the osprey-500 is the first professional-grade video capture card designed specifically for streaming. developed in collaboration with microsoft, the osprey-500 provides higher quality audio and video than traditional analog audio/video capture devices. particularly notable, the osprey-500 provides this data to the host in formats most optimal for encoding without additional cpu utilization, thus leaving more cpu bandwidth for the actual encoding process.

    the osprey-500 provides to the host application the following:

    digital video from an sdi video source

    decompressed dv video from ieee-1394 dv video devices

    video from s-video/composite sources

    digital audio from a digital audio source (aes/ebu, s/p-dif)

    digital audio from ieee-1394 dv video devices

    audio from balanced or unbalanced analog sources

    the osprey-500 also offers optional hardware based video processing.

   

    in hardware the osprey-500 can scale and color convert video, and it can perform a video filter operation. the filter is basically a de-interlacing operation. the benefit of the de-interlacing operation is twofold:

    provide full resolution de-interlacing of video from interlaced sources, thus eliminating typical interlaced artifacts.

    provide more motion content in resolutions less than or equal to cif. in typical existing video capture devices, resolution captures of less than or equal to cif resort to only a single field capture. the video filter provides for higher motion content than a single field capture without jagged/stair-step edges.

    starting with software release 1.0.6, the osprey-500 can be utilized with any vfw or directshow based audio/video application. for example, the osprey-500 can be used with:

    windows media encoder to produce .asf and .wmv encoded files

    realproducer to create .rm encoded files

    sorenson broadcaster to create quicktime encoded files

    and a variety of avi based capture programs to generate .avi files.

    starting with software release 2.1, the osprey-500 is simulstream capable. simulstreaming is an added-cost upgrade that allows the driver to capture and display video and audio to multiple destinations from a single card. please see the simulstreaming user’s guide which is installed in the osprey 500 program group for details about this feature.