Question / Help Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming issue?

[Zhylaw]

If I buy a capture card will that solve all the problems with streaming full screen games? I can just add capture card to scene and it works like perfect monitor capture? I'm willing to buy one if it will make streaming older games work, just want to make sure first.
And is the avermedia live gamer hd card a good card for old PC game streaming?


Thanks in advance

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Hi,

yes, using a capture card will solve all the problems, as long as it is supported by OBS or in reverse.
I'm going to order two of these card for my own in the near future: http://geizhals.de/803348

One big feature of a capture card is the ability to capture any input you like, except hdcp-encoded hdmi.(BluRays and stuff...) Using the breakout cable some of those cards are containing, you also can capture consoles like n64 and prior (even C64 would be possible afaik ;> ).

You should choose a capture card which can capture 1080p@60fps. I did the mistake to buy a capturecard which is only capable of 1080i@60fps, which basically limits you to capture at 30fps if you want good results. This also affects your gameplay if you are playing with VSync. Since you are going to clone your monitor output (the capturecard acts like an monitor) you are limiting your own monitor to 30Hz. If you play league of legends, limit your framerate to 30 in your video settings, and you know what i mean.

The AverMedia Live Gamer HD seems to be pretty good, but i think there were reports claiming trouble with the combination of obs and this card, especially with its button. I suggest to choose its little brother i posted above, which is basically the same AND not that expensive.

 

[Muf]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

The AVerMedia C127 supports the 1080p60 video mode, but will only capture it as 1080p30 or 720p60.

 

[Zhylaw]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Thanks for the replies!

I was actually scared of the button thing on the live gamer myself, but only because I want something simple.

I'm alittle confused now though. If I want a simple capture card to stream old full screen PC games should I get the live gamer hd, the c127 or something else entirely? I don't mind 1080p30/72060 since I will probably stream in 720p anyway and or use 30fps.

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

I would recommend you the C127 since it's not that expensive, no need for all the blingbling.

I was not aware of this limit, thank you Muf. Is there any (not that expensive) capturecard which can handle 1080p60?

 

[Muf]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

I was not aware of this limit, thank you Muf. Is there any (not that expensive) capturecard which can handle 1080p60?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: There are capture cards like the Blackmagic Decklink Studio ($695), the Datapath VisionRGB-E1s ($1095), and the Epiphan DVI2PCIe ($999.95), but as you can see none of them are really affordable.

On a budget, I can only recommend OBS Game Capture. If 60fps is a requirement, Game Capture is the only affordable option (being free), that also has decent performance. Alternatively, you can install Windows 8 and use its high performance monitor capture (unavailable on Windows 7).

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

The problem is that I, and some other streamer i know, want to stream their entire monitor. This is really hard to manage using game capture. ;) Also, GameCapture cant capture all games since there are technical issues with some games, other games cant be captured due to its old directx version (UT2004 using DX8...). And using software/window capture on windows 7 really screws your performance. As soon as a software capture get involved, your performance stays shitty, even after choosing another scene. Unless you are restarting the stream which is not always wanted.

Even if you have aero disabled, my framerate goes down to about 40-60, depends on the game we are playing. (Using hardware which should stand this load ofc.) Also, installing windows 8 is not really an option for me and my crew, but we had this discussion some weeks ago. I still dont see the differnce between win7 and win8 in this point, except aero ofc.

 

[Krazy]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Which is why he suggested windows 8.

 

[Muf]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Also, installing windows 8 is not really an option for me and my crew, but we had this discussion some weeks ago. I still dont see the differnce between win7 and win8 in this point, except aero ofc.

This is the difference between Windows 7 and Windows 8:
DXGI 1.2 Improvements - Desktop Duplication API

 

[Lain]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Capture card is the easiest but most expensive way to "guarantee" capturing of whatever is on your screen. Unfortunately contrary to what many people believe, capturing using the techniques provided in the application are not only more efficient, but produce a higher quality image output. They are more efficient because they do not need to pass through RAM or use CPU for image conversion, and they are higher quality because they are full RGB captures and not YUV4:2:0 semi-compressed captures that capture cards use.

