Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Best 4k HDR Capture Cards for PS5/Xbox Series X”.
What’S up folks how’s it going, this watch hope you guys are all doing well and today we’re going to be talking about capturing 4k video footage coming out of the next generation gaming consoles. Now both the xbox series x and ps5 have built-in dvr functionality inside on the xbox series x, you can record up to 10 minutes and with an external hard drive attached to it, you can record up to an hour’s length and on the ps5 you can record In hours within the console itself, which is cool, but what? If you want to record continuously beyond an hour, you want more control over the quality of your footage, because both sony and microsoft limit the bitrate of your 4k internal capturing capabilities around 30 to 50 megabits per second. And what, if you want to live stream on an external box, and i want to have generally more control and the ability to capture things like menu screens and things like that which are limited on the built-in dvr functionality on both platforms? Well, in this article, we’re going to talk about some of the best video capture card solutions that are out there specifically for gaming. Of course, you can use any of these capture cards to capture really any kind of 4k hdmi input, whether that be a camera or really anything else. Now.
Firstly, you’re going to take a look at this chart over here, which will break down the price point of each of the capture cards that we’re going to talk about the resolution frame rates that they have the ability to capture from whether they’re hdr certified internal external Things like that, so you can pause the video right now to get more details on that, but we’re gon na. Firstly, talk about budget uh, dvr solutions. Now, cloner alliance is a company. That’S been making affordable, dvr solutions for quite some time now. They have a lot of options in the 1080p dvr range, but it’s not until recently where they entered in the 4k dvr space, and this is their first generation 4k recorder. It’S called the cloner alliance uhd light.
The price of this thing is going to be around 200 or less, and it has a full 4k 60 frames per second hdmi pass-through with a minimum latency, and you can record a 4k resolution at 30 frames per second. Around 30 megabits per second in terms of maximum bit rate in both h.264 and h.265 codecs, you can also record 1080p at 60 frames per second as well. The big thing about this is that you have the ability to directly record onto a usb uh thumbstick or hard drive, formatted fat32 ntfs exfat, pretty much most common format and with the built-in mic line in line out connections at the front, you can easily add your Own live commentary: add your own music soundtrack to your gaming footage and even output that sound to headphones or external speakers, and, apart from some of the physical buttons at the front, including record snapshot and codec switching capabilities. It also comes with a handy, remote control which will allow you easy access to the box itself. It’S important that this is a pc free solution. It’S specifically designed to be a standalone box where you can record your 4k 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second 1080p gaming footage directly onto a usb thumbstick. You can take that footage off the thumbsticks and do some editing with it later on, but there’s no real pc, hookup solutions at this point for third-party streaming services like obs and xsplit, and things like that. However, cloner alliance also just came out with their flint 4k p plus capture card.
This is a super small box that allows for 4k 60 frames per second pass through it interfaces with a usb type-c and it’s powered through that usb connection as well. So that’s super convenient. Unfortunately, you can’t actually capture 4k resolution you’re top down at 1080p 60 frames per second, but you still have all the alive inputs for microphone line in and line output and it’s cross compatible across mac. Pc works great with all the popular streaming. Software out there like xsplit, obs, wirecast, vlc, etc and uh. The really cool thing is this also works with an android a smartphone.
So you can download the clone alliance app and actually connect this thing via usbc and record directly on to your phone, which is pretty cool now, in terms of the price point it’s fairly competitive on amazon, you can typically find these for under 180, which is great For something that does ultra low latency 4k 60 frames per second pass through at 1080p 60 frames per second recording now moving on the budget oriented stuff. Let’S actually talk about the uh real hdr, 4k 60 frames per second video capture cards that are out there now. You’Re going to be primarily looking at two main brands, elgato and avermedia. In my opinion, now in terms of elgato, i’ve had a huge history with them.
I’Ve had the hd60s for many years been really reliable and a great overall video capture card solution for 1080p 60 frames per second video. I’Ve also had the mark one version of the 4k60 pro pci express capture card. It was one of the first 4k capture cards that you can get at that time. I didn’t have a lot of 4k gaming consoles to actually test this thing out with, besides the playstation 4 pro, but with the mark ii version of this internal capture card, you can record 2160p at 60 frames per second, you have hdr 10-bit, pass-through and in-board recording With codecs for hevc, h.265 hdr, as well as hvc h.264 codec, this card is also probably the most aggressively priced at this point.
