Stuttering at 4K60 with AverMedia Live Gamer Ultra 2.1 and Elgato 4K X
Hello! I've been going insane the past couple of days putting these two capture cards through their paces and coming up empty on how to fix the stuttering they each seem to have.
My input source is my gaming PC with a 3080, using one of the Display Port outputs on the card (converted to HDMI). I can't use passthrough because I use a surround sound setup, which neither card can passthrough. AverMedia claims it can passthrough 5.1, but I couldn't get that working anywhere.
Here's some recordings I made of both cards in OBS doing the same two things, playback of a stutter test video on YouTube followed by some generic Ori gameplay.
They're both recording at 4K60 with NVENC HEVC at VBR 30k-60k on an RTX 4060 laptop.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WyXUDFKMmX47sO2luyTF4epLiOtsX663/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C_EniVwckFLM0n4KKaiWz90SiveCIA5T/view?usp=sharing
Here's that stutter test video if you want to see what it should look like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVNO-ehIOdw&pp=ygUSdmlkZW8gc3R1dHRlciB0ZXN0
What I've tried:
- Different resolutions/frame rates. This sometimes makes a difference, but not reliably.
- Different encoding settings. Almost never makes a difference.
- Different computers. I've tried with two separate 3080 machines and a 4060 laptop (whose express purpose is to do capture) and they all produce similar results.
- Using their native capture softwares (RECapture and 4K Gaming Utility). RECapture sometimes produced better results from the AverMedia. 4K Gaming Utility produced consistently worse results.
- Updating firmware/drivers/software.
I haven't really seen much mention of these cards having these issues, so I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong or if this is just expected behavior.
And, yes, I am using the provided HDMI and USB-C cables for both cards and am getting the full USB bandwidth in every scenario.
Google Docs
AverMedia - 4K h265 - VBR.mkv
Google Docs
Elgato - 4K h265 - VBR.mkv
Rantapossu
YouTube
60 Hz video stutter test
Use this video to check the motion capability of your computer, television or projector.
17 Replies
Need some obs logs of those kinds of captures too
Where would those be?
Help -> log files
Lemme take a look
this should have both of those I think
Have you tried using the HDMI output from your GPU instead of doing DP -> HDMI adapter ?
Yes I've tried capturing the direct hdmi feed of my laptop to the same results
GG @dylan 🍒, you just advanced to level 1 !
I haven't tried using the hdmi of the 3080 because that's not really a workable solution for me cause of the lack of surround sound passthrough
I did use it via passthrough at one point, but it was so early in the testing that I can't remember if it had the stutter, it was before I realized it was happening :fatcat:
But either way like I said, capturing the hdmi output on my laptop had the same results
Is there any real reason you need surround sound in your captures? Because any content you create with it will get converted to stereo regardless IIRC
It's not for the capture no, just for me while playing
For my job I occasionally have to record full playthroughs of games and I prefer to do that in the living room with my nice surround setup on the couch
The avermedia card supposedly can passthrough and record 5.1, but I saw no place to enable that in the playback device in windows even after the required firmware update
Also youtube does support 5.1 playback, but thats a moot point as we dont produce our videos in 5.1
Anyone have any ideas?
You can overcome your audio issues with an extractor like this. Then you don't have to clone your display, which is notorious for introducing stutters and tearing.
That's one piece of the puzzle, sounds like you tested with a direct connection and still got stutters.
1. Video recording apps with previews often have a composite step that uses your GPU to render frames, as opposed to simply dumping the feed from the capture card into your encoder.
2. Your laptop has an iGPU, which means your capture apps may be rendering with the iGPU, but encoding with the Nvidia GPU. This will exacerbate composite stutters in my experience.
If your up for it, I can walk you through making a test recording with FFmpeg. I can almost guarantee that this will result in a recording without stutter.
Using ffmpeg to record the capture card you mean?
I didn't know it could do that
Yeah, fairly unpopular because people understandably don't like command line tools.
Step one would be installing FFmpeg with winget. Simply run the following command in a PowerShell terminal.
I can't run through it right now, but if you wanna write something up or point me somewhere I can give it a whirl
I have ffmpeg installed, I use it often
Cool, when you get the chance run the following command on the capture machine and paste the output here.
Then I can provide you with a recording command.