Resolutions, capture rates and aspect ratios

User Guide

Resolutions, capture rates and aspect ratios

The resolution (also known as frame size or display mode) of a video signal, digital image, TV screen, computer monitor or other display device is a count of the number of pixels displayed horizontally and vertically. For example the resolution 1920×1080 (which is 1080p) creates an image that is 1920 pixels wide and 1080 pixels tall.

The aspect ratio of an image describes the proportional relationship between its pixel width and height. The resolution 1920×1080 (1080p) is quite a bit wider than it is tall. The ratio of its width to height is 16 to 9, represented as an aspect ratio 16:9.

AV.io 4K outputs resolutions in commonly supported aspects ratios. The table below is a color-coded legend for interpreting the two tables of product resolutions below it:

Aspect Ratio	Common Use
4:3	Standard TV (NTSC/PAL) display and non-widescreen computer displays
16:9	Widescreen (HD) TV displays (1080p, 1080i, 720p etc), and 4K-capable displays
16:10 (8:5)	Widescreen computer displays, and 4K-capable displays
5:4	Sometimes used in larger format computer monitors
1.90:1	Digital Cinema Initiatives standard resolution for 4K or 2K video projection

AV.io 4K accepts the following inputs by default:

640×480	1024×768	1280×720	1280×800
1280×1024	1440×900	1600×1200	1920×1080
1920×1200	2048×1080	3840×2160	4096×2160

If you're using an input resolution that is not on this list, it might still be possible to capture. However, the video might be stretched, or scaled to a different size and surrounded by black letter-boxing, based on the software and your configuration settings. Read Configure settings using AV.io Config tool for more detail.

AV.io 4K generates a list of the following possible resolutions for your capture application to select for output display:

640×360	640×480	960×540	1024×768
1280×720	1280×1024	1600×1200	1920×1080
1920×1200	2048×1024	2560×1440	2560×1600
3200×1800	3840×2160	4096×2160

Captured video content is output to your application, depending on your resolution and color space, at 5, 10, 15, 20, 23.97, 24, 25, 29.97, 30, 50, 59.94 or 60 frames per second (your application chooses one of these frame rates) when captured over USB 3.0.

When capturing 4K resolutions we recommend using a computer with an Intel USB host controller (this is the most common type) to achieve the best results. With other USB host controllers such as ASM, AMD, VIA, Renesas, Eltron, Fresco and TI, capture will be at 79% to 96% of the expected frame rate.