses all over that thing.

Since power strips ARE NOT fuses, dont just sue those. If you cant find fused  extention cables, use christmas lights on each console after the power strips. Those are safer than your normal extention cable, they have fuses.

 

 

Btw what consoles are those?

[gravatos]

1 minute ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Im not sure how to capture the consoles, but....

You need to make sure you dont run 1700w off one or two breakers. You also want fuses all over that thing.

Since power strips ARE NOT fuses, dont just sue those. If you cant find fused  extention cables, use christmas lights on each console after the power strips. Those are safer than your normal extention cable, they have fuses.

 

 

Btw what consoles are those?

Old stuff like SNES/genesis so composite video or svideo are what I have available. 1700W is still under 14A total so should be fine split across only 2 breakers. A space heater often is as high as 1500W and your microwave is likely around 1000W so each breaker would be getting less than a microwave with 2. Capture stuff would be its own third or fourth breaker depending how it works out.

[emosun]

What are you using for a mixer to mix 50 signals into one

[gravatos]

28 minutes ago, emosun said:

What are you using for a mixer to mix 50 signals into one

Partially depends on the capture setup as some capture cards will take audio as well so it would be handled at that level. Alternatively looking for a separate mixer to take this many channels of audio... That would be expensive so might DIY some crappy solution instead if needed. I wouldn't need your typical mixing options in this instance probably. At most mute switches for channels would maybe be nice.

[emosun]

1 hour ago, gravatos said:

Partially depends on the capture setup as some capture cards will take audio as well so it would be handled at that level. Alternatively looking for a separate mixer to take this many channels of audio... That would be expensive so might DIY some crappy solution instead if needed. I wouldn't need your typical mixing options in this instance probably. At most mute switches for channels would maybe be nice.

no a video mixer not an audio one

[gravatos]

3 hours ago, emosun said:

no a video mixer not an audio one

Didn't know that was a thing really beyond the instances of PBP and PIP on monitors/TVs. Can you point me to some examples or search terms that are useful for finding such things? So my line of thought was get 64 capture cards (less for things that take multiple) and then have this as 64 sources in OBS and just tile them side by side.

[emosun]

no computer is going to have the bandwidth for 64 captures running all at once even if they were at standard definition. you'll either need to capture them at VERY reduced quality or premix all of the signals proior to capture which of course will reduce the quality automatically.

right now capturing 50 standard def signals would be the equivalent of capturing a single 6400x2400 @ 60 signal which might be possible if you can find a capture device that goes way beyond 4k and a machine fast enough to save that kind of file. but capturing that with 50 devices is just silly to think the machine could manage that many devices at once.

your initial idea of just using security camera mixers to premix the signal might not be a bad idea , you;d only need 7 security base stations to mix the feeds , then one to mix the 7 feeds , then one pc to capture the output from the last mixer. The quality wouldnt be good but I'm assuming if someone is capturing 50 devices at once quality wasn;t really the initial idea of the captures.

[gravatos]

I would like the quality to be fairly decent so each source still looks reasonable. It is old consoles so the graphics aren't amazing to begin with. It doesn't seem like that much bandwidth though. In total it shouldn't be more than 4k 60. Say an 8x8 grid of displays would only be 240x320 x8 so 1920x2560. Or for 480i that's 540x640 but only half of the lines per frame so treat it like 30hz really, 8x8 that its still 5120x3840 so a bit over double the resolution of 4k but its interlaced so you're only drawing half of that frame at once so should be just a bit above 4k 60.