Video Gaming Capture Device HDMI 1080P 60FPS -- NO LAG

[trev1976]

Hi

I was wondering if its possible to buy anything that can record gameplay on the fly with no lag at 1080p 60fps via HDMI , Im looking to record some gameplay on my PC , Ive captured gameplay before using fraps or my ezcap but its always been with games or emulators that have a record/playback feature so lag isnt an issue as im not playing while recording but certain games like DMC4 do not have a record feature so i would have to be playing while recording , also id really need it too be portable so i could use it on 2 different PCs from time to time

Any help would be great thanks

[briareos_kerensky]

Recording at that resolution and framerate requires a powerful PC with fast drives, and that is an past the power required to run the game.
Anyway, have you tried OBS? It can be configured in a number of ways to decrease recording quality (bitrate) to keep the CPu/GPU overhead low. Going for an hardware device like an Elgato would be a waste, the connections would be like PC -> Elgato -> Monitor/PC (HDMI/USB 2.0).

[Asura]

The only practical way to get very high quality video is to run the game on one machine, and have another machine (or some other device) actually doing the recording. Otherwise you'd need an incredibly powerful machine to do both at the same time and expect good quality.

There are devices for this, like the Live Gamer Portable, which have quite a good write-up, or you could build a second computer.

You could build a modest-spec computer with a video capture card.

[speedlolita]

You absolutely do not need an external device for this.

What you need, is a scratch HDD. I honestly don't think recording uses anywhere near the resources people think it does. I can be playing a ridiculously intensive game, and have Nvidia Shadowplay (excellent capture program btw) recording full 1920x1200@60fps no issues at all. The bottleneck is almost always drive read and write performance so unless you're using a large SSD for your main drive, grab something like a 500GB HDD for next to nothing and have it as a dedicated recording drive.

A 500GB HDD x2 would cost about ?30-40 tops if you wanted to put one in each PC. You don't need an incredibly powerful machine either - my system is extremely modest 3 year old Ivy Bridge CPU with a 3 year old GPU too - the two parts combined would come in under ?200. I'll assume you're using a moderately respectable PC to begin with, although I used to record video just fine on basically every PC I've owned, even a Pentium 4.

[trev1976]

hmm good ideas , i dont need the recording to look awesome id actually be happy with 480p but id like my game to look and feel good while playing.. i have a crappy old laptop here could i use that at all ?

[k0pp0]

Why would drive read performance be an issue for capture?

[Asura]

I can be playing a ridiculously intensive game, and have Nvidia Shadowplay (excellent capture program btw) recording full 1920x1200@60fps no issues at all.

You don't need an incredibly powerful machine either - my system is extremely modest 3 year old Ivy Bridge CPU with a 3 year old GPU too

Surely, though, if you can run most "ridiculously intensive" games at 1920x1200 at rock-solid 60fps, then you do have an "incredibly powerful machine" by the standard of some people.

I just feel an external device or a second machine is a very good solution as it takes your performance out of the equation for the capture/streaming. Your gaming computer only has to run the actual game, plus you can use that set-up for console capture too.

[speedlolita]

Why would drive read performance be an issue for capture?

It can be if you want to play the game smoothly in addition to recording, which is why I suggest either using an SSD so you have the headroom or using a dedicated hard drive.

[k0pp0]

Ah sorry yeah playing and recording from same pc would make sense - mixed that bit

[S3M]

Recording at that resolution and framerate requires a powerful PC with fast drives, and that is an past the power required to run the game.
Anyway, have you tried OBS? It can be configured in a number of ways to decrease recording quality (bitrate) to keep the CPu/GPU overhead low. Going for an hardware device like an Elgato would be a waste, the connections would be like PC -> Elgato -> Monitor/PC (HDMI/USB 2.0).

Another vote for OBS (Open Broadcast software) it's a great bit of free kit.

Having a decent processor is the key thing as briareos told me, what I also advise is having two hard drives. One to play the game on and the other to record the video, that way the each drive only has to deal with the writing and reading of one task. Drive speed is also key the faster it is the better.