Intro/Overview
IN THIS RESOURCE: I will provide latency data for capture cards to OBS’s preview as well as important notes if a capture card does not have real-time passthrough. I will catch this resource up with decode mode support and etc. as time allows.
I have posted a breakdown/walkthrough of this Resource to my YouTube channel – this explains each of the charts, some of my reasoning and thinking process, etc. Keep in mind that this is simply a snapshot of things at the time of posting, whereas this Resource page will remain updated.
Latency
Different capture cards have different input latency when it comes to processing your signal and displaying it to software. Different programs can have different latencies as well. OBS tends to be slower than some first-party apps for cards (such as AVerMedia’s RECentral) and capture apps (such as AmaRec) but is still faster than other (such as Elgato’s 4K Capture Utility.
Here’s every capture card I have measured running to OBS’s preview:
| Capture Card | Preview Latency (OBS) |
|---|---|
| Black 4K USB 3.0 HDMI Video Capture Card (Lattice) | 128 |
| EasyCrap "USB 3" Dongle #1 | 126 |
| Genki Shadowcast | 115 |
| Narvitech U2 HD60 Pro | 100 |
| Bird Dog NDI Flex 4K IN | 85 |
| AVerMedia Live Gamer Mini (GC311) | 82 |
| KAPCHR (TC-UB570) | 82 |
| ATEN CamLive+ | 80 |
| EVGA XR1 Lite | 78 |
| AGPTek VG0061 EZCap U3 | 77 |
| Black USB 3 4K HDMI Capture LT | 76 |
| ClonerAlliance Flint 4KP Plus | 75 |
| Silver "USB 3.0 HD Capture" w/ Power LT | 75 |
| Magewell USB Capture HDMI 4K Plus | 73 |
| ClonerAlliance Flint 4KP | 71 |
| Elgato 4K60 Pro | 71 |
| Riiai YK752 | 69 |
| EVGA XR1 | 68 |
| Razer Ripsaw HD | 67 |
| Razer Ripsaw | 65 |
| Mokose U70S | 64 |
| ASUS TUF CU4K30 | 64 |
| AVerMedia Live Gamer Extreme 2 (GC551) | 63 |
| Elgato Cam Link 4K | 63 |
| AVerMedia ExtremeCap UVC | 61 |
| Magewell XI100DUSB-HDMI | 61 |
| Elgato HD60 S+ | 61 |
| Bird Dog Studio NDI | 60 |
| Elgato 4K60 Pro MkII | 58 |
| BlackMagic Decklink Mini Recorder 4k | 57 |
| Elgato HD60 S | 57 |
| AVerMedia Live Gamer Ultra (GC553) | 55 |
| Elgato HD60 Pro | 51 |
| Elgato Cam Link (Gen 1) | 51 |
| EZCap GameLite RAW (ezcap321) | 50 |
| Digitnow U601 | 50 |
| Pengo 4K HDMI Grabber | 49 |
| Magewell 4K Pro Capture HDMI Plus LT | 48 |
| BlueAVS/GOODAN/Generic HDMI to USB 2.0 | 48 |
| AVerMedia Live Gamer Duo (1) | 43 |
| AVerMedia Live Gamer Duo (2) | 42 |
| AVerMedia Live Streamer CAP 4K | 40 |
| AVerMedia Live Gamer 4k (GC573) | 36 |
Decode Mode Support
Some buyers are looking for capture cards that provide specific decode modes to the user. These are color compression formats (not to be confused with data compression) that affect the bandwidth required by the video feed through the device, as well as the total image quality.
Common decode modes include:
- YUY2 – 4:2:2 color space, uncompressed data stream
- This is the most common, and generally the target you want to aim for
- Requires more bandwidth over USB/PCIe bus, but has minimal system resource load and latency
- MJPEG – Compressed data stream, can be 4:2:0, 4:4:4, or 4:2:2
- Literally “Motion JPEG” – it’s JPEG (like the photos) image compression
- Lower bandwidth over USB/PCIe bus, but requires your CPU to decode the stream before re-encoding on your OBS canvas. Increases system resource load and latency.
- Usually through UVC protocols, MJPEG is 4:2:2
- YV12/NV12 – 4:2:0 color space, uncompressed data stream
- Elgato’s preferred decode mode
- Requires less bandwidth over USB/PCIe bus than YUY2 (more than MJPEG), should have less system resource impact as well – unless OBS is set to RGB mode or something (in advanced settings)
- RGB (XRGB) – 4:4:4 completely uncompressed color and data stream
- Much less common
- Best possible quality image, improves scaling and final encode quality
- Uses much more bandwidth than any other mode
