GV-USB2-Driver
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Isaac-Lozano
Mac Driver?
Hello!
As a Mac user who is trying to move my entire workflow (which includes streaming) onto the new M1 Pro MacBook, I'm wondering if there's a way to request a native Mac driver for the GV-USB2? It's a fantastic capture card, but the company only ever developed a Windows driver for it and it won't show up on Mac streaming apps, even if the Mac detects the card itself. Would be great to use it, as I think a ton of people are starting to jump on the new Apple silicon train.
Thank you!
Sorry is that comment for me? I don’t know what you mean by “try build”, it’s a Linux only plugin at the moment.
I'll wait for the time being. IO Data has no plans of making a Mac driver, so sadly I can't use this capture device until someone who knows what they're doing can make a driver for the Mac.
@HiroiSekai Sorry for late response. I thought we could get some hint for porting this driver, if you share build output message.
@OctopusET Sorry for late response. I thought we could get some hint for porting this driver, if you share build output message.
Thank you for looking into this! I'm really sorry, but I may need a little guidance on what to do to acquire said "build output message". I'm not on Linux so I'm not sure what I need to do to get that for you. Once I know how I'd be more than happy to provide it. :)
@OctopusET I did pick up a different card (the August VGB300), but it has poor audio output and very questionably unstable video output. Nothing like what the GV-USB2 did flawlessly on Windows. I also do have the newest Mac hardware and software available, so any inputs I can provide, I'd love to help. Nintendo 64 is such a nightmare to capture well.
@HiroiSekai I can try, but I don't have that much skill. Anyway I will try, if something achieved, I will let you know (Using email or something?).
I think you can try virtual machine with USB passthough. That would be solution for now. Using Windows VM can be also solution or using Linux kernel. You can try VirtualBox, or you can try QEMU virtual machine. If you are not familiar to terminal, but you want to use QEMU you can try UTM.
@OctopusET Amazing, I really appreciate you trying.
The big issue right now is on M1 Pro (generally Apple silicon machines), virtualization is super limited. Parallels is the only app that can do it, and it doesn't run the vanilla standard build of Windows. Linux isn't even supported. Technically it works, but it's insanely unstable and has annoying quirks to it, like if you click off the virtualization window, OBS freezes the source.
Again I'm not savvy in what's required to accomplish this, but if I can provide any testings or logs from my machine that will help overview what's needed on Mac, ask anytime and I'll provide it.
Thanks kindly again!
@HiroiSekai Okay, if I need you when I try something I will let you know what I need and how can you provide things.
BTW, Hey you can try UTM, UTM is based on QEMU and it's works on Apple Silicon chips too. https://github.com/utmapp/UTM I think you can find my email from my GitHub commits, feel free to contact me.
@OctopusET Thanks for letting me know about UTM, I hadn't seen it yet! Tried it out, and it runs virtualization quite nicely without all the clutter that Parallels installs. I ran the capture through that and ran across 2 issues:
- The performance doesn't seem to be well optimized for Apple silicon yet. The capture playback was choppy quite frequently.
- OBS Studio on Mac does not allow a single window capture unless both it and the capture windows are in windowed mode, on the same desktop. Even with that, I couldn't get the virtualizer to stay active when I put the focus back on OBS so I could concentrate on stream details. Only way it would work is if I both cluttered up my desktop in windowed mode AND kept the entire virtualization window on top of the OBS window, active. Just way too much obscured content for an unstable playback, sadly.
I do like the app though, so I'll be keeping an eye on UTM for future virtualization needs! For the time being, that direct Mac driver to allow the GV-USB2 to be detected as a video capture device directly in OBS Studio on Mac will be the ultimate end-all solution.
Was just a little update that I tried it.
Just wanted to check in: Windows did one of its usual supplementary updates, and now no matter what I do, the audio for the GV-USB2 just screeches horribly. Apparently this is a common issue on several Windows 10/11 versions due to some random Windows driver issue.
Now my janky Windows workaround won't even work anymore, it's really unfortunate. :(
Hey Chromagram I've run into a similar issue. Gvusb2 won't work on parallels machine at all.
I'll be honest, I don't see this happening anytime within a reasonable future. There's just sadly no interest for us Mac users, even with the constant improvements to OBS itself. I've given up for now and just re-setup my cheap spare PC to run GV-USB2 on there. I'd rather be able to use it at all instead of waiting an unknown amount of time for it, if it even does happen.
Yeah it's pretty infuriating how obnoxious even using OBS can be. I've had good luck with running some other games on it in Parallels Virtualization although I still just wanna test gvusb2 on it. I know it's almost certainly a doomed venture but I wanna give it a bit more of a try. Currently right now I am just trying to get my gvusb2 drivers to even install on my device. I was able to install the drivers including even on my device manager - however my gvusb2 still always appear in other devices with no drivers. Even when I try to manually install it directly onto the device - it continues to fail.
I saw in your above comment that you had a windows workaround which I assumed you used parallels to do which made me wonder if you had any advice for getting the drivers to work.
I had one, but it was Parallels. Sadly Windows is a broken mess and it just doesn't work anymore through virtualization for me.
When you got it initially working in the first place - did you install the drivers the normal way?
I tried updating the driver on my gvusb2 unrecognized device with the installed gvus2b drivers I managed to install into system32. Still was unable to work and totally confuses me.
I used I/O Data's own install tool, you input your GVUSB2's serial number and receive the download. I wouldn't really hold out a ton of hope doing it through Parallels/Mac, there's a whole driver layer that appears to be conflicting with virtualization and I/O Data left this product behind ages ago.
This is why I've been actively asking on here and other places if someone with the chops to look at this could develop a driver for Mac to pick it up natively. The sad truth is that Mac OBS users are just a tiny fraction and it's not worth most people's time to develop something like this.
It appears that even the install tool doesn't work anymore. For some reason the drivers won't even install onto my device but they will install onto my computer. I have oe7m.inf in my driverstore but whenever I go to device manager and click update driver on my on mygvusb2 device(which currently has no drivers) it always says ' windows was unable to find drivers'
It's a great product. Such a shame that I/O will never give it any more updates in the future.
Honestly, I've been trying to push for any interested devs of capture devices to just look into developing an OBS-compatible driver once for a product. OBS is open source and is actively updated, so any incompatibilities are taken care of by their devs for the most part.
The bonus is that since those driver/plugins use a similar language, if a Windows one already exists, it can be tweaked for a few Mac dependencies, and it'll work. One example is the speedrunning timer, LiveSplit. No real good alternatives on Mac, but the developer a while back made a compatible plugin for Mac, and the app can be run within OBS on Mac without the restriction of a Windows .exe file or Windows only driver.
If (and that's a big IF) someone finally does get interested in a potential Mac driver for this or any other Windows-only capture system, I'd want to suggest going the OBS driver/plugin route. OBS also has fully compatibility to stream and record, so as long as it works in there, it can display gameplay, record it, or stream it depending on your needs. It'd cover 100% of the userbase and minimize future development time necessary.
I've thought of another possibility. Could it be that the usbc to usb adapter could be a source of the issue?