Sorry I have no idea what I need! My son is wanting a streaming setup for Christmas and I have no clue what he needs. He plays on switch and wants to make fornite videos to post to his YouTube channel. I know he needs a capture card (because he told me he did) but I have no clue what that is or what type of laptop to get him. I always said I would never be the old guy who was outdated by technology but here I am!! Any help would be great.
What do i need to stream fortnite to youtube for my son??
- Thread starter Chaddport
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koala
Active Member
You need a device that is able to grab the video output of your Switch, so your PC/laptop can process it. This is the "capture card" your son mentioned. Although there are pci-express expansion cards with this feature, you want USB devices for this usually.
You connect the Switch to the capture device instead of the monitor. The capture device appears as a monitor to the Switch. To still see something, you connect the monitor to the "passthrough" connector of the capture device.
In the PC, a capture device will show up like a webcam device in the Windows device manager. OBS Studio can read this device and process the captured video. You can tell OBS to either record to disk or do live streaming. If you record to disk, you can postprocess the video, cut unwanted slack and upload the processed video to Youtube. Or you stream directly and live to Youtube without any editing.
The maximum quality the Switch is able to output to the TV output is a resolution of 1920x1080 with 60 fps. If you want to fully support this best quality, get a capture device that is able to process 1920x1080 at 60 fps.
There are cheap noname capture devices from China, and there are more costly brand models. It's up to you what you choose. If you go for noname models, look closely to what the actually capture. Quite often, they cheat in their specifications. Popular brands are Elgato or Avermedia.
You don't need devices that are able to capture 4k and more than 60 fps.
If it comes to a laptop that can handle recording or streaming 1080p video: difficult. Any "gaming" laptop that comes with a powerful graphics card will do, but these are quite expensive. Laptops that have a built-in default GPU (often called iGPU) might or might not be powerful enough. I am not up to date with current laptops, but I assume a laptop for 600 Euro might be around the lower barrier of a computer that can create and process decent video. It depends on your standards and on what you think a decent video is. It also depends on the age of your son and his long term eagerness to use it. If it comes to video processing, the cheapest 200-300 Euro laptops are not suited. Don't try this, it will be frustrating for your son.
If you already have a laptop that comes with a built in webcam, try to install OBS on it and create a video or a live stream. This is similar to using a capture device, so you can judge the performance of that laptop and see if you need something similar for your son, or something more or less powerful.
You connect the Switch to the capture device instead of the monitor. The capture device appears as a monitor to the Switch. To still see something, you connect the monitor to the "passthrough" connector of the capture device.
In the PC, a capture device will show up like a webcam device in the Windows device manager. OBS Studio can read this device and process the captured video. You can tell OBS to either record to disk or do live streaming. If you record to disk, you can postprocess the video, cut unwanted slack and upload the processed video to Youtube. Or you stream directly and live to Youtube without any editing.
The maximum quality the Switch is able to output to the TV output is a resolution of 1920x1080 with 60 fps. If you want to fully support this best quality, get a capture device that is able to process 1920x1080 at 60 fps.
There are cheap noname capture devices from China, and there are more costly brand models. It's up to you what you choose. If you go for noname models, look closely to what the actually capture. Quite often, they cheat in their specifications. Popular brands are Elgato or Avermedia.
You don't need devices that are able to capture 4k and more than 60 fps.
If it comes to a laptop that can handle recording or streaming 1080p video: difficult. Any "gaming" laptop that comes with a powerful graphics card will do, but these are quite expensive. Laptops that have a built-in default GPU (often called iGPU) might or might not be powerful enough. I am not up to date with current laptops, but I assume a laptop for 600 Euro might be around the lower barrier of a computer that can create and process decent video. It depends on your standards and on what you think a decent video is. It also depends on the age of your son and his long term eagerness to use it. If it comes to video processing, the cheapest 200-300 Euro laptops are not suited. Don't try this, it will be frustrating for your son.
If you already have a laptop that comes with a built in webcam, try to install OBS on it and create a video or a live stream. This is similar to using a capture device, so you can judge the performance of that laptop and see if you need something similar for your son, or something more or less powerful.
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