You can typically find them on amazon for 250 to 280 and even cheaper, sometimes in the use category so uh for people that are building a pc specifically for live streaming or 4k video capturing. This is definitely the most competitively priced solution out there now elgato’s most powerful 4k capturing solution is actually this thing over here. This is the 4k 60s plus it’s a standalone unit has all the same capabilities as you would find as the pci internal capture card. So you can fully record hdr 10 certified 4k 60 frames per second video coming straight out of your ps5 or xbox series x, and you have the flexibility of either using this capture card as a standalone unit.
Since you have a built-in sd card slot that will support 256 gigabyte cards, get you about seven hours of recording time, and you can also hook this up by a usbc connection to your pc and be unlimited based on your hard drive space. Furthermore, the unit also has a built-in hvec video encoder that will minimize the cpu load and stress on your main machine. So either your pc or laptop will then be more streamlined and optimized for gaming itself or for live streaming and leave the video encoding done all through the capture card itself. Now all these features and capabilities sound, really awesome and for the most part they definitely are.
When they work, i’ve had this particular unit for the past two months and it’s worked pretty well, it was a refurbished unit and initially i believe the hdmi input was acting up. It unfortunately came back up again and now i’m getting no signal whatsoever. I’Ve tried many different things: swapping out cables: the power supply, upgrading the firmware reinstalling, the software been through it for a couple of days and, unfortunately, there’s no luck. I’M gon na have to send this unit back. Fortunately, corsair.
Slash elgato is an amazing 2 year warranty and they have you covered in the scenario. So hopefully we’ll get this thing back up and running. There’S been some reliability concerns with these first generation units, which is understandable, of course, for the most part, most people using these units have had pretty much no issues, i’m just in the rare circumstance where i did come across a bad refurbished unit now move forward.
Let’S talk about avermedia, we had the chance to test out the live, gamer 4k or the gs 573 internal pci express card, as well as their external card called the live. Gamer bolt now the cool thing about both cards from a quality and capability standpoint. I think they do go beyond the elgato stuff.
That’S currently available. They can record 2160p 4k resolution at 60 frames per second full hdr 10 bit certification at up to 240 megabits per second with their rec central software. That’S beyond what any of the elgato products can do.
They can also capture quad, hd or 1440p at 144 frames per second, as well as 1080p, at 240 frames per second, which is currently not possible on any of the elgato cards. Now, obviously, the main difference between the internal and external card is the interface with the live. Gamer. 4K. It’S an internal pci express 4x gen, 2 form factor card gets powered through the motherboard and it lives inside your pc versus the live. Gamer bolt is a thunderbolt interface, so that means you’re gon na need either a windows base a desktop or laptop that has a thunderbolt connectivity built inside.
It will not work with just any plain usb type-c connection. Now there are only a handful of reasons why you would get the live. Gamer bold, opposed to just the standard pci express card is one.
Is you don’t want to install something inside a pc? You want something mobile specific, perhaps to connect to a laptop. So it’s more travel friendly plus you do have that convenience factor of using thunderbolt 3, which gets data and power through one connection. Now it’s important to note that live gamer bolt is not a standalone unit.
It doesn’t do any of the hevc encoding on board. It does require a gpu and cpu to do most of that encoding and obviously it doesn’t have an sd card or usb connection for standalone recording like what we saw in the clone alliance, uhd lite and indeed the elgato 4k 60s plus. But besides those minor factors, both internal and external cards have the same overall encoding and recording capabilities. Both support ultra low latency 4k pass-through, as well as high refresh rate low response time. A gaming monitor. So if you’re going to use this with a 240 hertz or 144hz, a gaming monitor you’re not going to sacrifice that kind of performance while using these cards.
Additionally, there’s also a decent price gap between the avermedia live gamer 4k internal card, which typically goes for around three hundred dollars versus uh. The bolt uh goes for anywhere between 400 to 450 dollars, which makes it one of the most expensive capture card designed for gaming. But it is the only external box that will not only record 4k at 60 frames per second, but also 240 frames per second.
At 1080p, but besides those things, that’s really definitely love to hear your thoughts. I would like to know if you guys think it’s worth getting an external capture card, or would you just stick with the internal capturing capabilities of the next generation consoles? Big thanks to all the support from the people that made this content possible in the first place, an even bigger thank you for you guys for watching and supporting the channel make sure you have post notifications turned on so you, yet our videos want to become available. Like if you haven’t done so already and please subscribe, .