• Any capture cards specializing in low latency?
    16 replies, posted
I'm planning to experiment to see if I can use a capture card as a kind of "virtual monitor" by connecting a console to it and using the preview window on the PC as the monitor. My first consideration is the Elgato HD60S which IIRC has a latency of around 50ms, which is maybe okay for RPG games or something but still might be unsuitable for fighting/shooting/racing games. Is there any capture cards out there that has an even lower latency?
Not really a capture card, but wouldn't a HDMI switch work better for this purpose? Not exactly a window but you'd be able to switch between PC and console about as fast as just alt+tabbing
There are actually monitors that have "picture in picture" which allow you to effectively have a small window showing a separate input an HDMI splitter would be useful with that depending on your needs.
@Crest paging Elgato
Well, not really unfortunately. Assuming this kind of setup actually works, what I'm trying to do with it is possibly use a laptop as a portable monitor, so that I don't have to bring around both an extra monitor and a console when I travel around. If I end up having to get a PCI-E card, I could probably find some use in that too. Anyways, for everything to work out I absolutely need to be able to get the video output of a console (or any HDMI device) onto the PC screen as a window, camera, or something.
there are laptops which have HDMI in, which is what you must be looking for
Practically speaking, the HD60 S you already own probably has near the lowest latency you can expect from a device without some purpose built niche hardware. Much of the latency you're experiencing is buffering to make sure things stay in sync and you're not skipping all over. Depends on the system but 3-4 frames of buffering is normal. A Capture Card is probably not what you want.
Watch out for these. PiP feature in monitors might or might not have absolutely awful delay. My Ultrawide's one goes from great to game with to "worse than cheap tvs" when PBP is enabled.
Sounds like elgato got the lowest latency on the market. Even professional blackmagic cards introduct at least 100ms of latency. You'll have to use hdmi splitter and a separate preview monitor unfortunately.
Friend of mine just ended up playing the game though OBS's source output underdog feature https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1755/99e00d1f-c254-41a3-9ee2-028d5933e446/image.png https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/1755/c9b374c1-278e-401e-9f97-02bba013fceb/image.png
You're really not gonna get much better than that I'm afraid. I've done exactly this before, but it was with a Component standard def usb 2.0 capture card and with my PS2. It's playable for normal games, but ain't gonna cut it for frame perfect tricks, obviously. Best option I can suggest is just get a second monitor.
This just changes how its displayed. The fundamental latency isn't changed. The lowest would probably be in VirtualDub or some other very lightweight capture programs.
From what I see, that Elgato you mentioned is about $150 on Amazon, you might be able to find a decent portable monitor for that price, they've gotten pretty good in the past couple of years
Depending on the capture software, I've seen an actual difference in latency due to the buffer. With the HD60S, I get around two frames of latency using their software. Works well enough for MK8 but I don't know about more precise racing games. One thing to note though, games do not feel as smooth when I am playing them through the capture software. I don't know if there's a frame pacing issue or what, but they feel a bit jittery. Also, the elgato cards are a bit notorious for having slight crackles in the audio preview. It bothers me enough that I actually just break the audio off directly into my speakers. They refuse to address that the issue even exists, but if you spend 30 seconds googling you'll find many reports of the issue. So from experience with doing this myself, it works with an HD60S, but my experience is limited to the WiiU and Switch. It works well enough that the only time I actually swap inputs is for Smash and (sometimes) Splatoon.
Some of the delay is also dependent on the system, but what I mean is some software has multiple layers or processes which need to run to provide a particular feature set. Virtualdub does almost nothing. Game Capture can also be quite low if you disable many functions. Audio skipping issues is a very broad issue, sometimes it's an underpowered system, sometimes it's some other third party driver conflict, sometimes just closing the software and reopening it solves the problem. So it's handled on a case by case basis, it's not some specific bug to point to. We've implemented plenty of fixes in the drivers and software over the years, but it's a surprisingly difficult issue to solve because based on my conversations in my tier 2 group it's often a combination of problems relating to a customers config or other conflicting hardware. If you've ever experience DPC Latency problems on Windows you'll know how difficult that can be to track down. It's something brought up in meetings routinely. I can promise you it's not something that's ignored. I'd be curious how many of those google results still are showing the problem. But I'd always encourage emailing in with a SupportInfo reporter file. http://e.lga.to/help http://e.lga.to/reporter
Maybe it's been fixed over time and I hope that it has, but I've still gotten minor crackles while using it recently. On top of that, sometimes it'll initialize and the audio will be completely goofed. A replug fixes that. It's not on just one system though, it's on three different systems. I understand hardware is hard but the fact of the matter is that (at least last time I looked, while I will admit was a while back), were many posts on Reddit about the topic with people saying they had gotten no real answer (despite there being staff replies to other posts). As a dev, I know this kind of stuff can be really hard and I know it's generally going to be configuration specific. It just left a bad taste in my mouth when so many people were experiencing similar issues and there was what appeared to be active avoidance of answers.
This is where I'd ask for a case to send above me to the next department. HD60 Pro and HD60 S are there this typically shows up, but they're also based on similar hardware. When someone says they got no real answers, I'll usually ask for their case to see whats up. Could very well be that we're still working on it in the background (working with other staff via notes) or waiting on QA to look it over. There are only a few things we avoid talking about. These would be things like Linux Support, Future Products, etc. But we've totally RMA'd cards we didn't think were bad because all other tests failed. If this happened on multiple computers then that would be a totally valid suggestion.
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