For $300, AVerMedia has released quite possibly the best capture card you can buy in 2018
for game streaming.
Seriously, I went in skeptical - as I’ve had some issues with the last couple capture
devices they’ve sent me - and while there are still some issues and potential improvements,
this thing gets a huge recommendation from me.
But there’s a lot of details to this capture card and it was the messiest review experience
I’ve had with such a device, so buckle up.
I’ll try to include timecodes so you can learn about specific features where possible.
Also, this video is uploaded in SDR, not HDR - as I don’t have the ability to shoot or
really edit in HDR.
I will have uploaded samples of the HDR footage from this capture card linked in the video
description for your viewing.
[intro/ad]
Disclosures Usual disclosures: AVerMedia sent this device
to me for review for free, as with most capture cards and products I review.
I am not being paid or sponsored in anyway for this review, no one is seeing it before
it is posted.
AVerMedia has also never purchased advertising on my channel, either.
Let’s get into the review.
Specs The AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K is a $300 PCIe
X4 Gen 2 capture card.
It features a nice, black PCB, heatsink to keep it cool, and an attractive shroud.
They’ve also added a RGB LED logo block to it, though customization is limited.
For connectivity, you simply have HDMI 2.0 input and output.
No audio, no analog connections.
This card is capable of capturing 4K UHD at 60 frames per second, 2560x1440 at up to 144
frames per second, and 1080p at 240 frames per second.
These get both passed through and actually captured, more on that later.
For ultrawide support, 2560x1080 can be captured at up to 144 frames per second, and 3440x1440
at 60 frames per second.
I tried forcing the 32:9 super ultra wide 3840x1080 nonsense to the card, but my graphics
driver crapped the bed and I had to hard reset.
The Live Gamer 4K can also capture and pass-through HDR!
This is a first for affordable gaming capture cards.
If you hook up a non-high dynamic range screen to the passthrough you get the washed out
colors you’d expect.
But it’s great that it works and made my testing easier.
If they could somehow add an option to make the HDMI output tonemap HDR to SDR I’d call
this card magic.
But that would require a framebuffer and other physical hardware changes, so don’t bet
on that happening.
This capture card is also very low-latency, which means syncing it up in your live streams
will not be a problem.
It is still a capture card, however, so it’s not real-time and I found it uncomfortable
to play any game from just the preview.
You know, despite what a certain someone tried to tell me…
[Linus ERC clip] In
the Box In the box with the Live Gamer 4K, you get
the capture card itself, some paperwork, a single HDMI 2.0 cable - be sure to label this,
as there’s no outward way of telling if a cable is HDMI 2.0 or an older spec - as
well as a product key for CyberLink’s PowerDirector 15 editing software.
On the surface this sounds great: “Wow, they include 4K editing software with the
capture card!
What a great value!”
BUT, while this does seem to activate a full copy of PowerDirector 15, attempting to drag
in any HEVC captured files from RECentral gives you an error that such a file isn’t
supported in this version and you should upgrade to PowerDirector 16 instead!
“Oh…”
Capturing & Editing Footage Depending on what you’re doing, you have
quite a few options for capturing footage.
RECentral, AVerMedia’s own software, is installed upon installing the required driver
and is actually pretty great now - which I will touch on soon.
If you’re NOT capturing HDR, then you can use any program that supports DirectShow devices
- OBS Studio, XSplit, VirtualDub, AmaRec, etc.
T his isn’t a UVC capable card, so programs
expecting cameras, specifically, won’t work - but most standard capturing programs will.
Keep in mind that if you’re capturing 4K or high frame rate captures that you’ll
want a compressed, fast option like OBS.
Trying to do lossless 4k 60fps in something like AmaRec will cause you many problems,
as the resulting files can be anywhere from 1 to 3 gigabits per second, which bottlenecks
my speedy Intel 750 series NVMe SSD and I can’t capture more than 20FPS.
But it works wonderfully in OBS Studio.
You can capture high frame rates in OBS Studio by setting the frame rate to fractional mode
in the Video Settings, then put your desired frame rate in the Numerator and 1 in the denominator.
Then choose “Highest FPS” or “Match Output FPS” in the video device settings.
HDR If you want to capture HDR, or high dynamic
range, footage, however, you’re pretty much stuck with RECentral.
OBS and XSplit do not support the color space required for HDR.
VirtualDub and AmaRec could theoretically do it - but I cannot find a supported codec
to use with them, and again - you would need absurd NVMe Raid0 setups to even attempt it.
In RECentral when a HDR source is feeding in, you can click the HDR button next to record
to switch to that mode.
Otherwise, it records a tone-mapped SDR video file instead.
This is actually really neat and an incredibly useful feature.
If you want to play and enjoy the benefits of HDR but still stream or produce normal
SDR content, you can do so without any additional effort.
You can also still pass HDR through the card but capture tone-mapped SDR via OBS Studio
or other programs as well.
It does a great job of tone-mapping and the results are fantastic.
If you do wish to capture HDR, however, it must be done in RECentral.
It captures using GPU-accelerated HEVC, which many video editors will not support.
Theoretically that Cyberlink PowerDirector 16 upgrade might read it, but Vegas Pro 15
nor DaVinci Resolve liked the HEVC files produced here, despite supporting HDR.
You would need to transcode the files to a supported HDR format to use them.
Adobe Premiere Pro opens and seems to accept the files with no problem.
Which is great for me, since that’s what I use.
I wanted to do a comparison showing how the HEVC HDR files looked compared to a more “raw”
recording of them via my Atomos Ninja Inferno, which captures HDR to lossless ProRes - however
Premiere Pro interprets the files very differently.
