Question / Help Capture Cards with OBS

[Mainiaxe]

I'm looking to get some recording going, but I'd prefer not to spend a ton of money on a better GPU, so I've been looking at some capture card alternatives. First of all, which card would you guys recommend, and will any of them be compatible with OBS so that I can record a windowed game rather than dealing with the full-screen capture most cards are limited to.

I know that GPU recording is the superior choice, but unlike some people I do have a budget :P

 

[mrasmus]

A capture card will not help a single PC setup in any practical way. They're useful in two PC setups (where one is dedicated to capturing and encoding video), and they're obviously useful for capturing consoles, but piping a computer into itself through a capture card is significantly less efficient than using Game Capture. There's no advantage to be had, there.

Also, no capture card will be not "limited to" full-screen capture: They just capture what they're sent, they are in effect a display capture; they have no extra context that would let them know where a window is in the screen image. That said, cropping sources in OBS is pretty straightforward, so that's generally not a big idea. Obviously, also, this means capture cards cannot capture windows that are behind other windows.

 

[Boildown]

And a 2 PC setup is unquestionably the higher-cost solution. Seeing how capture card makes no sense on a 1 PC setup, you're best off updating your main system's GPU or CPU, or whatever your bottleneck is. A log file for what your computer can achieve now would be helpful.