[Solved] How to record HDR 4K60 via another PC? Cost effectively?

[D Levy]

edit:

Problem solved, see this post below

 

Big fan of the channel so figured I'd try to ask this here.

I'm looking for ANY cost effective way to record 4K60 HDR gameplay from 1 PC, to another PC.

 

Can be peripherals, networking, a ton of Raspberrys.. anything... don't care so long as the solution works and doesn't cost an arm and a leg like every current device out there now.

 

CONTEXT:

I play this game called Star Citizen, in 4K60 (only gets 60fps in Star Marine though). It has great fidelity but my PC can't handle recording it in 4K60 while playing it.

My rig is

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/DavidAELevy/saved/GVxp99

• i7-6700K
• Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming G1 EATX
• G.Skill Trident Z 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4-3400 Memory
• two Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980 Ti's Gaming G1s
• Samsung SM951 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (wish I didn't buy these, they're bloody OEM, no support and don't work with Samsung software)
• BenQ 27-Inch IPS UHD LED Monitor BL2711U (4K60 4:4:4 10bit 100% sRGB & Rec. 709, things look really nice on this monitor!)

I have a 2nd PC that's an i5-6600k with a 980ti and 32GBs that I can use for recording or streaming. I can output to it via this 4K60 splitter 1x2 ~$40 USD

 

I'm building my own 45U server rack and will eventually centralize all my PCs into 4U cases (still trying to figure hvac cooling issue, need to get a specialist)

and have a Quanta LB6M to 10GB connectivity PC to PC and to a raid array eventually. So I'll be able to have these two PCs stacked directly on top of each other.

if only I could just turn both these PCs into one...

I was hoping there was a way to make this happen, recording 4K60, with an additional $500-ish USD budget or under?

4K60 is gorgeous on my screen and I'd love to share it with friends,

but I can't justify dishing out $1000+ USD just for the privilege of owning such a capture device.

Elgato hinted at having a 4K60 option 1st quarter of this year but I haven't seen anything more about it since then, It's a frustratingly situation.

 

OPTIONS:

Here's 4K60 capture options I've looked at (overpriced for me):

• AJA - Kona 4 ~$2000 USD
• Atomos - Shogun Inferno ~$1500 USD
• Avermedia - CE511-HN  ~$1200 USD
• Blackmagic - DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G ~$1420 USD (not sure if this would work)
• Datapath - VisionSC-DP2 ~$2000 USD (not sure if would work)
• Magewell - Pro Capture HDMI 4K Plus ~$900 USD (not sure if claims are legit for 4K60 4:4:4 capture)

And that's about it AFAIK.

 

Possible temporary solution?

I thought maybe a FPS reducer to go from the 4K60 splitter to 4K30 output would work, I could then use any number of assorted crappy capture cards to record the 4K30 feed... 

it's a compromise that could work... but I haven't found such a device yet. How it reduces the FPS is probably also important. I'd imagine there is different ways of doing it that affect quality? Instead of just removing every other frame.

 

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions?

Thanks for any help, if there's a way, sure some body here would know. Thanks!

 

Edited August 5, 2017 by D Levy
Solved

[mariushm]

If you want to retain the 4K quality, you'd want to use something that can capture the image as raw as possible, basically save each frame uncompressed or compressed using a lossless codec, and then you can later compress it to the actual format you want (basically use x264 or vp9 with highest quality per bitrate.

 

Cheap solutions often have hardware encoder chips on them which compress in real time to h264 so you can get artifacts and bad quality due to low bitrate and due to being "tuned" to be real time.

 

Some raw capture cards like the ~ 500$ epiphan av.io 4k usb capture cards are limited to 30 fps using NV12 or YV12 color spaces (YCbCr 4:2:0 which is perfectly fine for Youtube) because more than that would exceed the usb 3.0 bandwidth - you get excellent quality , no artifacts, crystal clear images, but at 30fps.

 

OBS can capture 4k at 60fps is you have a powerful processor, and if you use custom output .. for example play with custom output (ffmpeg) , choose a proper container like matroska which allows you to use fast and lossless video codecs like huffyuv and lossless codecs like flac for audio part. I did a basic test right now and 22 seconds of 3840x1200 of screen capture used about 4 GB of disk space and my fx-8320 was used to 50% and the capture speed was only about 10 fps but that's irrelevant because i wasn't doing game capture and capturing game frames is different than capturing two separate displays in rgb32 and converting each to yv12 and so on... it would have been faster with games.

Anyway the point is, you could have some raid0 or a bunch of SSDs set up to accept up to 10-15 GB per minute of video and then if you have a powerful cpu you could reserve a few cpu cores just to capture 4k 60fps and lightly compress (without loss of quality) what's captured

 

Think of AMD's threadripper with 16 cores / 32 threads or dual cpu motherboards.

[D Levy]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

If you want to retain the 4K quality, you'd want to use something that can capture the image as raw as possible, basically save each frame uncompressed or compressed using a lossless codec, and then you can later compress it to the actual format you want (basically use x264 or vp9 with highest quality per bitrate.

