2018, going to 2019. I’m going to build a new PC but keep my current one around. Might be old, but can handle inself.
General idea here is I want a separate machine to handle streams and video editing and another machine to dho the actual stuff. Generally, my mac pro should be good for all of this with final cut and whatnot. KDenLive is great as long as it doesn’t crash, but it crashes a lot for me so I’ll just wait for it to figure itself out for now. And when it DOES, I’ll just switch back to linux.
IDRC if its a PCIe one or USB one, I just don’t know much about the hardware itself. So any info is good info as far as I am croncerned.
The best ones for Linux are the Magewell PCI-E ones for direct V4L2 integration (if properly cooled) but the Blackmagic PCI-E ones actually have proper framerate capture, since it’s not using a scaler, but rather only takes in the image format the card is set to. (Which guarantees the framerate is not going to be converted by a scaler.)
UVC capture is only for convenience. Because of the video scalers some UVC capture devices use, it doesn’t properly grab the framerate and it introduces framerate stutter.
Best bet are the Blackmagic cards, but if you can work around the Scaler on the Magewell PCI-E cards to not cause frame rate discrepancy, I would love to know that.
I bought a decent workstation ($50 for a 3770 w/8gb of ram) from my university surplus to be a streaming pc for me. Now I am looking at capture cards and the Blackmagic PCI-E cards have appeared to be the best from my “limited” research. If anyone in the thread is also looking for or knows about cards good for streaming specifically, I think we all need your help.
Blackmagic Decklink Mini Recorder 4K and a HDMI splitter would work for dual system with Linux as the streaming PC’s OS. (BTW, there is a OBS Browser plugin for Linux: https://github.com/bazukas/obs-linuxbrowser/releases)
Be aware that it doesn’t support ultrawide resolutions. If you want to capture ultrawide resolutions, that’s basically limited to the Elgato 4K60 capture card and that only works on Windows.
Also, for refresh rates higher than 60hz, you will need the Elgato 4K60 or the Avermedia Live Gamer 4K, and once again, it only works on Windows. (Live Gamer 4K doesn’t support ultrawide resolutions)
People do stream to Twitch at 720p 100fps, mainly Half Life 1 speedrunners, so don’t say the limit is 60hz for streaming.
I do not recommend UVC capture if you want consistent frametimes. It’s PCI-E or bust. I’ve used the Avermedia ExtremeCap UVC and I’m not impressed with it’s handling of 59.94 drop frame framerates in V4L2 Linux. I also don’t know if that’s universal with all devices so I need to grab a AVio HD sometime in the future to confirm things. (AVio 4K is out of my budget now)
I would ask people to confirm frame time consistency with UVC devices, but that’s asking too much. No one is going to set aside spare time to test this so I have to test it.
And I know for a fact the Magewell PCI-E cards if overheated have frame dropping issues. The Blackmagic should just work on Linux. The Elgato (Windows only) supports all the fancy high refresh rate and ultrawide stuff together, and the Avermedia Live Gamer 4K (Windows only) supports HDR capture, but not ultrawide capture.