Elgato HD60 Pro Review

I've been wanting to review this for quite awhile and thanks to the kind folks at Elgato, I was supplied a review unit.

Originally when this was announced, I was pretty sceptical about a card that only accepted HDMI. I found it very weird that they dropped Composite/S-Video/Component support from the original Game Capture HD design.

After having time to reflect on it, I think Elgato has chosen wisely. The future is HDMI and this card is meant to cater to that. Recently I've been getting into PC and PS4 gaming so keeping around older consoles like a Super Nintendo doesn't mean much any more. Time to move on and embrace the new! Eventually some hardware based solution that doesn't suck (Retron 5 etc) will come out and we can all enjoy the glory of HDMI even with our older games.

Packaging and contents

Elgato have gone with a similar packaging design to the original Game Capture HD and who can fault them. It looks really nice and is very practical. Inside is the capture card itself, an Elgato Gaming case badge, a mini PC bracket and at the back is a HDMI cable.

I personally like the approach of not supplying driver CDs with computer products. They are almost always out of date and pointing the user to grab the latest from the internet is always the way to go. The card is surprisingly small compared to other cards I've used. It's basically nearly half the length of the SC-512 and it should have no issue fitting into any case.

The build quality is also really solid and sturdy. You can tell they really put care and effort into this card. I like that they label the input and output ports very clearly. Too often have I stumbled with this on other capture cards and been scratching my head for a minute or two as to why I don't have a signal (I'm looking at you Blackmagic).

Software installation, usage and owning a capture card, worth it?

The latest drivers and software can be downloaded from here.

Click to enlarge

The software supplied is as user friendly as it gets and anyone regardless of technical knowledge should be able to use every feature after 10 minutes. One of my main issues with the USB version of the software was that changing any setting hanged the video preview for 5+ seconds. With the internal offering, this is cut down to maybe a second and is much more responsive because of it. You are also easily able to record commentary over the game and individually tweak the volumes which is good when making tutorials or an actual "Let's Play".

The flashback feature basically allows you to record without recording. Missed an awesome moment? Just slide it back and hit record. Can't say I would use this much though and this is where the line between owning a capture card and just using the built in PS4 recording comes into question.

Most of the normal gamer user base is going to be fine with the 15 minute PS4 record limit if they are doing a Let's Play or whatever. They can technically get around that and have unlimited time if they stream it on Twitch and then upload the highlight to YouTube. I guess that approach is okay but what does that suffer?

1. Actual 1080p quality recordings are missed and depends on the users internet connection
2. Editing that video is going to be troublesome rather than having offline MP4 files
3. Lack the ability to record other HDMI consoles without the PS4 feature
4. The PS4 stream layout is always like everyone else who does it, nothing unique. You can't put up splits if you're doing a run or set up the scene how you would like

I'm still 100% sure it's way better to own a capture card than using inbuilt console recording. Maybe in the future this will change but that is probably still years away.

Video quality and DirectShow drivers

Obviously the main selling point of this card is 1080p60 so let's try and focus on that. On the original Game Capture HD, Elgato limited the capture bit rate to 30Mbps when other USB2 solutions were offering 60Mbps. Thankfully it looks like Elgato have changed this for the HD60 Pro and 1080p60 at 60Mbps is the top offering. Here is some Elgato software 60Mbps recordings of what you can expect: Beyond: Two Souls and The Last of Us (make sure to locally download for an optimum viewing experience). The software records video in YV12 (4:2:0) mode which is to be expected. The lowest capture bitrate is 14Mbps if you were wondering.

I didn't actually find out until yesterday from Elgato that the HD60 Pro has a DirectShow driver! They have kept it low key as they believe "it can create more issues than it solves". I don't personally believe it does. Its made adding the card to programs like XSplit and OBS as easy as it should be. You can get the driver here.

Fortunately for us, someone at Elgato has been paying attention and has released the DirectShow driver with YUY2 support. It is possible to record from this card in lossless YUY2 mode. Needless to say I was quick to open up AmaRecTV and test this out.

A quick configuration to 1080p and away we go!

It works just like the SC-512 would when recording YUY2 video. It's really fantastic and what you would expect from the card. Below is a YV12 vs YUY2 comparison if you are interested (madVR is used as the renderer).

Lagarith/x264vfw Lossless YUY2

Elgato YV12 60Mbps

As you can see there is basically no quality loss. The 60Mbps strikes a great balance between quality and compression for such large resolutions and frame rates. The Elgato YV12 encoder is really performing well even against lossless files.

As for audio, the Elgato software limits audio capture to AAC since it outputs TS and MP4 whereas the DirectShow method is your usual PCM. Elgato should maybe think about implementing 5.1 audio support somewhere down the line. I know of 2 or 3 people who have bought the more expensive Magewell offering since it boasts 5.1 support.

