You know what? I’m going to double post to talk about
Capture Cards For Your Console
In order to stream from your console, you’ll need a capture card. While this isn’t necessarily true if you have a Playstation 4 or Xbox One, which have streaming features built into them, their utility is extremely limited compared to using a capture card that you buy. So what are your options, exactly?
OPTION 1 - THE ELGATO
Elgatos are a trusted brand among streamers. They’ve been around for a while and have a bit of a reputation. But what exactly are the pros and cons of the Elgato?
Pros:
- Great audio and visual quality. Elgato is going to give you the best audio and visual stuff at a reasonably affordable cost. Speaking of affordable cost…
- Fairly inexpensive. You can buy a used one for, depending on the model, $110 to $125 refurbished, or $115 to $175 brand new.
- Simple to set up. There’s literally three holes to plug things into. It’s fairly idiot proof.
- When using the program it comes with to record and stream, it works fairly well.
Cons:
- It crashes OBS a lot. Like… a lot a lot. I had a 100% crash rate towards the end of my ownership of my last Elgato.
- It’s hard to get it to work with OBS at all, honestly. Sometimes I had to fight with the damn thing for 15 minutes before I could get my streams to work.
- I can’t confirm for sure but I’ve heard similar horror stories from XSplit users. (If possible, can someone please confirm or deny this?)
- Depending on the model you get, you’re going to have to do some wacky things to stream anything without an HDMI cable, or hell, something WITH an HDMI cable and HDCP enabled.
- If you don’t want to do those wacky things, you’re going to have to live with your games being capped with a capture rate of 30fps and your only 1080 option being interlaced.
OPTION 2 - AverMedia Cards
I use an AverMedia now and it’s really good. But just how good?
PROS:
- Very versatile. It’s capable of capturing damn near any system without any of said wackiness needed from the Elgato HD60.
- Reasonably priced. I use the AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme and it cost $170.
- Fairly good audio and visual. While it’s the worst of the three options I’m listing here, it doesn’t look terrible.
- Very OBS friendly. I haven’t had a single issue with my AverMedia card and OBS… well… I had one…
CONS:
- For some reason the most recent firmware doesn’t work properly with OBS on all computers. If you have this issue you’re going to have to deal with an older firmware in order to fix this.
- It’s also a bit complicated to set up in OBS, and can’t automatically change resolutions. You’ll have to manually change that, like a sucker.
- Kinda cheap feeling? I dunno, it feels kinda flimsy to me, but I don’t move it around too much so it’s not too bad, but it might be a turn off for some people.
MAGEWELL
I’ve never used one before, but I’ve heard good things.
PROS:
- EXTREMELY good audio and visual quality. While the Elgato is the best one for the price, this one is the best hands down.
- Plays nice with OBS and XSplit.
- Simple to use and read.
CONS:
I haven’t heard much in the ways of cons yet, except…
- Holy hell this thing is expensive. The most basic one is going to set you back $300, and certain cards from Magewell cost up to $800.
Other than that I haven’t heard much about Magewell. Maybe someone else can weigh in and help out?
That’s it from me. If anyone else has any experience with other cards (Like the Happauge, which I haven’t used in up close to 7 or 8 years now) feel free to talk about them and I’ll edit them in here for you.