 

Yes thank you, I do have a background in entertainment industry and very familiar with lossless workflows. But this is just a video game, I think a lossy workflow is perfectly fine in this context.

 

I've tried OBS using nvenc and it drops a lot of frames on my rig at 4K60.

I made a tutorial on using OBS with Star Citizen (if you want to critique it?) for downsizing using Lanczos to 1080p60 (recording and playing on same PC).

But it's just not as good at the native 4K or as good as using a 2nd PC to record. I found 8,000 bitrate to be a sweet spot in performance on my rig for 1080p60 where only very rarely do frame drops happen. Recording 4K60 while playing 4K60 ultra whatever on most games just doesn't work on my rig (encoding overload, PC will explode warning lol), even though it's still a somewhat high-ish end rig (about a year+ old now I think lol lost track).

 

The idea of having a raid server is way down the road, on a tight budget atm.

 

I've been using an Avermedia U3 for 1080p60, but yes AV.io 4K is a good option for the 4K at 30 fps. I was planning on trying the Inogeni USB 3.0 4K, little bit cheaper at $400, if I could get a framerate reducer as I wrote toward the bottom of my OP. I believe I'd need a hardware based FPS reducer to put in line after the 4K60 splitter, I don't trust OBS for the preview function at 4K or even 1080p60 because it will freeze or bug out on me. For whatever reason it does that often. Using the most recent version of OBS Studio.

 

Yea, I've been debating on switching to team red, I've been an intel guy since my i286. 16 cores at substantially cheaper than anything intel has sounds REALLY good... since I dabble in 3D and do video editing. I bet I'd get nearly half the render times by upgrading to that. Exciting times!

 

TL;DR edition:

I've 2 PCs to use for this, 1 high-ish end. Just trying to record 4K resolution to share.. even if it's only 30fps on the recording.

OBS and Shadowplay drop lots of frames recording 4K when playing games at 4K60 on ultra/max... and .. well.. got to have those ultra settings on.

[D Levy]

Bump, any stepdown FPS hardware converters out there? Not sure keywords to use to find that kind of device, haven't had much luck yet.

[md1972]

Hello I have the same issues. I only want to watch 4K60Hz with my monitor via win10.

Currently I´m waiting for the Magewell USB Capture HDMI 4K Plus USB video grabber.

Look here:

http://www.magewell.com/usb-capture-hdmi-4k-plus

The card has a HDMI2.0@60fps input (600Mhz HDMI Receiver).

Due to the USB3.0 limitations you will get out max 3840x2160 NV12 (up to 30fps) at your tv.

The drawback is that audio is only stereo if you look at the specs?

http://www.magewell.com/wp-content/uploads/specs/USBCaptureHDMI4KPlusEN.pdf

 

[D Levy]

Thanks @md1972 that HDMI in plus mic feature is awesome, can mix in my mixer output with it I'd assume depending on quality of mix in. I know razor's solution sucked for that from my experience. The ripsaw or whatever that crap was which I'm trying to forget about. I'm perfectly fine with stereo audio. In fact I prefer that because of YouTube/vimeo being the final destination of the content I want to capture.

 

edit:

I wonder if they do press samples? lol I'm no LTT by any means (not even a decent fraction of their glory) but I do have 6.5 million views which ain't bad right? Will give it a try. Worst response is a "no fuck off" so... will give it a go! *fingers crossed*

[D Levy]

Problem solved!

For under $170 total!

Able to game in 4K60 HDR and stream a 1080p60 version of that without any additional load on either gaming PC or Streaming PC.

\o/ win!

 

edit:

btw some workarounds for issues I've faced.

With this downscaler, every time I reboot the gaming PC, I have to open Nvidia control panel, and change resolution from PC 4K to TV 2Kx4K (same thing pretty much) and apply... it will turn on the scaling light (1st led to right of dip switches) on the right device. I'm using an Avermedia HD2 for capturing the 1080p60 feed from the downscaler. That capture card for me is really hit or miss on each reboot. I don't know why, neither did Avermedia support over the phone. I'm replacing it via amazon to see if the replacement will be more reliable after firmware update. Fingers crossed. Here's the downscaler, it's way cheaper than the other $400+ options and works perfectly with RGB 2160p60 or anything else in that resolution/fps you can throw at it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06Y4BSBF7/_encoding=UTF8?coliid=I46JVB5SW2NTR&colid=3F510341EW4ZH

[kx11]

i have Magewell HDMI 4K Plus 

 

i can confirm it can record 4k/60fps/RGB/Yy 4:4:4

 

small issue : a hissing sound is always there because the mounted small fan runs 100% all the time 

 

[D Levy]

I'm waiting to see the price point Elgato releases for their new 4K capture card:

 

I'm hoping it's low enough so Avermedia comes out with a more affordable solution,

out of all cap cards I've tried over the years, I had fewer problems with Avermedia than all the rest of them.

So.. here's for hoping.