What Capture Card (integrated or external) for OBS on Linux?

Yeow!!! That's definitely not how mine went! Mine "just worked", and still does.

I'm wondering about posting a tarball of what I downloaded then, and continue to automatically rebuild against each new kernel. Everything all together with no filter is 9.3MiB, and it says it's specific to the 4-input SDI card that I got. What do you have?
 
Hey AaronD! :)

What exactly do you mean by "What do you have?"?

I got this card:
www.acasis.com

Acasis 4K60Hz HDMI Input Video Capture Card 2K144Hz Game Capture

ACASIS AC-VS2583 capture card has 2 HDMI video signal inputs, providing 4K@60Hz input and capture. It has the characteristics of supporting multiple cards in one machine (up to 4), VRR technology, ultra-low latency, and high bandwidth. Supports streaming or recording applications such as OBS...
www.acasis.com www.acasis.com

I am on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS with Kernel 6.8.0-45-generic.
I was considering moving to the next LTS version, but I am not sure if that would make things better or worse.

This is the file "alex.liu@longtimetech.com" sent me:

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com

Edit: I dont understand why they cant give all needed drivers here: https://www.acasis.com/pages/acasis-product-drivers
Having to email some guy feels fishy as hell...
 
BroadcastGoblin said:
What exactly do you mean by "What do you have?"?

I got this card:
www.acasis.com

Acasis 4K60Hz HDMI Input Video Capture Card 2K144Hz Game Capture

ACASIS AC-VS2583 capture card has 2 HDMI video signal inputs, providing 4K@60Hz input and capture. It has the characteristics of supporting multiple cards in one machine (up to 4), VRR technology, ultra-low latency, and high bandwidth. Supports streaming or recording applications such as OBS...
www.acasis.com www.acasis.com
Click to expand...
That's what I meant. :-)

And it's not what I have. I don't think my driver will work for you, at least not directly as-is, based on lines 71-75 of hws_video.c. That's where the PCIe identifier is (what card to attach to), and they're different. You might try copying your ID's into my code to see if it just happens to work, but it's all experimental at that point. Likewise with the list of capabilities that immediately follow, and all the other differences.

BroadcastGoblin said:
This is the file "alex.liu@longtimetech.com" sent me:

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com www.dropbox.com
Click to expand...
For comparison at least, I've attached my version of what you sent. Another notable difference is the absence of what appears to be a third party in a couple of your header files, that is present for me, along with some renaming away from what is probably an abbreviation of that third party:

Where I have:
C: 
/*
    TurboSight TBS PCIE DVB driver
     Copyright (C) 2017 www.tbsdtv.com
*/
and things are prefixed with _TBS_, you have:
C: 
/*

*/
and things are prefixed with _HWS_.

A lot of the code is the same, but there are still a fair number of other differences beyond what I mentioned here, I suspect to account for not using that third party anymore. If whoever replaced them or made that code change did a poor job, then that would probably explain it. I didn't dive into it enough to confirm though.

Pity, 'cause that's a good card.

BroadcastGoblin said:
Edit: I dont understand why they cant give all needed drivers here: https://www.acasis.com/pages/acasis-product-drivers
Having to email some guy feels fishy as hell...
Click to expand...
Yes it does. Fortunately I didn't have to, but so far there are two people in rapid succession that did. One worked, and the other didn't.
 

Attachments

Thanks for the feedback AaronD, I appreciate it!
I wrote to Acasis and told them about this... maybe they can come up with a fix. Otherwise I will return the card and start the Odyssee with the next one.

Its a shame because I still have a AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K (GC573) lying around also, which I could also not get to work.
 
BroadcastGoblin said:
I still have a AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K (GC573) lying around also, which I could also not get to work.
Click to expand...
I have a GC553 with the same problem. Works great on Windows, with no installation required...not on Linux at all. An Elgato CamLink 20GAM9902 does work. Both are USB3.

I remember having to do something to get the CamLink to work, but whether it was configuration somewhere or a community driver or what, I don't know anymore.

USB is good if you only have one, but each USB controller (not port: internal hubs...) can only support one. (*) So my 4 inputs on one rig had to be PCIe. The USB one is on a different rig that only needs 1.

(*) With decent quality anyway: I originally had 4 deceptive HDMI -> USB captures on one hub - deceptive because they were actually USB2 chips behind a genuine USB3 *connector* - and in addition to the quality problems (that I didn't notice until I replaced them because I was still learning how to set up and run a broadcast rig in the first place), they were always out of sync with each other and the separate soundtrack by different amounts each time. Good luck chasing *that*!
 
BroadcastGoblin said:
Thanks for the feedback AaronD, I appreciate it!
I wrote to Acasis and told them about this... maybe they can come up with a fix. Otherwise I will return the card and start the Odyssee with the next one.

Its a shame because I still have a AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K (GC573) lying around also, which I could also not get to work.
Click to expand...
Hey Goblin, Sorry to hear the frustration... did Acasis come back to you with a solution?

