How to Use ANY Capture Card in OBS

How to Use ANY Capture Card in OBS

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Do not buy a capture card because the box says “4K.” Match the card to the resolution and refresh rate you actually play at, then separately check what it can capture.

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Before you buy

Answer four questions:

1. What resolution do you play at?
2. What refresh rate do you play at?
3. What resolution/frame rate do you want to stream or record?
4. What device are you capturing?

Passthrough and capture specs are different. A card may pass a high-refresh signal to your display while recording at a lower resolution or frame rate.

Add the card in OBS

Add a Video Capture Device, then select the capture card.

Switch away from Device Default when you need to explicitly control resolution, FPS or pixel format.

Resolution and frame rate

Choose a capture mode the card genuinely supports.

For a typical console stream, there is rarely a reason to force a higher capture resolution than the stream/recording actually needs.

Video format

Prefer a good uncompressed/low-compression format such as NV12 when available.

On the FIFINE V3 used in the guide, Brandon preferred YUY2 over MJPEG.

Color

For normal SDR: