What's the best capture card for retro gaming?

So I’m wondering how to best capture retro gaming footage. I read the Startech USB3HDCAP is actually great. I’m also considering to just get an upscaler or line doubler and use it with an Elgato or whatever popular capture card there is now. What do you guys recommend?

I have an Elgato HD60, that has worked great for me. Though for retro stuff I have a framemeister and feed the Elgato with that. I have the regular HD60 and not the HD60S because the computer I was using it with at the time had no Intel/AMD driven USB 3.0 ports. I had USB 3.0 ports but none of them were controlled by the main Intel or AMD controller, which I guess the HD60s, and the other one from Aver Media needed. So the HD60 is a USB 2.0 one. If you want to see the quality of the capture from it you can check out the replays of my extra life streams I use it for https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKB6M6Af6X65mZx4VN9tTyw

I have heard that it doesn’t play nicely with the OSSC, but I don’t have one of those so I can’t give you any first hand experience with that. I do believe the AverMedia GC573 Live Gamer 4K is supposed to play nicely with the OSSC though. But that is also almost 300 bucks.

I have an older Elgato the game capture HD. I mostly use it with Saturn and pc engine and OSSC.

Out of those the pc engine has had the most compatibility issues with game capture HD, Some games like Raiden, Detana Twinbee, and Winning Shot to name a few only display black screen even though I have sound.

The USB3HDCAP is a great option. I have owned one for a few years and love it. It captures lossless and lagless video up to 1080p/60fps!

It does have a few caveats however,
It requires custom unsigned drivers to work properly. These drivers only work in windows.
RGBs ( aka scart to some) is done through the DSUB15 port( aka VGA) so you will need an adapter to capture straight RGBs.
Only certain USB chipsets are supported. Fortunately both my desktop and laptop work without issue.

I belive the DATAPATH card is kind of the go to at this point but I’m unfamiliar with it.

I guess for greater compatibility, one can say to get a Framemeister instead of OSSC then feed it to an Elgato or whatevere good capture card there is. Is that right?

I originally wanted the Startech but ended up getting an El Gato from my husband, and I’m pretty happy with the results of that combined with the Framemeister. I’m pretty time poor though so the path of least resistance makes sense for me.

I prefer stand alone solutions because my Mac is in my office and my consoles are in the lounge.

I’ve been using an AVerMedia Game Capture HD C281, which I put an SSD in. It’s OK, but Component only and I’ve not been happy with the way it captures 480i. So I deinterlace manually on my Mac using fgmpeg and GPU H.264 encoding and that works.

Just bought an Maplin HS602 which goes by many names (Startech USB2HDCAPS etc) and I’m excited to try it recording straight to SD card. HDMI and Component inputs, and network streaming. I’ll try recording PS1/2 and report back. It should be able to do 240p.

Wondering if a USB3HDCAP for £50+shipping (used) is a good deal?

Perfect deal, buy it, I have one of those and love it!

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I recently bought a cheap used PEXHDCAP and StarTech support were very helpful in sourcing a replacement breakout cable for me that I was missing. Really can not fault their service!

Seems to work decently enough but playing anything from the streaming/preview window is impossible due to very bad lag for any analog inputs and hardware like my MVS show sync issues the same as they appear on my JVC DTV so probably best I try to introduce my Extron RGB 201 into the chain to sort that out.

See the jittering at the top of the screenshot below:

The HDMI input on it only supports up to 1080p 30fps unfortunately, though the only consoles I have with HDMI input is the NES/SNES Classics.

For my needs I would also want to be able to capture the HDMI output of my Sony a6000 at the same time, so will need a secondary capture card just for that as well as trying to figure out some sort of decent microphone that will be decent enough to use in an environment that has a lot of background noise from a busy road I am next to.

Probably going a headache trying to get everything synced up and dealing with external noise…

This cheap capture card is getting some hype on twitter:

There are models being sold for about $44 on A.Express. Scanning the comments and it’s not been tested with interlaced games yet and it seems there’s no ‘instant’ mode where you can play comfortably as you capture. Couple of people have trouble using it with Mac with one person having no issue getting it to work. Tempted to try this.

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