# Capturing PAL video with an SDR (and a few dead-ends)

DevFeed: [Capturing PAL video with an SDR (and a few dead-ends)](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/capturing-pal-video-with-an-sdr-and-a-few-dead-ends-21655.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://www.windytan.com/2019/08/capturing-pal-video-with-sdr-and-few.html>)

Author: Oona Räisänen (noreply@blogger.com)

Published: 2019-08-24T18:30:00Z

Content type: tutorial

Language: en

Sources: [Oona Räisänen](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/oona-raisanen.md>)

Topics: [Hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/hardware.md>), [Software](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/software.md>)

Tags: [camera](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/camera.md>), [capture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/capture.md>), [devices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/devices.md>), [finland](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/finland.md>), [github](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/github.md>), [hardware](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/hardware.md>), [mac](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mac.md>), [programming](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/programming.md>), [radio](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/radio.md>), [video](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/video.md>)

## AI overview

A project diary explores ways to capture PAL video from a Nintendo NES on a MacBook. It discusses unsuccessful or limited capture-device options and records a CRT television and manually configured DSLR camera setup that produced usable video, with some low-frame-rate jerkiness.

## Source excerpt

I play 1980s games, mostly Super Mario Bros., on the Nintendo NES console. It would be great to be able to capture live video from the console for recording speedrun attempts. Now, how to make the 1985 NES and the 2013 MacBook play together, preferably using hardware that I already have? This project diary documents my search for the answer. Here's a spoiler - it did work: Things that I tried first A capture device Video capture devices, or capture cards, are devices specially made for this purpose. There was only one cheap (~30EUR ) capture device for composite video available locally, and I bought it, hopingly. But it wasn't readily recognized as a video device on the Mac, and there seemed to be no Mac drivers available. Having already almost capped my budget for this project I then ordered a 5EUR  EasyCap device from eBay, as there was some evidence of Mac drivers online. The EasyCap was still making its way to Finland as of this writing, so I continued to pursure other routes. PS: When the device finally arrived, it sadly seemed that the EasyCapViewer-Fushicai software only supports opening this device in NTSC mode. There's PAL support in later commits in the GitHub repo, but the project is old and can't be compiled anymore as Apple has deprecated QuickTime. Even when they do work, a downside to many cheap capture devices is that they can only capture at half the true framerate (that is, at 25 or 30 fps). CRT TV + DSLR camera The cathode-ray tube television that I use for gaming could be filmed with a digital camera. This posed interesting problems: The camera must be timed appropriately so that a full scan is captured in every frame, to prevent temporal aliasing (stripes). This is why I used a DSLR camera with a full manual mode (Canon EOS 550D in this case). For the 50 Hz PAL television screen I used a camera frame rate of 25 fps and an exposure time of 1/50 seconds (set by camera limitations). The camera will miss every other frame of the original 50 fps video, but