What's a good capture device?

Heh, I was actually looking into this last week. I haven't bought anything yet, but here's what I've come up with: There's basically two big options for game capture: Elgato Game Capture HD and Hauppauge HD PVR. The Elgato unit seems to have better reviews, as well as cost less. From what I understand, Elgato's product is easier to use, and has lower latency, though it also has (had? I heard they fixed it.) minor gamma issues, requiring a small bit of post to correct. If you're editing your videos anyway (you definitely should) this shouldn't be a significant obstacle.

If you intend to record PS3 games, I'm led to understand the Elgato works much better. If it's just 360 gameplay, it shouldn't make as much of a difference.

As for playing right from your monitor, the simple answer is no. Just about any device of this sort has an HDMI passthrough, and you'll want to use that. What displays on your computer screen will be choppy, laggy, and generally not a good playing experience.

edit: I forgot to mention, avoid the BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle. Seriously. If you can get it working, it's the best out there, but I'm led to understand it's incompatible with most USB3 chipsets (and it requires USB3), so you'd be taking a serious risk in getting one unless you're willing to do the research to make sure it'll work with your PC.

 

I have the old analog version of the HD PVR, which uses component cables. That device has video out, which is the way they intend for you to use it if you're trying to play something without lag.

Any USB HD capture device is going to have lag, you can't avoid that. The devices have hardware to encode video built into the device, since a raw 720p 60fps stream would require way too much bandwidth to send over USB. The data sent to your PC is what the device has already encoded in real time. The lag is necessary for video compression to be possible, since it needs to see how the video changes for several frames in order to reduce their size efficiently. In the case of the HD PVR, I know it encodes directly to H.264, and the video looks perfect if you set the bitrate to the highest option available. (I could provide some samples, but anything you upload to YouTube or stream is going to look worse anyway.)

I can't speak for any device in particular, but there's nothing that would really prevent any of these devices from being used to live-stream. If you're playing on an actual TV with video pass-through, the computer can still stream the video it's getting from the capture device. There's only about a half second of lag. But I don't know what software would be available to do a live stream. I guess if the software that comes with your device isn't capable of streaming live to YouTube or something, you'd need to see if there is third-party software for that.

 

That said, how much lag is going to depend on the PC in question.

Take the KuroKomix LPs - when we started recording, we were using Tom and AJ's mother's computer, which is fairly out-of-date. There was a good 5-10 second lag between what was on the TV and what was on the computer.

Later, when AJ got his new gaming laptop, we started using that, and the lag dropped to 1-2 seconds. There have been a couple of times where there was no noticeable lag at all.

For the record, we use the Happauge HD PVR 1212.

Also, who have you been asking as far as LPers go? I know Stephen Georg (StephenPlays) is very open about the equipment he uses, and several of the LPers I follow (JoshJepson, LucahJin, NCS, Chuggaaconroy, etc.) are all very friendly people. You might want to ask PCULL what he does for livestreaming, as he fairly recently (within the last month, I believe) did a stream of Dead Rising 2 with ProtonJon, and is posting that series currently.

 

You can try AVerMedia , the have basically everything

http://www.avermedia-usa.com/avertv/product/ProductDetail.aspx?Id=482
You can hook all your consoles to this. Records at 1080p and is about $120 in amazon.

http://www.avermedia-usa.com/avertv/product/ProductDetail.aspx?Id=503
This can even stream your recordings.

 

I just got an HD PVR 2 Gaming Edition about 12 hours ago! Haven't had an opportunity to do much more than test it out so far, but I'll let you know how it does after our recording day, Thursday.

 

Actually, you can. Bartman does it all the time with Vidya Retro streams.

Also, PS4 and Xbox One let you live stream from a console. :v:

 

My brother has a Hauppauge HD PVR 2, and it works great. Used it to record some Metal Gear Rising videos and an S&ASRT video that're on my YouTube.

 

There is... you just don't want to play on the same screen because of some really nasty lag. You also don't want to use screen capture software OVER the game capture software; instead use something that can grab the game's capture directly to livestream. (Can OBS do this? I'm not sure)

It also requires a fairly decent PC, but I'd think that's a given.

 

I also have the Hauppauge HD-PVR with HDMI and I had streamed and captured some videos before. The problem is that you need a PC to save the video or to upload to some web site, and a good PC if you want to capture 1080p, not to mention that a good internet bandwith is also required to upload in that quality...

I also bought some adapters to use component or VGA/DVI devices, but mainly with HDMI is a good quality..

EDIT: I have capture from Wii, PS3, X360, WiiU and PC (for the Wii you need the HDMI adapter)

 

Well, you could consider splitting the signal, and using a switchbox to go between the game and your computer.

 

Startech PEXHDCAP

Does anything from lossless RGB to DVI-D to coponent and HDMI. from 320x224 to 1920x1080, including wierd formats that arcade machines use

/thread