Obs. Will a capture card improve my performance?

sundyz

New Member
Hi,

When streaming, I have noticed considerable blurry and pixelation when streaming one game. I am thinking of buying a high quality capture card and running the game on a console instead. Will this improve my stream quality and reduce the blur? I have messed around with the settings for almost 8 months now on twitch, but I even tried streaming to YouTube with a high bit rate and still see this problem with this game. I am hoping by playing the game on a console it will take the load of the computer and produce a clearer image. Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks.
 

Harold

Active Member
If you're capturing the machine you're gaming on and using OBS on the same computer, no a capture card will not help in any way.
 

Harold

Active Member
Then you will have more control over the overlays and layout, and compared to the built-in streaming or the playstation remote play you would likely have a picture quality gain
 

qhobbes

Active Member
It depends on how you define "stream quality" (dropped frames, skipped frames, overall visual quality, etc.) and what is causing the blur. Is it frame rate conversion, bitrate, etc?
 

koala

Active Member
I am hoping by playing the game on a console it will take the load of the computer and produce a clearer image.
Using a capture device will not produce a clearer image. It will be the same clarity as with the direct capture methods of OBS. A clear image is dependent on encoder settings, mainly bitrate. And it is dependent on rescaling - any rescaling will slightly blur the image.
If you use a capture device and run the game on one machine and run OBS and the capture device on a second machine, you split the load between the two machines, but you lose some control: You will always capture the whole screen of the machine running the game.

If you have CPU load issues running both the game and OBS on the same computer, make sure you limit the fps of the game to 60 and activate vsync. This will leave resources for OBS, so you might be able to properly run both. It seems your issues are quality-(bitrate-) orientated, not with resource shortage in general. In this case you will just run into the same quality issues by capturing the console, because it creates the same image, which is encoded the same.
 

Amirsol55

New Member
I am new but this conversation is interesting.

I make videos on YouTube using OBS and connect to my iPhone 15 wireless. I use a MacBook Air 2020 with M1 chip.

I react to YouTube videos and find the video quality drops massively and there is also lag.

Would a capture card help in anyway ?
 

koala

Active Member
Please consult the Mac support forum. On Mac, the hardware situation is completely different (and completely unknown to me).
 
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