Micomsoft/StarTech Driver Changelog (February 2014)

Micomsoft have not released a new driver since October 8th, 2013. I decided to do some hunting at StarTech and I got lucky. I checked the driver date and it was from February 2014.

Click to enlarge

So... what's new?

1. They worked with the SC-512N1-L and Composite/S-Video worked (even when the PEXHDCAP does not support this). I get the feeling these are somewhat universal drivers for Yuan products that will work for anything if the hardware supports it. This is probably why there is an SDI option even though it has never featured on any Micomsoft hardware besides the more expensive models from Yuan.

2. RGB support in Amarec at both 24 and 32 bit.

YUY2 Screenshot:

YUY2 Click to enlarge

RGB Screenshot:

RGB Click to enlarge

Both of those captured via Lagarith in the respective modes. The RGB capture is actually wrong in colors so stick to YUY2 until it is fixed. However, even if ti was fixed the difference in bandwidth for capturing lossless RGB vs lossless YUY2 is very significant. For the above scene, the bit rate peaked at 407 Mb/s on RGB but just 240 Mb/s over YUY2. I even doubt if 1080p60 RGB is possible with x264vfw.

3. Finally we can toggle between 0-255 and 16-235 (Do not ever use Enhance... you have been warned). For more information on this please click here.

4. NV12 and YV12 selectable in Amarec (although why would you want this when Lagarith/x264vfw can do it). If you do not know, these are 4:2:0 modes.

5. Some new ticky boxes like "SOG" which stands for Sync on green. I don't know much about this but it might be useful for some people. There is also a new "Auto" option which will auto detect a video signal and switch to it.

The driver version on StarTech's website was 1.1.0.5. The driver link is here. Just click the Drivers & Downloads tab.

The old 2013 Micomsoft drivers should be updated soon and you can check that here.