Question / Help Looking for the right capture card

ZeloTypia

ZeloTypia

Member
Hello,

I read a lot about Magewell, Datapath, Razer, AVerMedia, Decklink and elgato capture cards (not limited to them).
And now, I am totally confused and I am in need of help.

What do I want to do?
I only want to stream one game: Starcraft 2 (PC only) in the best possible Quality to Twitch (primary) with the most compressed data (smallest bandwidth footprint possible).

Bonus: Without 2 cables for the capture card (HDMI).

My system
  • ASUS MG279Q (HDMI 60Hz/ MiniDP1.2 with 144Hz <- prefered)
  • AMD R9 390 Powercolor (HDMI/DisplayPort)
  • Intel i7 6700
  • 32GB DDR5 RAM
  • 50Mb down and 2Mb(!) upload bandwidth.

I bought an elgato HD60 Pro but I think this doesn't fit my needs. Why?
I had to switch back (from DP) to HDMI and it blanks my screen with every change in the settings and the stream quality is to dark fmpov (I didn't managed it to fix it via settings). I hate the elgato solution b/c it captures my whole screen instead of the game only like Game capture from OBS Studio. I can stream with their elgato software to Twitch but I want to use the Game Capture feature from OBS Studio together with the updated SC2Sceneswitcher plugin.

Help is really appreciated. Ask me for further details.
 
Last edited:
ZeloTypia

ZeloTypia

Member
I thought I can uplift my stream quality (small upload bandwidth) and without FPS drops ingame. Starcraft takes up considerable computation power but just needs a fraction GPU power.
 
ZeloTypia

ZeloTypia

Member
c3r1c3 said:
Why are you using a capture card with a single system?
Just use OBS and game capture.

If you're new to OBS Studio, the community has created some resources for you to use. Check out our Quickstart Guide at http://goo.gl/bLzO5T and Nerd or Die's video guide at http://goo.gl/dGcPZ3
Click to expand...

I can't believe it doesn't have an advantage in a single system. The unstable stream events were going down (http://inspector.twitch.tv) while having a smother game play in the stream and much better graphic quality.

Are you sure? I will send it back if you could explain a bit more.
 
c3r1c3

c3r1c3

Member
No advantage in a single system. The only thing I can think of is happening in your case is that your mirrored output is set to 60fps, which OBS is getting instead of 144fps when using game capture... but you can just limit the amount of frames OBS reads using the "limit Capture frame rate" option in the game capture settings.
 
ZeloTypia

ZeloTypia

Member
I looked into your hint but I can't see the possibility to change or set a number in game capture properties.. Thank you neverthless,
 
c3r1c3

c3r1c3

Member
You can't change the number in game capture. The number is set by your FPS amount in settings->Video. That checkbox tells OBS to capture your game at the FPS amount you set in your profile (i.e. Settings->Video->FPS).

As to the capture card not having any advantage, it's pretty straight forward:
Signal path with a capture card: GPU renders image->Output from GPU to Capture card->OBS grabs images from Capture card->OBS uploads to GPU (to composite, even if you have nothing else in your scene)->all other sources are uploaded to GPU for composite->GPU composites image->OBS downloads image from GPU.

Game capture: GPU renders image->GPU mirrors output internally to a ultra-high speed buffer that OBS uses->all other sources are uploaded to GPU for composite->GPU composites image->OBS downloads image from GPU.

As you can see, several fewer steps and a lower load on the bus/upload/composite on the GPU.
 
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