Setting up a Middle School TV studio

pennridgesd

New Member
Hello- I'm trying to assist one of our MS teachers with her daily announcements. They are repurposing a computer for video capture but only have USB ports. I believe it is a mix of 3.0 and 2.0. They don't have a budget this year for a new computer. They have two Canon camcorders for the news and want to hook them both up and use something to convert the HDMI to USB and have OBS see both cameras. I've seen many devices online but wanted to see if OBS or anyone here recommends a specific item or process to achieve this. Since there's very little budget, it has to be done right the first time!

Thanks in advance
 

koala

Active Member
You have the choice of somewhat expensive well known brands, for example from Elgato, with well known characteristics and features, and of quite cheap no name products mostly from China with uncertain features. Usually, all capture devices run without extra drivers - they run with Windows standard drivers used for Webcams.

Choose by comparing the technical details with your requirements. If it's clear that some candidate matches these requirements with resolution and fps, buy the cheapest matching.

With no name products it's tricky to get the real technical details. Many cheap devices are advertised as "4K 60 fps", although they actually only support something like 1280x720 with 30 fps, and the advertised values are only achieved by some shady addon software that's scaling things up. Or they accept a 4k signal, however they produce only 1280x720 output. Also, "USB 3.0" support in the title doesn't mean the capture device runs with USB 3.0 speed. All the cheap capture devices are actually USB 2.0 devices, and because such device can of course be plugged into a USB 3.0 port, they are advertised as USB 3.0.

Try to find the specification of the actual capture hardware. Don't rely on the name of some "4k camlink capture USB 3.0 for games, streaming 1080p 30 Hz". A device named this way is probably only a USB 2 device, able to create 1920x1080 output with 30 fps. 1080p with 30 fps is not bad, and if 1080p/30 is what you need, than this device is what you definitely could buy, but it's not 4k as suggested.

With all the expensive brands, it's usually clear what they actually support. Go to their websites and you will see what each of their product will support.
 
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