Record gameplay with another PC

[mnbvcxz]

Hello gamers.

 

So, I recently bought amd rx 6900 xt and ryzen 9 5950x thinking I will be able to record perfect 4k 60fps gameplay. But it seems like that sh*tty amd graphics cards are not good for recording gameplay. So I'm thinking now to record gameplay on another pc(my old pc). My old pc is nvidia rtx 2080 super and intel i7-9700kf.

 

So, can I somehow connect these 2 computers on 1 monitor, and use 1 for gaming and the other one only for OBS or nvidia shadowplay. Monitor is 4k 60fps.

 

Do I need some capture card or not, or is it better only with capture card, but I want clean video without ANY stuttering.

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

[mnbvcxz]

My monitor has 2 hdmi and 1 dp port. Can I put 2 cables from 2 computers in monitor and control both computers? second pc is not 100% ready that's why I'm asking instead of trying 

[mariushm]

Either buy a 4K capture card or send the captured stuff through NDI to 2nd pc through the network  (a  dedicated network card for transfer would be ideal)

 

You can connect both computers to same monitor. You can switch sources from monitor OSD (on screen display/menu) or use picture in picture if monitor has such feature.

 

With enough storage space you could record 4K losslessly and then compress with x264 or hevc with the best quality settings possible. See a lossless codec like MagicYUV : https://www.magicyuv.com/

 - the free version is fine but keep in mind it will use A LOT at 4k / 60 fps... maybe 300 MB/s or around 20 GB per minute

another option is using x264 in near lossless mode, which will use less disk space and be practically transparent.

 

[SpookyCitrus]

It also depends on what program you are using to record the gameplay, some programs are much more demanding than others. If you want good performance and lossless recordings I'd recommend getting a 4K 60fps capture card. 

[mariushm]

With a 5950x he can configure / lock 4-6 cores strictly for the x264 encoder and set it to ultrafast preset  -qp 5 or something like that (basically near lossless).

Most games don't even use 12 cores to the fullest, nevermind 16 cores and their 32 threads.

[mnbvcxz]

So, I should buy capture card, and put it in my gaming PC, connect it to my monitor and that's how I record the screen, right? without another pc? 

 

And like that my video won't stutter because the pc is not recording the screen, the capture card is one that records? It will be 60fps non stop if I buy some good capture card like Elgato?

[mnbvcxz]

 

 

Like on this video, except I will buy the one that can capture 4k 60fps?

 

[mariushm]

Yeah, you connect a cable between the video card and the capture card, and then from capture card to the monitor ... the signal passes through the capture card to the monitor and the capture card can record.

Or you connect the capture card to second hdmi/displayport and select  clone display on your video card

BUT the lossless 4K 60 fps capture cards are quite expensive.   I mean the ones that give you the raw uncompressed video.

For example the av.io 4k  (hdmi to usb) that can do only 30 fps at 4K is around $500 : https://www.epiphan.com/products/avio-4k/

 

The cheaper 4K 60 fps capture cards have a hardware h264 or hevc encoder on them and give you the compressed stream ... When you import it in OBS the stream is decoded and that uses CPU... but the point is that what you get from the capture card is not lossless.

 

The external capture things like the one in the video you just posted use a hardware encoder chip to compress. And that is more likely worse than AMD's hardware encoder, or nvidia's hardware encoder.

It would probably be cheaper to just buy a RTX 1060 as a second video card and use the hardware encoder on that card to compress 4k 60 fps...