Topic: Capture Card

Hi all, I've been uhmming and ahhing about getting a capture card in today's Prime Day sale. I am a total n00b (and also a bit too old for some of this new technology to come naturally to me) at this sort of thing and don't really know anything about it and have never used Twitch or anything.

I thought I might want to get into a bit of video making using game or menu footage (OS menu footage isn't always recordable by the capture on the consoles themselves) to make a few guides and stuff.

I have a Mac Pro with final cut as well as Adobe premiere Pro (it's on Mojave so I can actually run the old CS6 version of premiere).

I was looking at that elgato s+ which is like 130 quid on Amazon at the mo.

Initially I'll be using it for recording footage but I would like flexibility in future to try streaming, I probably wouldn't end up doing that often if I had to sacrifice quality with the pass through as it looks like that elgato doesn't support all the bells and whistles of my current gen console/LG C1 set up.

Anyway yeah, just wondering what people's thoughts were? What do you all use for capturing and streaming? Is it worth plonking down for an elgato or would a cheaper card suffice? I am a bit out of my depth here so stories, personal experience and advice would be greatly appreciated!

@LiamCroft cheers for the assist with the forum category. My apologies, I wasn't sure where to put it!

Personally, I use the Elgato HD60S+ and find it perfectly okay on Mac with OBS, even works on the new M1's. There are newer cards available but I think this is perfect for someone getting started with streaming and recording. If you want 4K recording though, I think you might need to look at a higher spec set up, as the HD60S+ only supports recording up to 1080p 60FPS or 2160p 30FPS.
https://www.elgato.com/en/game-capture-hd60-s-plus
Word of warning - don't get the HD60S as its pretty much useless on Mac, make sure its the '+' version.

Zasluke Capture Card and OBS Studio .

@purplemouse ahh cheers, I really appreciate your input! Sounds good to me, I don't really need 4k streaming/recording as I suspect that if I put any live action element into the videos, that will be 1080p too. Pass through would be nice though which it looks like the S+ has.

I keep getting distracted by all the much cheaper options on Amazon. £135 for the Elgato is a lot for something I've never used before but I think it could be quite useful. Just not sure if something cheaper will do.

Sorry if this is a naive question but I can use it for recording footage and then editing it in Final Cut can't I? It's not just for streaming on Twitch.

Cheers! Really appreciate the reply

@nomither6 cheers, I'll look into it!!

@ralphdibny The capture card saves the files to a folder you determine on your hard drive, and you can save it in a number of different formats, although I just use mp4. From there, you can literally drag/import it straight into your editing software and do what you want with it.

And no, it's not just for streaming on Twitch - I use mine for direct capture, then use iMovie for basic edits before posting to YT. It will also stream AND record at the same time if you want it to.

@purplemouse cheers I went head and ordered the s+, I'll see how I get on with it! Looking forward to joining the 21st century 😅

@purplemouse I'll be sure to give you a sub if I get a channel off the ground at some point!!

Btw, you can make your signature on your posts here to a clickable link if you wanted to. Just change your signature to:

(url=https://youtube.com/channel/UCoZ4kRnybFEC5iPeYsn3jgQ)YouTube: purple mouse gaming(/url)

But swap the ( ) brackets for [ ] brackets and it will show up like this but not in blue:

YouTube: purple mouse gaming

@ralphdibny No worries - and thanks for the tip!

@ralphdibny Have you recieved your card yet? How you getting on with it? Any questions, please feel free to ask 😉

@purplemouse heya, thanks for following up! I actually saw your post this morning and realised I hadn't tested the thing yet (it was on my to do list) so I tidied up the office and just recorded some Mario kart 8 (Wii U is the only console I have in the office right now 😅)

I think I need to play around with it some more this weekend. The footage I captured was noticeably blocky. Obviously I don't really know how to use the software yet but I just set it to 1080p. I'll probably have to change some other settings to get a crisper image. I also exported it to "ProRes" whatever that is to put it in final cut (I chose ProRes because it had the same logo as final cut) and that made it even blockier. So yeah, some more work/learning needed on my part!

That was with the Elgato software btw. I downloaded that OBS you mentioned after doing the Elgato test but haven't tried it yet. I opened it up and it came up with a choice of "Use this software primarily for recording" or "Use this software primarily for streaming" which I wasn't sure about as I probably will do both at some point. I'll have another look at that one at the weekend too!

I'll also probably lug the Series X into the office at the weekend and try recording some of that with it as well.

I have a XR1 Lite from EVGA that I got on deep discount from Amazon, that I use with consoles in my office. I had the HD60S from Elgato for a couple of years just by itself, but it was apparently really picky about USB cords, so I just ended up giving it to a friend of mine who runs Smash tournaments. The XR1 Lite for me has worked flawlessly with my Switch and XBox One X so far, but my PS4 is in storage and the PS5 is in the other room hooked up to our TV. I do plan on trying to use it soon with my PS5, just to see how it handles it.