I need some advice on Game Capture Cards for PC

jumpstylerz

Hey icrontic. I was recently looking at getting the AverMedia Live gamer HD (C985) PCI-e capture card for recording my PC game play (fraps seems to hate me, not sure why) but came across a few reviews saying there is better. I then looked around and saw that the Hauppauge HD PVR II can record game play from a PC as well, so my question is, should I go for the Hauppauge or the AverMedia, I have enough for both so it's more down to functionality.

I'm planning on recording battlefield 3 game play which is 1920x1080@60 as well as other games, ususally the same resolution as previously mentioned and I also plan on doing livestreams through twitch.tv semi-regularly.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

P.S. as for what happens with frap (and DXtory as well), i tend to get about a 20-70% frame drop depending on what I'm doing at 1080 and about a 30-50% drop when at 720.


System Specs:
Asus Sabertooth Z77
Intel Core i5 3570 ivy bridge 22nm @ 3.4GHz
8GB dual-channel DDR (Kingston brand)
NVidia GeForce GTX 570 1279Mb
Sound blaster X-FI Xtreme

jumpstylerz

Anyone?

Theironhand

http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=pk9954&d=hauppauge-hd-pvr-2-hdmi-xbox360--ps3-game-capture-with-pc-gaming-edition-

Hauppauge is one I hear about all the time, it works for Xbox360, Ps3, and PC.

Then there's always the Roxio game capture HD pro, it's slightly cheaper and I've heard it works great as well.

shwaip

live gamer is probably overkill unless you want to stream as well as capture.

RootWyrm

Missed this thread. I used to do a lot of video capture and NLE, especially to route PS2 and Xbox through PC.
Hauppage is pretty much the gold standard for capture cards in the consumer space. Very reliable, and you don't get reamed on the price.
The question is how you're doing the input. Point blank, if you're trying to loop PC output? Your only choice is Fraps and similar. These are hardware solutions, which require hardware input. The Hauppage Colossus is great for HDMI and component fed by console. But it's not for looping PC output - you would have to redirect monitor output to the capture card and redisplay while ALREADY displaying. (So no it doesn't work.) But that's also true of the AVM LiveGamer HD and Game Broadcaster.

Most likely the cause of dropped frames is simply the fact that your disk isn't fast enough. Single disk is almost invariably going to have this problem, whether it's 7200RPM or SSD. I generally would recommend a RAID0 scratch set - Windows software RAID is fine.

shwaip

also try open broadcaster software

shwaip

also live gamer hd works fine with pc output (as long as your main screen is 1080p, max). it has hdmi pass through.

RootWyrm

shwaip said:

also live gamer hd works fine with pc output (as long as your main screen is 1080p, max). it has hdmi pass through.

Does it? It wasn't very clear whether it was HDMI software passthrough or actual passthrough. (Remember that HDMI has that stupid HDCP component for DRM which screws EVERYTHING up.)

jumpstylerz

So basically, it would be better going the avermedia right? As I said in the OP, I plan on both recording and streaming

RootWyrm said:

Most likely the cause of dropped frames is simply the fact that your disk isn't fast enough. Single disk is almost invariably going to have this problem, whether it's 7200RPM or SSD. I generally would recommend a RAID0 scratch set - Windows software RAID is fine.

I actually have two HDD's in my PC, I have also heard a lot about RAID being a bit iffy a lot of the time so I want to try and avoid it.

RootWyrm

jumpstylerz said:

So basically, it would be better going the avermedia right? As I said in the OP, I plan on both recording and streaming

Quite possibly, yes.

jumpstylerz said:

I actually have two HDD's in my PC, I have also heard a lot about RAID being a bit iffy a lot of the time so I want to try and avoid it.

