Input Video Capture

[YGri]

Hello
I have a many HDMI devices and I want to use HDMI video input to usb dongles to capture the videos and centralize them on a PC, setup the Scenes ...
The configuration could be 2 or 3 video source but some time I could have 15 to 20 Video to capture

So
Does OBS can manage all the videos?
What are the limitation of OBS in that case? What are the scene quantities we could have and how many video capture per scene we could get?
Many thanks for your reply
Yves

 

[koala]

The limitation is usb bandwidth. OBS is probably able to access an arbitrary number of capture devices, but the USB hardware in your PC has bandwidth constraints.

If you compose multiple capture devices into one scene, you can reduce the resolution of each device, so less bandwidth is used per single device. I speak of the resolution you set in the properties of a capture device source, not of the base/canvas resolution of OBS.

Rule of thumb: one or two full hd (1920x1080) video streams can be transferred with USB 2.0 devices at the same hub. To increase the bandwidth, make sure capture devices are distributed over as many USB root hubs as possible (this is the internal partitioning within the USB subsystem, not some external USB hub device you should avoid).

Half the image size (1280x720) is half the data, means double the possible amount of devices. Quarter the image size (960x540) means quarter the data size and four times the possible amount of devices. If you divide a scene into 4 quarters and put 4 capture devices into this at 960x540 resolution each, you should have the same bandwidth requirements as one capture device running at 1920x1080.

 

[YGri]

Good Morning
I'm using several HDMI input to USB dongles to capture videos of several devices and connect them on a PC that run OBS Studio.
When you had the resources into a scene, into the properties for Video Capture Device, you can see all the USB Video resources you have connected to the PC.
But if the dongles are connected via an USB Hub, you can see the video only of the first dongle that was connected to the Hub. For the others, the video stay black .
We tried to use several type of Hub and all of them had the issue
OSB version that was tested is V30.0.2
Best Regards
Yves

The limitation is usb bandwidth. OBS is probably able to access an arbitrary number of capture devices, but the USB hardware in your PC has bandwidth constraints.

If you compose multiple capture devices into one scene, you can reduce the resolution of each device, so less bandwidth is used per single device. I speak of the resolution you set in the properties of a capture device source, not of the base/canvas resolution of OBS.

Rule of thumb: one or two full hd (1920x1080) video streams can be transferred with USB 2.0 devices at the same hub. To increase the bandwidth, make sure capture devices are distributed over as many USB root hubs as possible (this is the internal partitioning within the USB subsystem, not some external USB hub device you should avoid).

Half the image size (1280x720) is half the data, means double the possible amount of devices. Quarter the image size (960x540) means quarter the data size and four times the possible amount of devices. If you divide a scene into 4 quarters and put 4 capture devices into this at 960x540 resolution each, you should have the same bandwidth requirements as one capture device running at 1920x1080.