 

[Muf]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Capture card is the easiest but most expensive way to "guarantee" capturing of whatever is on your screen. Unfortunately contrary to what many people believe, capturing using the techniques provided in the application are not only more efficient, but produce a higher quality image output. They are more efficient because they do not need to pass through RAM or use CPU for image conversion, and they are higher quality because they are full RGB captures and not YUV4:2:0 semi-compressed captures that capture cards use.

The exception to that rule being Datapath capture using my plugin, which is about as performant as Game Capture; it captures uncompressed high quality RGB32 straight from the capture card to a GPU texture using DMA, that is, bypassing the CPU and system RAM.

 

[Warchamp7]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

To add on to mufs post, as he omitted an important detail: The capture cards he's talking about are upwards of $1000

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Sure you all are right, but as a windows 7 user im really screwed with the current monitor capture. In a long term we need a solution which works properly on windows 7. (Or even better, a solution which can be ported to linux at some day ofcouse) Right now a capturecard is the only way you can stream your desktop in a stable way and without screwing around with multiple third party softcams (like xsplit does basically).

Don't think i don't appreciate the work you guys already did on obs, i really love this shit, but it's not usable for win7 users unless you own a capturecard or you only want to stream one particular game and nothing else. And again regarding windows 8, yes there might be this feature which allows you a superefficent and highestquality monitor capture, but that is only for windows 8 users. I don't know if you have any statistics about the OBS users, but i look around me, and no one in my area is using windows 8, and belive me they tried.

 

[paibox]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Excuse me, but you are being very unreasonable.

You're screwed with the current monitor capture? I've tested this, and with Aero off, OBS' monitor capture is currently the fastest available software way of grabbing the entire monitor. Things like getting the video output of an entire screen is not something that was ever intended to be supported by operating systems.

And believe me, the people in your area who tried (and somehow failed?) to use WIndows 8? They didn't try very hard. Windows 8 performs better than Windows 7 in every single way, with incredibly few compatibility issues. If the new user interface is something that prevents you and your crew from using it, despite the fact that Windows 8 offers the solution you want, without either costing close to a thousand dollars... tough luck.

Just for the record, capture card output at 1920x1080 and sixty frames per second is in many cases a very CPU expensive activity, you would most likely have to go with a DataPath card, and either use the plugin Muf designed for it for OBS or another application that uses the card's RGBeasy interface.
Okay, fine.

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Sorry, i think i wasn't clear enough.

I think it's unreasonable to switch the entire operating system for one single feature you can utilize, while you are losing at least two and a half others (startmenu(yes i know about classic shell..), aero and design as the half one since this is a matter of taste). Anything else on windows 8 is exactly the same or as good as on windows 7. Thats why so many people aren't switching over to windows 8. It's designed as a tablet OS, and as such its quite poor imho, since you have to switch your environment (metro/desktop) where there should be no reason to do this. I bet if you check up the user statistics of obsproject.com you will find way more windows 7 user than anything else.

Saying im unreasonable for comparing pro and contra IS unreasonable tbh, sorry.

The Monitor Capture is a huge bottleneck on windows 7 right now, no matter what. It's near to impossible to play a game on stream (that the #1 reason obs is used i guess) without huge performance issues. I'm playing mainly UT2004 and also like to stream it, but monitor capture is slowing me out way to much, and game capture isn't recognizing it. So i need to run dxtory which can capture it, but then again, im slowed. I'm talking about streaming in 30fps by the way. The only way to get around this is using a capture card, and here we are on topic again.

p.s.: i really tried to use windows 8, make it fitting my needs, get around all those issues. But at the end of the day, i would rather switch over to linux than to windows 8, at least at it's current status.

 

[Muf]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

I'm talking about streaming in 30fps by the way.

Then what's the problem? Even the cheapest AVerMedia cards do 1080p30.

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

The Cheapest AverMedia can, but not the software, not on windows 7, and that makes me sad.

But i think i talked enough on this topic since it seems like my made paibox angry already which was not my intention.