It's really hard to give recommended source bitrate configurations since it depends what type of games you are playing. Anything slow without much action (think Beyond: Two Souls) seems to like ranges between 40 and 45 with anything above that being superfluous. The more visually demanding games will need around 50 and 55 Mbps to stay consistent in quality.

XSplit and OBS Support

The HD60 Pro is supported in each main streaming program with the DirectShow driver. Below are my OBS settings.

XSplit was a tad more difficult to set up. I had to manually specify the audio source within the capture card properties in XSplit. Hopefully in later XSplit versions this is automatically detected like it is for the AVerMedia cards or the Blackmagic Intensity Pro.

Limited and Full Range DirectShow Support

One of the issues with the DirectShow driver is that it is not clear how the user is supposed to toggle between HDMI ranges. The only way I could figure out how to do it was similar to the AVerMedia LGX method I came up with where you open up the Elgato software, toggle the range you need and then reopen AmaRec/XSplit/OBS. Here is the difference it can make so make sure you do it properly! I'm outputting full range 0-255 video in these screenshots.

16-235 toggled on

Proper full range 0-255 toggle

Conclusions and recommendations

This is a really solid offering from Elgato. Anyone in the market for a HDMI/1080p60 solution should probably pick this up. Obviously the main competitor is the Micomsoft SC-512 which has more inputs but like I said in the introduction, that really means nothing as time passes. If you do care so much about capturing your retro consoles you already should have an XRGB Mini which outputs HDMI and you guessed it... capture it with the Elgato HD60 Pro. You can even reinvest the money you saved in buying the HD60 Pro into an XRGB Mini.

The only real recommendations I can make to improve this is implement 5.1 audio support which should be well within the bandwidth requirements. I also find it weird that the software is limiting the user to capture audio at 224 kbps. Audio is so small in comparison to video data that I'd like to see configurable options for audio such as a slider that the software currently uses for configuring video quality. A range from 224 to 320 should ensure great quality stereo audio.

As mentioned above, an easier way to toggle HDMI ranges when using DirectShow should be implemented for future versions.

Thanks for reading. Any additional questions about the card you can contact me using the form on my blog or leave a comment below.

Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4K (1080p60 and 2160p30)

Announced mid February 2015, the new Blackmagic 4K now arrives.

It supports 1080p60 RGB capture and up to 2160p30 at 4:2:2. One of my main problems with the old Intensity Pro was that 480p was not supported over Component, this is now fixed.

People will be comparing this to the Micomsoft SC-512 so we can do a quick pros and cons list.

Intensity Pro 4K

Supports Deep Color output. Due to this, no other capture card can rival the quality outputted by this device. In a real world scenario though, I'm unsure of whether this will actually be beneficial as most stuff will just end up on YouTube.

It's $200 (or £135 according to the site). That's absolutely insane value.

Has passthrough. I'm unsure of whether it will function like the old Intensity and the tech specs don't mention it doing 4:4:4 to 4:2:2 processing. It looks like it might be lagless.

Supports 7.1 audio capture. This is always absent on cards of this price.

If it's like the old Intensity, it won't capture Full range content. I'll need to have the driver and the actual hardware to know for sure. I'm guessing since it supports Deep Color, they did support it.

The drivers can be flaky but obviously this can improve with time.

Obviously no 240p support but that's easily worked around with a GV-USB2 or similar.

Micomsoft SC-512

The Blackmagic crushes it in price and availability.

We know for sure the passthrough is lagless but so might this new Blackmagic.

Ability to capture via VGA so retro console RGB capture is possible. Anyone really into retro gaming has an upscaler so doesn't really matter.

Drivers are currently way better than Blackmagic.

Summary

What's now known as the best capture card completely depends on what you personally need. Both products are great but right now I have to side with the Intensity. That price point and features is bordering on absolute insanity.

Update:

So this is turning into trainwreck city for Blackmagic. 5 days ago I emailed Blackmagic some questions. Yes... 5 days ago. Today I got a reply.

"We aim to respond to all email queries within 1 working day"... I see.

Here are my original questions.

1. Does the passthrough operate the same way as the old Intensity Pro where it was converted to 4:2:2 on output and thus introduced some lag? Is it now 4:4:4 output and lag free? If so, what happened to Component to HDMI lag?

2. With other DirectShow software, are you able to select 4:2:2 HDYC for non UltraHD resolutions or is it always going to be RGB?

3. Will the new card support 0-255 Full range? The old Intensity only supported 16-235.

The reply:

thanks of your email,

1) I will ask the developer team whether the pass through is 10bit RGB or re negotiated
2)The UHD is always YUV
3)the card support 0-255

My impressions:

It's just as quick as they can reply it seems with 2 mistakes. "of your" instead of "for your" and "support" instead of "supports". Just looks really unprofessional.

Question 1 wasn't even answered and I bet you I don't get a follow up email to clarify. How did answer 2 help? The only answer I got was from 3 but they haven't explained how you would do this as there's no configuration to select this. I honestly may aswell not even have emailed. I'd stay away from Blackmagic.