People who have no clue about what they are doing with storage have problems. That's just the simple fact. The other fact is that competing disk access is going to cause problems with videos, and the queue length in Windows is insufficient for NLE in many situations. Hit queue limit and outstanding writes, frames drop. RAID0 will reduce the queuing amplification dependent on the number of spindles. RAID0 offers no data integrity, just increased performance. RAID is not a backup. Goes on and on. The point here would be to have a RAID array for the exclusive purpose of being scratch disk (fast writing space) before saving to reliable storage. Having game and video write on the same disk is guaranteed dropped frames, and single 7200 RPM disk is going to struggle like hell with 1080p 60FPS writes.

jumpstylerz

RootWyrm said:

Having game and video write on the same disk is guaranteed dropped frames, and single 7200 RPM disk is going to struggle like hell with 1080p 60FPS writes.

I game on one HDD and record to the other By the way

shwaip

this guy streams using OBS + the avermedia card. the quality is great.

http://www.own3d.tv/Destiny

He does have an OC'd i7, but I'd guess you'll be ok.

RootWyrm

jumpstylerz said:

RootWyrm said:

Having game and video write on the same disk is guaranteed dropped frames, and single 7200 RPM disk is going to struggle like hell with 1080p 60FPS writes.

I game on one HDD and record to the other By the way

Yah, clarity fail. What I meant is that even in that scenario, a single disk is likely not going to be fast enough for scratch disk for recording 1080p. Theory and practice - theoretical says "oh totes got plenty of speed dude" and the real world says "NOPE." Depending how long you're going per run, might make sense to use a 64GB SSD for recording scratch.

PirateNinja

You use codecs to compress frames before writing them to disk. This chews CPU but allows for less dropped frames due to HDD. Still, an SSD is going to help, but CPU usage is the biggest issue with dropped frames based on all the work I've done. I don't know how capture cards handle compression, but all software solutions let you choose (or choose for you) a compression codec. That's massively important. So is the way the software handles directX injection so it can steal frames from your video card's memory. Dxtory does an absolutely superb job of this in my opinion, better than fraps and any software I've made. Especially if you insist on AA when capturing.

The best codec in my experience is Lagarith, with multithreaded color conversion enabled. Lagarith + dxtory + disabling anti aliasing + your current hardware should get you close to 24fps in 1080p BF3. You don't need any more fps than that for sharing vid on the net.

I know that is all slightly off topic since this is about capture hardware, but maybe it helps.

jumpstylerz

PirateNinja said:

You use codecs to compress frames before writing them to disk. This chews CPU but allows for less dropped frames due to HDD. Still, an SSD is going to help, but CPU usage is the biggest issue with dropped frames based on all the work I've done. I don't know how capture cards handle compression, but all software solutions let you choose (or choose for you) a compression codec. That's massively important. So is the way the software handles directX injection so it can steal frames from your video card's memory. Dxtory does an absolutely superb job of this in my opinion, better than fraps and any software I've made. Especially if you insist on AA when capturing.

The best codec in my experience is Lagarith, with multithreaded color conversion enabled. Lagarith + dxtory + disabling anti aliasing + your current hardware should get you close to 24fps in 1080p BF3. You don't need any more fps than that for sharing vid on the net.

I know that is all slightly off topic since this is about capture hardware, but maybe it helps.

At this point in time I have already ordered the capture card, but with the DXtory thing, I can't even launch the program so yeah, also I find anything below 30 unplayable in BF3 to be completely honest

RootWyrm

Compression of 1080p is very CPU intensive; for stuff like this you want to record uncompressed raw. Because otherwise you can't play your game. That's where the capture cards come in - they have an ASIC for handling the MPEG conversion so it doesn't chew up the CPU. Lagarith is very meh. And 24FPS display is totally different from 24FPS actually running.

PirateNinja

jumpstylerz said:

At this point in time I have already ordered the capture card, but with the DXtory thing, I can't even launch the program so yeah, also I find anything below 30 unplayable in BF3 to be completely honest

Sorry for not being clear, I meant your output video should be at least 24 fps. Your gameplay fps should be higher. If you can't launch DXtory it could be an issue with .NET on your system needing a reinstall. If you send me the error message / event log entry I can tell you what it is. Doesn't sound that important though, as you said you already got the card.