 

[Muf]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

The Cheapest AverMedia can, but not the software, not on windows 7, and that makes me sad.

Point me to a piece of software that can do it and we'll happily take a look to see if we can implement the same method.

 

[Krazy]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

Sorry, i think i wasn't clear enough.

I think it's unreasonable to switch the entire operating system for one single feature you can utilize, while you are losing at least two and a half others (startmenu(yes i know about classic shell..), aero and design as the half one since this is a matter of taste). Anything else on windows 8 is exactly the same or as good as on windows 7. Thats why so many people aren't switching over to windows 8. It's designed as a tablet OS, and as such its quite poor imho, since you have to switch your environment (metro/desktop) where there should be no reason to do this. I bet if you check up the user statistics of obsproject.com you will find way more windows 7 user than anything else.

Saying im unreasonable for comparing pro and contra IS unreasonable tbh, sorry.

The Monitor Capture is a huge bottleneck on windows 7 right now, no matter what. It's near to impossible to play a game on stream (that the #1 reason obs is used i guess) without huge performance issues. I'm playing mainly UT2004 and also like to stream it, but monitor capture is slowing me out way to much, and game capture isn't recognizing it. So i need to run dxtory which can capture it, but then again, im slowed. I'm talking about streaming in 30fps by the way. The only way to get around this is using a capture card, and here we are on topic again.

p.s.: i really tried to use windows 8, make it fitting my needs, get around all those issues. But at the end of the day, i would rather switch over to linux than to windows 8, at least at it's current status.

Yeah, and if you checked user statistics the first few months after Win7/Vista came out you would see way more XP users than anything else. What's your point?

Windows 8 definitely does have Aero, by the way. You just can't disable it. There's also no need to because of some good changes to the design behind the OS.

Just because you can't get used to some new UI (which, frankly, makes a lot of sense and is very easy to use once you get past your initial predispositions) that is why you won't choose the $120 option to get an improvement over Win7 (in almost every functional way, I might add, as well as easier streaming of older games), including the exact feature you want for streaming? Most decent capture cards are more expensive than this.

??????????

Anyway, your options on Windows 7 are Monitor Capture with Aero off, or Aero on using a bunch of Window Captures, or an expensive capture card which may or may not actually improve things for you unless you decide to use a 2PC setup (which is the only way to get no impact streaming)

 

[Ragnos]

Re: Will a capture card solve full screen game streaming iss

I start to believe you don't want understand me.

I'm able to get used to a new ui. But im not able to get used to a ui which basiclly doesn't make any sense on desktops.
I can stream older games very fine on windows 7. I don't consider UT2004 to the older games, would consider d2 as one. Also, where is the good design in bumping a tablet ui on top on a windows 7 build, enhancing some of the features which weren't touched in decaded (hi taskmgr) and put some sugar on top of directx (duplication). Thats windows 8 for me. I give a fk on boot times, if my pc boots longer, i got more time to get me a coffee - no feature i consider for this discussion. And i never said there should be no impact at all by using software capture, everyone with some IQ should expect that such a software needs resources, but its bad if it needs to much of them.

After vista almost no one stepped over since it really was crap. Then windows 7 came and the users started migrating. You should consider that windows 7 _could_ become the next windows xp, since the people which already had a hard time accepting windows 7 won't accept windows 8 in a long term.

For me, Windows 8 is a step back, not forward. I accept that you have another opinion on that, you should accept mine opinion and that of a couple hundredthousand other users.

Btw, here is a record of an obs session i just did with 1080p60. It just a lol-spectator-session, but imagine to play with those framerates. If you can't, my bad, but this discussion is over for me since it seems that we can't get to any consense, sadly. We would end up throwing cotton balls against each other or something like that...

http://de.twitch.tv/utzoneragnos/b/395147134

And again: It was not my intention to make anyone here angry, but it seems that i did with my postings. Im deeply sorry for that, but you should consider not to take things like this that personally, at least it seems for me that you guys do.
OBS is a great project and i will advertise it where i can and recommend it, but there are issues which should be thught of atleast. I would also contribute code and stuff, but i can't since im complete braindead at coding stuff. :<