Blackmagic Intensity Pro - 720x486 to 720x480

Pretty much just making this quick post to remind myself what to do when handling SD 720x486 material from the Intensity Pro/Shuttle. Hopefully it helps someone.

The OCD inside me wants the processed output from these devices to be 720x480 so it falls in line with other capture cards. You would think this would be an easy solution, right? Just crop 3 pixels from the top and 3 from the bottom... nope. According to this post, that will reverse field order (instead of being TFF it will be BFF). Personally I can't really see how it would (maybe program specific?) but let's not dwell on that.

The correct way to go from 720x486 to 720x480 is to crop 2 lines from the top and 4 from the bottom. Check the second post here. Other sources I've read seem to back this up.

How to edit x264vfw videos

In my 1080p60 article it was clear that x264vfw was the best codec. However, at the end of the article I mentioned that editing the videos were really laggy in Sony Vegas. One of my readers informed me that the editing procedure in Premiere Pro was even worse.

I decided to do some research and figure out how you could use x264vfw but still retain editing capabilities that were close to the other lossless codecs. I am no expert in video encoding but from what I understand, the editing is laggy is due to not enough Intra (I) frames (also called key frames) in the video file.

We can fix this by changing the --keyint default value of 250 in x264vfw. After trying many values I just settled on --keyint 1 (so all I frames). This should make working with the videos much easier as it gives frame perfect seeking.

Click to enlarge

One issue that concerned me initially was that I frames hold all data of the frame where as P (predictive) frames just track the changes from the previous frame and thus compress much better. I thought that incorporating all I frames would hurt the compression and it does but not to a large degree. If the hike to --keyint 1 is too much you may want to experiment with --keyint 10 or similar. Happy capturing and editing with x264vfw!

Blackmagic Intensity Pro Capture Card Review

This was one of the first capture cards I ever owned. Let me explain what it does good and why it left me looking elsewhere.

Blackmagic Intensity Pro - Image courtesy of Amazon.com

The device will accept Composite, S-Video, Component and HDMI. The composite connection gets connected to the Green Y plug of the supplied breakout cable. One thing to note is that the device is aimed at the camera market, so non standard resolutions used by retro consoles (240p) are not supported. It will only handle resolutions of 480i or more. However, 480p over component is not possible (only over HDMI) so if one of your main consoles is a Nintendo Wii you should really consider something else.

The drivers are just plain annoying to use. You need to go into the "Blackmagic Control Panel" and select what input you want to capture from. No other capture card I own requires you to do this. It's not a big issue but something I think needs to be said. The drivers are DirectShow compatible and thus work with any program you would need (AmaRecTV, XSplit and OBS).

The composite capture quality is average and nothing special to talk about (there is no 3D comb filter). The component quality is very near to what the source outputs and as expected, HDMI is excellent. The real downside to the card lies in its color space. For SD the card uses UYVY (this can easily be worked with) and HD uses HDYC. No freely available codec besides UT Video will support HDYC natively (make sure to choose ULH2 in UT). This pretty much leaves you with 3 capturing options.

1. Use the Motion JPEG encoder supplied with the driver (unless you are very limited by disk space or processing power avoid this). The quality is very bad.

2. UT Video. Delivers very good CPU load and compression for a lossless codec.

3. Uncompressed capture (the data rates with this are just way too high without having to invest in RAID0).

So out of the 3 options, only UT Video is really viable for great quality on a single hard drive. The problem is that other lossless codecs like Lagarith and x264vfw don't support HDYC but can perform better (in regards to CPU load and bandwidth). HDYC is basically YUV 4:2:2 with 709 levels for the U and V. This means it is identical to other YUV 4:2:2 color spaces like YUY2. You can read more on the subject here. There also exists a Huffyuv HDYC build but users have reported it has color space issues so don't use that.

The last thing I want to talk about is the pass through feature of the card. What Blackmagic won't openly advertise to gamers is that the pass through is not lag free (input lag is introduced). One of the cool features is that you can input say component video and output over HDMI. This will add more lag (analog to digital conversion) than inputting and outputting component video (I even directly asked Blackmagic about that). However, I was able to play perfectly fine going from component to HDMI (but I am not very sensitive to input lag) so you might want to do further reading before you commit. The pass through is also processed and not what your source device is outputting. I also noticed that there was about 2 or 3 black pixels at the top of my 720p image when looking at the pass through image. This seems to be a common issue with the Intensity Pro but it was fixed with the Intensity Shuttle.

I always like to have a choice of what codec I want to use and that is where the Blackmagic ultimately falls short. There is very limited uses for this capture card. If you are just looking to capture HDMI video from a console then buy yourself the much cheaper AVerMedia C027/H727 with a HDMI splitter and put the spare money to something else. The only real resolution the Intensity Pro is good for is 480i over Component and for the price, not exactly worth the money.