The HEVC files from RECentral are very saturated and overly bright - clearly out of SDR range,
but still kinda resembling a blown-out version of what the colors look like.
Meanwhile the ProRes files from the Atomos are very grey and dull - typical of most HDR
recordings.
I could not do anything to get them to line up for a comparison.
So I’ve uploaded both files to YouTube and have them linked in the video description.
YouTube does a great job tone-mapping HDR to SDR and the two files look almost identical,
with the Atomos version maybe being a little warmer or just more saturated than the HEVC
file from AVerMedia.
Either way, the results from the Live Gamer 4K are great.
Encoder & Problems I originally had a whole section in here dedicated
to talking about a lot of encoder problems I ran into where if you increase the bitrate
past the optimal settings, which was about 100mbps to 180mbps, to the maximum supported,
which was 240mbps, the framerate would get destroyed.
The framerate would be variable, there would be a lot of glitchiness and it ruined a lot
of really cool sample clips I had saved up to use in this review.
So...
RIP.
But after some back and forth with Avermedia and they seemed to have resolved this issue.
They released a beta version of RECentral 4, which seems to have resolved the issue.
I've done a couple recording tests now at 240mbps - this was specifically with the Nvidia
nvenc encoder option.
With the CPU H264 it worked fine, but with the Nvidia H264 or HEVC, this would keep happening
(prior to the update), I've done a few tests with that now and made sure that everything
seems to be working fine.
They seem to have - at first they wanted to blame my configuration and my graphics card,
but I replicated it on 2 machines, seems to be working now, so ...looks like they fixed
it.
So you're welcome.
Their software doesn’t allow for all of the Nvenc options, so there is no lossless
mode.
Someone had asked that on the unboxing.
But as long as you leave the bitrate alone, it works wonderfully on my machines.
Quality is great and files work fine.
By default, the capture card is set to NV12 decode mode for the best performance and compatibility.
But if you know what you’re doing and have a high end PC, it supports YUY2, full RGB
mode, and P010 which I have not heard before, but seems to maybe be the mode that’s used
for HDR recording.
I’ve not had any issue with this card in OBS Studio thus far.
Pixel-peeping in on recordings with the H264 and HEVC mode reveal no significant differences.
RECentral in 2018 When I first started reviewing AVerMedia cards
back in 2014, I really didn’t like RECentral.
It was spartan, slow, and I had desync issues with it.
But RECentral 4 in 2018 is actually pretty great.
You have full customization of all plugged in AVerMedia capture cards, and can record
multiple audio sources, a separate microphone audio file, and they now have a mini streaming
program built-in which allows you to compose scenes with images, videos, web sources, multiple
devices and webcams, text, and more.
They even have a multi-stream tool built right in.
I’m going to release additional, separate, videos on RECentral soon as it’s too much
to add to this already lengthy video.
High Frame Rate As mentioned towards the beginning, this capture
card does support 144hz and 240hz modes for 1440p and 1080p, respectively.
Unlike the Elgato 4K60 Pro, this capture card can actually capture all 144 or 240 frames
per second to a video, if desired.
This is very intensive, so you can choose whether you capture or just sample the frames,
but it is doable.
For most gaming content there is no reason to pull so many frames, but if you’re doing
compositing or slowmo for fancy edits or montages, this could be useful.
240fps allows you to slow down this much if you drop to 30fps
[slowmo] Versus this much if you’re recording 60fps
[less slowmo] However, do keep in mind that if you don’t
have VSync enabled, slowmo will make screen tearing substantially more obvious, as seen
here.
High frame rate mode works in both RECentral and OBS if set up properly.
RGB One of the less important but still asked-about
features of the Live Gamer 4K is it’s RGB badge.
This doesn’t allow much customization of the badge.
By going to settings, capture device and choosing the Live Gamer 4K, there’s a “Lighting”
tab.
You can turn off the light altogether, which is good.
Then you can choose for it to show effects - of which you have 3, “Hue Cycle”, “Colorful
Breath”, or “Dreamy” along with a frequency slider.
Or turning off the effects means it shows status lights for recording, streaming, and
so on.
Just flashing a red light basically.
It’s basic, but more light is more better?
PCB & Heatsink It was requested that I send in what photos
I could get of the PCB.
Wasn’t really comfortable removing the whole heatsink, so here you go.
It DOES have a heatsink, however, whereas the Elgato 4K60 Pro does not.
Now, this usually isn’t much of an issue despite being the sole focus of GamersNexus’s
“review” of the card, but having a heatsink is nice.
Having a quiet fan like the Magewell card would be better, though.
Just to be safe.
Conclusion For $300, the AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K seems
to pose the best possible gaming capture card for those with available PCIe lanes that you
can buy, value-wise.
It’s $100 cheaper than Elgato’s less feature-complete option, and one third of the cost of Magewell’s
similar product - which doesn’t even come with software to
actually capture HDR.
It supports a ridiculous amount of video capabilities, though may disappoint some of the high refresh
rate ultrawide gamers among you.
For those of you I recommend looking into NDI for sure.
I have a couple videos on it and plan to cover it more.
I do hope I can work with them to resolve the high bitrate mode in RECentral, something
I’ve replicated on two machines, but otherwise this card gets a pretty significant recommendation
from me.
If you don’t need a capture card this badass, AVerMedia has also just released two USB 3
capture cards along with this that I’m working to get reviewed this week, as well.
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with all of my many, many capture card reviews, and some direct to YouTube uploaded samples
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