as you can probably imagine we deal with a ton of video around here a lot of it
comes from cameras or screen recording software but we also make frequent use
of capture cards which are typically standalone usb or pci express devices
that can be used to record from external devices like a game console or a camera
like on the WAN Show which raises the question why haven't we made a video
about a capture card in over five years well the truth is that i wasn't ever
really satisfied with any of them but in recent years they have improved
immensely and when Corsair and AMD reached out about doing a sponsored
video about their new vengeance a4100 gaming pcs with included capture cards
it seemed like a no-brainer to take a look at how far they've come and
demystify this category of products so today we talk capture cards what they do
and why you should or should not buy one for your game streaming or recording
setup
before we get into whether you might need a capture card it's important to
understand exactly what they actually do
a capture card is a device designed to take an unencrypted video signal and
convert it into a format that can be understood and recorded by the computer
it's plugged into if your intention is to record tv or movies off netflix be
warned that those signals are encrypted using hdcp and no legal device is gonna
decrypt it for you for consumer devices it's typical to see an HDMI input like
what you'd get out of your game console but in the professional world sdi is
preferred for its longer maximum cable lengths support for time code and
locking connector now a typical capture card looks either like this
a box that here we go plugs into the usb port on
your pc or like this a well box that plugs directly into the
pci express slot on your motherboard these two styles make up the majority of
consumer capture devices and both of them are dependent on a nearby computer
to handle the actual processing of the data elgato offers both form factors for
both tiers of their capture devices their hd tier and their 4k tier and
while there are some minor benefits and drawbacks to either approach generally
they share the same functionality and when you plug them into your pc they're
going to get picked up by your capture software in a similar way there are
exceptions to this rule like the camlink series that registers as a webcam making
it a little bit easier to use NVIDIA chat software in our experience pci
express based capture cards tend to be significantly more reliable just like
water bottles from ltdstore.com now whether this is due to not having to
deal with usb driver issues because internal cards are closer to cooling
fans or just because pci express is
generally a lower latency more stable interconnect than usb we're not sure
usb cards though offer a lot more flexibility basically any computer with
a usb port that is usb3 can run them
laptops included if you want to switch which system you're recording on you
just gotta move which usb port you're plugged into rather than having to shut down a system
pull a pci express card shut down the other system put it in and then fire
them both back up this flexibility can come with its own issues as we mentioned
before though and we have found these cards tend to be a little less stable
for instance if you rock a budget motherboard with only a single or best
case scenario two usb controllers on it it's actually quite likely that you're
gonna end up overloading your usb controller by having too many high
throughput devices plugged into it like if you were running say for example a 4k
webcam and a 4k capture card for your game console at the same time
some people might not have a pc around to plug their capture card into though
like say at a latin party or a tournament fortunately as i mentioned before there
are also capture cards that feature standalone encoding and recording like
the 4k 60s plus in this case a hardware encoding chip is
installed in the capture device which does the work that normally the attached
computer would do by encoding the incoming video stream into a playable
video file that allows those to record entirely on their own just pop an sd
card in and you're off to the races they do tend to be a bit more expensive
though regardless of what it plugs into though
basically all gaming oriented capture devices share one trait and that is ah
there we go pass through pasture is an essential feature if you want to be able
to game on the device that you're recording at the same time because
otherwise you would have to deal with the crazy latency of trying to game
through your obs preview window or something like
that with pass-through the main signal that you're capturing is passed through
back to your display while it's being captured so this is
usually through an HDMI output port on the capture card with manufacturers
generally claiming that there is zero added latency that was something we
wanted to investigate in this video so we tested all three styles of recorder
from elgato usb with the hd60s plus pci
express with the 4k60 pro and standalone
with the 4k 60s plus on our latency tester and hey
good news Corsair we actually didn't find any appreciable
increase in latency when using any of them so then it's up to you which form factor
of capture card is best for you though if you have the space and you don't need
the extra flexibility we definitely encourage going with
something pci express based as for the resolution that just depends on your use
case if you're browsing elgato cards the price differences between their two PCIe
models it's pretty minimal so it's 80 to go to
the 4k60 pro from the hd60 pro and you
gain the extra flexibility of high frame rate 4k recording just make sure that
your source content actually pushes that resolution although even then for the
minimal cost it might be worth future proofing
and it seems like Corsair agrees since this happens to be the card that's
pre-installed in the vengeance a4100 streaming pc that they sent over the
configuration we have here is pretty dang smack-on for streaming the ryzen
3700x CPU has enough course for gaming
with some extras for video encoding and if you want less of a CPU hit the
equipped rtx 2070 super comes with NVIDIA's latest nvinc encoding chip
which allows for a near zero performance hit while encoding directly on the GPU
our specific config also comes with both a 480 gig NVMe drive for excellent os
responsiveness and two terabytes of mass storage for games video clips duh or
what have you so now we know what all the capture cards sort of look like and what they do
but the final question is do you actually need one
can't you just capture your screen with fraps or obs
well in a lot of cases yes if you're strictly a pc gamer and you
don't have any external capture requirements like no dslr camera xbox
nintendo switch or the like then there really isn't any major benefit to
running a capture card in your system fortunately for you though the vengeance
a4100 along with Corsair's other gaming systems is available without a capture
card to save you the unnecessary purchase if you don't need it
so thanks for watching if you're interested in more technical streaming
recording stuff maybe check out our video on building a streaming setup on
the cheap and get subscribed so you don't miss future videos like this crazy
acetech pci express slot radiator water
cooler thing that we've got coming very soon