For the record, the driver has been working on my machine and there is no need to recompile after kernel upgrades, it just works, I guess that's DKMS working properly. So far so good.

If I were you I'd have been in dialogue with that chap I mentioned, Alex Liu, I think, who I guess writes their drivers, understands Linux, and who provided perfect personal support at least in my case. (I think he's a gent!) But I guess you have.

Anyhow, seeing as I seem to have prompted your purchase I hope you can resolve the issue!

Linux can be tricky, we should know that. Timeshift is your friend! Or maybe clone your system, then test on the clone.

I'm about to add a low-latency kernel and play with that (I have bad latency issues when streaming long shows but that's another thread) ... it should make no difference but I'll report back if there are problems with the new kernel.
 
Hello! I purchased the Acasis AC-VS2583 to use with Bazzite based on this forum's recommendation. I figured that getting a driver working in Bazzite would be challenging since it is atomic, and it appears I was right! After some back and forth with Acasis support, I did find that the Kylin driver provided in their driver package did work to an extent, in that upon installation the capture card does appear and work in OBS for the remainder of that session, but will stop working if the computer is shut down or rebooted. I checked the status of the service using sudo systemctl status hwsuhdx1.service and got the following output:

-----
× hwsuhdx1.service - Load HwsUHDX1Capture kernel module
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/hwsuhdx1.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
└─10-timeout-abort.conf
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2026-04-17 10:17:23 EDT; 1min 1s ago
Invocation: c37145d79144432688955cdd7031c593
Process: 1460 ExecStart=/bin/sh /usr/local/sbin/hws-load.sh (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Main PID: 1460 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
Mem peak: 4.6M
CPU: 67ms

Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1460]: hws-load: insmod /opt/HWS/ko/6.17.7-ba29.fc43.x86_64/HwsUHDX1Capture.ko
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1520]: insmod: ERROR: could not insert module /opt/HWS/ko/6.17.7-ba29.fc43.x86_64/HwsUHDX1Capture.ko: Permission denied
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1460]: hws-load: insmod failed; last Unknown symbol lines:
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1523]: egrep: warning: egrep is obsolescent; using grep -E
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1460]: hws-load: ERROR: failed to load module from:
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1460]: hws-load: /lib/modules/6.17.7-ba29.fc43.x86_64/updates/dkms/HwsUHDX1Capture.ko
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite sh[1460]: hws-load: /opt/HWS/ko/6.17.7-ba29.fc43.x86_64/HwsUHDX1Capture.ko
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite systemd[1]: hwsuhdx1.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite systemd[1]: hwsuhdx1.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Apr 17 10:17:23 bazzite systemd[1]: Failed to start hwsuhdx1.service - Load HwsUHDX1Capture kernel module.
-----

As a workaround, I can cd /opt/HWS/ko/6.17.7-ba29.fc43.x86_64 and run sudo insmod HwsUHDX1Capture.ko and then sudo systemctl start hwsuhdx1.service and get it working for the remainder of that session, but this is obviously not ideal. I did reach out to Acasis about this but they just told me to use AI to solve my problem, which was disappointing. I guess I'm wondering if anyone has gotten this working on Bazzite, and if this is even the right forum for this.
 
sonicsam41 said:
I did reach out to Acasis about this but they just told me to use AI to solve my problem, which was disappointing.
Click to expand...
Since this thread started, I've bought a couple more ACASIS cards, and not had the same success either. It seems they've really fallen off. I did manage to get an exchange, suspecting bad hardware, but it felt like they didn't really want to talk to me. Once they sent me the replacement, and I still had issues, ACASIS ghosted me.

So I have one of these now, in one rig, to see how it goes:
It's a bit more expensive, and I still had driver issues, but their support responded immediately with a different google drive link that worked. It seems the one printed on the box depended on some kernel features that have changed since the box was printed (*), and the one that they e-mailed me the link to is the same thing for the newer kernel. Still sketchy, but it does work.
Also source code, like the other one, to build on the machine that's going to run it.

(*) This is why you point people to your website, which can be kept up to date, and not to a specific version that inherently can't (because of how google drive works), which I told them.

There are three versions of that new card:
- 4x SDI, that I got and I'm still testing
- 4x HDMI
- 2x SDI + 2x HDMI, that I'll buy for a different rig if the first one proves reliable
They said the same driver works for all three variations:

1080p_Linux_20260311.rar

drive.google.com drive.google.com
 
Last edited:
AaronD said:
They said the same driver works for all three variations:

1080p_Linux_20260311.rar

drive.google.com drive.google.com
Click to expand...
It seems that the installer scripts were written (or last saved) on a Windows machine, despite being meant for Linux, and so they have the Windows line endings (CR LF) instead of Unix ones (LF). That causes the shell to look for filenames that literally end in CR, which none of them do, and so it errors out with that message. Fixing the line endings made it work, with no other changes, and I told them that too.
 
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