I was in the market for a video capture card, and thought I’d share my thought process around picking the one I did in the hopes it helps someone else. What helped early in the process was knowing that I wanted to go the internal card route, external cards didn’t seem to be as reliable, and I had no plans to capture anything while not at my desktop machine.
BRANDS
I narrowed the search down to two primary brands, Elgato and AVerMedia. They seemed to be the two brands that most people were using when capturing console footage. I investigated what YouTube personalities were using and I spoke with a few people who had a capture card and honestly, Elgato seemed to be coming out on top in this area.
Video quality
The next way I narrowed down options was straightforward, I wanted 4K support. Both brands have offerings in this area so neither was immediately out of the running. When it comes to video quality, both seemed to be close to each other but there was some reported ghosting with the AVerMedia card which I’ll discuss a little bit later in the GHOSTING section. Outside of this one reported issue, neither on the surface seemed to have a particular advantage or disadvantage over the other. I watched dozens of videos comparing footage quality and watched dozens of reviews.
Supported Audio Channels
The Elgato is limited to 2.0 audio capture, which I admit was a disappointment. AVerMedia on the other hand does 5.1 and I’ve even seen reports of 7.1, although I was unable to find specific data on 7.1 before making my purchase decision. Now, while capturing in 5.1 (or 7.1) has no impact upon YouTube content, it was a factor in potentially future proofing myself and while I don’t have a specific use case for capturing 5.1 at this time, I do have multiple systems that can take advantage of it, so it wasn’t a feature I wanted to discount.
Frame Rate
Both cards support capturing up to 4K with 60fps but where the AVerMedia pulled ahead was its ability to capture resolutions lower than 4K at a higher frame rate, as high as 240Hz at 1080p where the Elgato was always capped at 60fps.
Bus requirement
On paper, both cards require a PCIe x4 slot but after some further research, apparently the AVerMedia in truth requires an x8 or x16 slot to get the best performance. Using an x4 slot resulted in noticeable poor performance with occasional skipping. I was fortunate in that I had a spare x16 slot for the card so I was covered regardless, but this could potentially be a factor for other users out there.
Ghosting
Approximately 4 years ago as of this publishing, there was a video post that compared PS4 footage captured using both cards in question. One tiny footnote here is that the Elgato used in the video was the original version of the card, not the Mk.2 (which is the current offering). The Elgato footage seemed to be cleaner, with each individual frame appearing sharp, while there was an occasional ghosting effect that showed up with the AVerMedia card. This was a concern since video quality wasn’t something I wanted to compromise on. If there was a clear winner on picture quality, that’d weigh heavily on the final decision. Since it was from 4 years ago though, I did my best to find footage captured more recently and in the samples I found, I am happy to report that I found no ghosting. After researching this particular bullet point all I could, I made an assumption that it was an issue fixed in an update, at least I’m hoping that’s the case. It could be random chance that the more recent footage just wasn’t showing this issue, and the ghosting is in fact still present, but it at least appearing absent at this point was enough to improve my confidence level in the AVerMedia card.
Brand name
Interestingly, most people with capture cards I know are using an Elgato so there must be something to that. I would go so far as to say that anecdotally speaking, Elgato has a leg up here and make no mistake, the brand has a lot of power. I see their name pop up all over the place online and I would go so far as to say Elgato has much more exposure and is unquestionably the bigger name, at least as noticed during my researching time.
Latency
AVerMedia posted this chart on Twitter, which even though coming from AVerMedia, was a good set of data to review, dated April 29, 2020.
I didn’t take this immediately as fact, especially since I didn’t see the Elgato 4K60 Pro Mk.2 mentioned so it wasn’t immediately clear to me as to which version was tested but since the Mk.2 was released in 2019, it was a reasonable assumption to make that data was for the newer, Mk.2 card. After some additional digging, I came across similar reports from others online who tested latency and that helped support the results AVerMedia provided.
Conclusion
The winner? The AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K.
I have a feeling I went against the grain on this one, but I did my homework. Capturing 5.1 audio was a selling point, as was the low latency since I only have a single primary monitor setup and wouldn’t be using the passthrough option.
So far, I’m quite happy with the decision and fortunately I haven’t encountered any of the ghosting I noticed from that earlier footage so maybe that issue was indeed fixed. I’ll provide an update if anything changes but so far, it’s looking good.
Update
I’m still happy with my purchase however I’ve noticed occasional audio popping that requires editing to smooth out. However, I’m also getting similar pops on rare occasions when using a mic so I’m not ready to say it’s specific to the capture card. There’s a chance it’s caused by something else and might even possibly be an OBS issue.