CapView 2.0
The settings now show what the source can actually use, and the first run says hello instead of opening ten tabs of options.
The settings adapt to what is plugged in
Nothing but the device picker until a device is picked. Everything else — standard, input, audio, format, and the nine other tabs — describes a card, and there is not one yet. A no device entry in the dropdown makes that state reachable without editing the configuration by hand.
Once a card is running, controls that cannot apply are absent rather than greyed out. A disabled control still has to be read and dismissed.
And absent means inactive. Move from a SNES to an HD console and the dot crawl filters and the pixel grid stop acting on the picture — otherwise you would be looking at something you did not ask for with no control anywhere to change it, the control having gone precisely because it does not fit. The values stay in the profile, because a profile describes a console and that console will be back. They are not restored on the way out and back: the next analogue source may be a different console, so restoring would be a guess.
Measured with a native width of 256 against a 1080p source: with the signal type forced to Analogue the grid applies and a row shows 55 column transitions; on Automatic, where 1080 lines cannot have come from an analogue decoder, the same row shows 240.
| Shown when | |
|---|---|
| Native pixel grid, composite filter | the source is analogue |
| Scanlines and CRT mask | the source is 576 lines or fewer |
| Deinterlacing | the source has fields |
| HDR source curve, source peak | the source is not analogue |
Two of those deliberately do not key on analogue versus digital, because the obvious rule is wrong in both directions. Scanlines go by line count: a RetroTINK or a MiSTer hangs off HDMI at 480p and its owner is precisely who wants them. Deinterlacing goes by whether there are fields: 1080i and 480i exist over HDMI too.
The HDR tab is split rather than hidden. The source half — which transfer curve arrives, how bright the source peaks — is meaningless for an analogue decoder and goes away. The display half stays, because it is not about the source: with the desktop in HDR mode an SDR picture still has to be written into the HDR container at a chosen white level, or it comes out too dim or too bright. That is as true of a SNES as of anything else.
Automatic now looks at the picture, not just at the card. Having an analogue decoder is not the same as using it. On a hybrid card both inputs sit on one board, the decoder is reported either way, and a console at 1080p60 over the digital input was being treated as an analogue source. No analogue standard produces more than 576 lines, so anything taller did not come from one.
One profile per console, and an easier way to make one
A profile holds everything — device, card input, video standard, capture format, and every picture and audio setting — and Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9 switch between them. Almost nothing carries over between consoles: a SNES over composite wants the four-frame average, the demodulator, a native width of 256 and PAL at 50 Hz; a Switch over HDMI wants none of that. Set both up once and swapping a cable is one keystroke.
Save current as … replaces Duplicate. Connecting a second console almost never means starting over — you change what is different and want to keep the result, while an empty profile forces you to set up everything that was already right. It asks for a name with the cursor already in the field, and Enter confirms.
A welcome screen on the first run
Ten tabs of options are the worst possible first thing to see. The first run opens on a welcome screen instead — the same screen as "no signal", but the line underneath says which key opens the settings rather than reporting that something is missing. Nothing is missing the first time.
From the second run onward the old shortcut returns and a missing device opens the settings directly, because by then it is a problem rather than a greeting.
A separate settings window by default
It has a Direct3D device of its own and is therefore fully decoupled from the preview: nothing it does can affect the preview's pacing, and the preview's size and position do not constrain it. It can go on a second monitor.
The embedded panel stays, and not only for taste — a window capture in OBS cannot see a second window.
Screenshots can keep the interface
A screenshot has always been the picture itself: source resolution, after crop and deinterlacing, taken between the first draw pass and the interface, so no toolbar, statistics overlay or toast could reach the file. There was no way to capture the window as it stands.
Include the interface, in the Recording tab, moves the grab to the far side of that line — after the interface is drawn and before the frame is presented, which is the only moment the back buffer holds the finished window. Two consequences worth knowing before turning it on: the result is the size of the window rather than of the source, and it is always SDR. With HDR output the back buffer is scRGB in half floats, and rather than convert that by untested colour maths the grab is refused, the picture alone is saved, and the message says so.
Measured on a Switch at 1920x1080: off, the file is 1920x1080; on, it is 1280x1176 — the window — with the statistics overlay in it.
Fixed
The embedded panel ran at 4.7 frames a second with no capture device. It is drawn by the same loop that draws the video, and that loop's idle floor of 200 ms is right for a picture that is not changing and wrong for an interface that has to respond. The floor now asks what is on screen: an embedded panel, the crop overlay, a toast or the volume display each want 16 ms. Measured, no device: 4.7 fps before, 58.6 after, and 4.6 again once the panel is closed, so a genuinely idle screen still costs nothing.
Since 1.9
Reinitialise card, and two other places where a video standard was travelling to an input it says nothing about — a card that seemed stuck between decoder profiles after moving between analogue and digital. Confirmed on a StarTech PEXHDCAP60L: switch from composite to DVI, press it, and 1920x1080 at 60 is found on its own.
The crop overlay's dimming no longer paints over its own Apply and Cancel buttons.
Full detail in the wiki.