I thought this PCI Express serial and parallel port card would be easy to
get working well I couldn't have been more wrong
so instead I'm doing a video about something that I thought would be a challenge to get
working but ended up being a piece of cake it's an HDMI video capture card from Pyle the
brand known for cheap stereo equipment I'm sure they had nothing to do with this other
than putting their name on it but it's the PLINK5 PCI Express Gen 2 4K HDR HDMI video capture card
when I bought the card it cost $89.20 although I've noticed that the price
has since gone up to $112.58 and other websites are selling it for up to $162
so it seems like prices vary widely for this card
now right off the bat I'm not a gamer I don't have any 4K equipment so the best
we're going to do with this is 1080p60. I had a special use case for this that ended
up not really working out as I intended but that was not due to any fault of this
card or my computer that's due to another reason when which I'll talk about later
it supports 2160p 1440p 1080p and 720p but actually also supports 480p and 480i I tested
it and it works it claims to be 100% lag free it supports most of third-party video capture
softwares including OBS but I have a much simpler solution which I'll demonstrate if you're using
Windows 10 or higher it also supports Mac OS if you happen to have a Mac with PCI Express slots
inside you get a registration card throw that away you get the PCI Express card itself
a very brief owner's manual but here it is "we don't recommend using the device on Windows 7
system but if you need you can download the driver and install it" so it does support Windows 7.
I don't have any PAL HDMI video sources to test it with but it does mention 50 frames per second
so it should support PAL video sources in addition to NTSC and a link to download some kind of EzCap
software I didn't end up needing that but I'll give it a try anyway just to see what it's like
here's the card itself with a PCI Express connector HDMI in and out connectors on the back
and just two main chips on it one just says ezcap320 and the other one
is completely blank except for a pencil check mark and otherwise there doesn't
seem to be anything else in there of note except for a couple capacitors
here's the computer I put it in it's a Dell Optiplex 3020 from 2014. it has a
Core i5 4570 CPU it's not new enough to run Windows 11 but it is running 64-bit
Windows 10 Professional and I didn't have to install any drivers I just plugged it in turn
on the computer and Windows automatically found and installed the drivers for it
now all I need to do is just go to the Windows 10 camera application I have it connected to the
camcorder's HDMI output and in a few seconds we see an infinite feedback loop of it showing what
the camcorder is seeing so this is a live capture through the camcorder going from its HDMI output
at 1080p at 60 frames per second into the capture card into the computer and showing on the monitor
and now I'll try capturing some video but I'm recording this at 1080p 60 so
that's what I'm going to choose and I'll give the camera something better
to focus on and click the button to start capturing video move it around a little bit
and end the test now go here and play back what I just recorded start capturing video
move it around a little bit
and and that looks perfectly smooth to me it didn't drop any frames
and in case you're wondering what kind of video compression and bitrate it is using
is MPEG4 video at 35.5 megabits per second 1920x1080 at 59.94 frames per second which
is the correct NTSC frame rate it's not actually 60. the audio is only 192 kilobits per second I
wish it was a bit higher than that 48 kilohertz sampling rate and is stereo
now I have it connected to a Panasonic camcorder which is recording at 720p at 60 frames per second
and if I go into the menu here and change the video resolution to 720p at 60 frames per second
I'll capture some video from the Panasonic camcorder at 720p well
for some reason that didn't record any audio although the video looks fine I
think that's because that camcorder doesn't actually have live preview of
the audio but if I record a video and play it back through HDMI then it will have the audio
now I have the camcorder's HDMI resolution set to 480p and even though the manual
for the capture card said it only goes down to 720p it supports this just fine
there's no option for recording 480p so it's going to be upscaled but 720p is
one and a half times the resolution so that should be a pretty clean upscaling
so this is recording 480p video it's actually 4:3 aspect ratio as
well and capturing it at 60 frames per second through the HDMI capture card
to prove that it's not dropping any frames I'm recording this at 1080p at 60 frames
per second and I'm going to play it back and capture it at 1080p60 and then I'll
switch to slow motion and you'll see as the counter rotates it is not skipping any teeth
on the gear indicating it is not dropping any frames fun fact you need a monitor with
a response time of under 17 milliseconds in order to display 60 frames per second
without ghosting and apparently this one doesn't because you can see some
ghosting but nonetheless it does prove that the card is capturing at 60 frames per second
so far so good I tested it at 1080p 720p and 480p and it worked fine at all three resolutions but
you notice those are all progressive what about interlaced video such as 1080i or
even 480i standard definition well to test that I switched cameras because I'm going to use the
Sony Handycam which as you can see here can be switched to 60i which is 1080i interlaced video
and I can even switch it to standard definition which is 480i
and also
480i standard definition in 4:3 aspect ratio
now this is a test of 1080i at 60 interlaced fields per second and you'll see when I play
it in slow motion that due to the de-interlacing method that it is using it'll skip every other
tooth on the gear because it's dropping every other field of the interlaced video signal
now I'm recording at 480i standard definition video widescreen and the camcorder is outputting
it over HDMI as 480i and the fact that you're seeing this proves that it works
and it looks fine except as I said you're only getting 30 frames per second out of it
now this is 480i standard definition at 4:3 aspect ratio which also works
except it's being stretched out to 16:9 or what I call fathead mode
however if your media player or video editing software is capable
of it you can squeeze it back down to 4:3 aspect ratio and then it will look fine
you may wonder if it can capture from copy protected videos sources such as
a DVD or Blu-ray player well unfortunately the answer is no because even with the DVD
player not actually playing anything it says HDCP protection and won't let me capture from
it actually you can capture video but all it does is capture this image of it saying HDCP
protection so I guess that proves that the software is not the limiting factor here it's
actually the card itself that's blocking copy protected video from being captured
and that foiled one of my planned uses for it which was to connect it to this Panasonic
combination VCR and DVD recorder and this unit actually does output VHS tapes through
HDMI so I thought I could just connect it to this HDMI capture card and use that as
an easy way to transfer VHS tapes to digital but unfortunately with this copy protection
system it's not letting me do that even on a tape that I know is not MacroVision encoded
I did try that EzCap software that the card came with a link to download but it's very
basic it can do live streaming and it can also capture video into a GIF animation but otherwise
that's about it for its extra features versus just using the Windows camera app
so I don't fault this card at all because it's not the reason why my intended use for HDMI
capture didn't work out as I planned that HDCP copy protection is required by law on all HDMI
capture devices and I'm still amazed I could just plug this in Windows would automatically load the
drivers for it and it would work perfectly with the camera app included with Windows
the hardest part of getting this to work is going to be just opening up your computer and installing
it in the slot once you have that done it's smooth sailing and it can capture 1080p video at 60
frames per second flawlessly on a nine-year-old PC and I think that's pretty impressive
so even if my intended use for it didn't quite work out as planned
this Pyle PLINK5 PCI Express Gen2 HDMI capture card has my full recommendation