Best External Capture Card for Windows PC to Capture MacOs Screen/Audio?

[bigbumblebee]

I want to use the HDMI Out of my MacBook and Capture its Screen/Audio using my Windows PC. What are the best Capture Cards (Internal/External) to accomplish this task?

[wanderingfool2]

What is your price point you are targeting?

What is your intended usecase for it?  I ask this because "best" can be relative.  For myself, best means allowing for high bitrate, full 4:4:4, 4k support @ 60fps.   Others best could be reduced latency for streaming.

 

Like for myself if price wasn't a thing, I would use an Elgato 4k60 pro because it fits all my personal categories I want.  Just remember that it doesn't encode the videos, you would need to have a sufficiently good enough video card if you were trying for 4k60fps full 4:4:4  (With that said, if the target was like 1080 60fps pretty much any video card these days would be able to handle it with nvenc on it)

[bigbumblebee]

21 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

What is your price point you are targeting?

What is your intended usecase for it?  I ask this because "best" can be relative.  For myself, best means allowing for high bitrate, full 4:4:4, 4k support @ 60fps.   Others best could be reduced latency for streaming.

 

Like for myself if price wasn't a thing, I would use an Elgato 4k60 pro because it fits all my personal categories I want.  Just remember that it doesn't encode the videos, you would need to have a sufficiently good enough video card if you were trying for 4k60fps full 4:4:4  (With that said, if the target was like 1080 60fps pretty much any video card these days would be able to handle it with nvenc on it)

Budget: $450 MAX. But something around $250 should do just fine.

 

I’ve tried capturing my MacBook screen with an Elgato… and got Horrible results. I need something with Custom Resolution, High Bit Depth, 4k60fps 4:2:2 (minimum).

 

The External Magewell USB Gen 2 works good, but the end result is blurry. I want something clearer.

[bigbumblebee]

I want to stream to TikTok/Twitch with this setup.

[wanderingfool2]

On 2/12/2023 at 8:41 AM, bigbumblebee said:

Budget: $450 MAX. But something around $250 should do just fine.

 

I’ve tried capturing my MacBook screen with an Elgato… and got Horrible results. I need something with Custom Resolution, High Bit Depth, 4k60fps 4:2:2 (minimum).

 

The External Magewell USB Gen 2 works good, but the end result is blurry. I want something clearer.

You have an Elgato already?  What model do/did you have?  Sometimes (at least for be) you have to play around with the settings on the capture side to get a good quality.  Or what issues did you have?

 

There might also be an option to just capture the MacBook screen with software (like OBS), although never really dealt with that before.

 

The max resolution for Twitch/TikTok is 1080p streaming...so it might be beneficial if you can set the video to 1080p and capture that (as that way you aren't downscaling 4k video...which depending on how things are setup could look more blurry.

 

I personally use AverMedia capture cards and find that they are just "okay" for what I want (it's 4:2:2 and 1080p60fps on my machine I use, but then again I am limited by my videocard in the machine I'm using that on)

[bigbumblebee]

I found the solution to all of my problems! - Using an internal PCIE Card instead of an external USB Card.

 

The Elgato 4k60fps is really good.