With Nintendo transferring into the 4K world with the Nintendo Swap 2, just about all of our gear right here at Vooks needed to be upgraded to go well with. Capturing each video and screenshots of video games is one thing we all the time had an Elgato HD60S to do such a factor, so it was tremendous good of Elgato to ship us over this 4KX to place by means of its paces with the Nintendo Swap 2.
Out of the field, there’s the whole lot you must get began with with both recording or streaming something that has a HDMI out – however for our evaluate, we’re going to be speaking about our expertise with the Nintendo Swap 2. The 4K X is definitely far more succesful than the Swap 2 is outputting by with the ability to seize as much as 4K at 144Hz. Effectively, the Swap 2 can’t output that; the very best it will possibly do is 4K at 60Hz. It could possibly get to 120Hz, nevertheless it’s restricted to 1440p. The Swap additionally doesn’t assist VRR docked. It was famously introduced after which eliminated simply earlier than launch. Regardless, you’re coated right here for the Swap 2.
The Elgato 4KX has within the field a high-speed USB-C cable to play into your pc, and even iPad, and a high-speed HDMI 2.1 cable. It’s actually fairly easy, simply loop the Elgato in between your Swap and the show and you’ll watch in your system in actual time, as a result of it’s primarily lag-free (there’s all the time some notion distinction, it’s not 100% good). The system itself is tremendous small, however it will possibly get a bit heat – it’s piping by means of a variety of pixels in spite of everything.
The one time the 4KX will get a bit difficult is determining find out how to finest document and/or stream issues. There are a number of OSes supported with Home windows, in fact; you’ll be able to plug it into an iPad (with various outcomes), and a Mac as effectively.
I don’t have a PC, however Ollie does, and he’s shared his experiences along with his setup beneath for you.
Elgato assist on Home windows is a a lot smoother expertise than on MacOS. The Elgato 4K Seize Utility works out of the field — no drivers (visibly) put in, no messing round in settings was wanted to get it going. I merely plugged the 4KX into my PC, opened up the Seize Utility, and it sorted itself out routinely. It has a bunch of settings for altering seize settings, together with bitrate settings, which video renderer to make use of (I used my Nvidia RTX 2070 and it was greater than able to encoding 4K60 at excessive bitrates), and extra. Maybe probably the most helpful characteristic of the software program on Home windows is the Flashback Recording possibility, which repeatedly data whilst you play so you’ll be able to shortly hop again and save solely the bits you need, reasonably than recording an entire session and having to cut it up in post-production.
It’s not good – the interface is clunky and irritating generally, the latency can get iffy at excessive resolutions, and Flashback Recording may be very unintuitive – however in comparison with utilizing OBS, it’s primarily plug and play. The brand new Elgato Studio software program positively has a a lot nicer interface, nevertheless it’s additionally lacking some options current within the Seize Utility, so it’s in all probability higher to maintain each put in for now till the newly launched software program has a while to catch up.
For iPad and Mac although, I’m your man. Firstly, the simple one, relying in your iPad, is what decision seize will probably be supported. For normal previous non-pro iPads with USB-C ports, it simply plugs proper in and you’ll document as much as 1080p at 60fps, and the Elgato software program in my testing simply works. However I’m within the 4K world now, 1080p isn’t going to chop it. For that, you want an iPad with an M-series chip. I threw it onto my Mum’s now “historical” iPad Professional from 2021, and 4K 60fps seize simply labored – I did improve the firmware on the seize system first, and flick over to the 10Gbps setting in utilizing Elgato’s software program, and that could be required (so you’ll need a PC or Mac to do this).
Now the Mac, and such as you don’t care about Macs, you’ll be able to simply skip this, however mainly, Mac assist is a crap shoot – or at the least it was till this previous week. I had an M1 Mac mini, and the factor wouldn’t document something about 1080p 60fps, 4K was simply out of the query – even at 30fps. And also you have been by yourself, as a result of a month in the past, Elgato had no software program for Macs, you needed to depend on OBS and regulate recording high quality, bitrates, and the whole lot your self. The M1 Mac mini I had didn’t have a {hardware} encoder, so I used to be shit out of luck. I’m not the one one both; there’s a bunch of complaints, a bunch of YouTube movies on this – and a few Mac customers appear to have the ability to get it to work on earlier M collection chips – however just about, you’ll want at the least an M2 Professional or newer to document something above 1080p at an excellent bitrate.
So I purchased a M4 Mac mini, and it didn’t work. This was every week earlier than the Swap 2 launched, thoughts, and I used to be utilizing my PS5 as a tester. It wasn’t till I watched hours extra video and tweaked settings that I ultimately received some form of settings working. It additionally simply required nothing else to be occurring on my Mac on the identical time; I must shut the whole lot off and ensure some background course of didn’t begin – it didn’t make sense. It wasn’t till later that I tweaked some settings but once more in OBS and it really works like 99% of the time. Then got here simply this previous week and Elgato launched their Elgato Seize software program for Macs after having no Mac software program since Apple transitioned to their very own Apple Silicon like 5 years in the past. And it simply works, such as you plug it in, use their software program, and you’ll seize 4K at 60fps and it doesn’t break a sweat. I used to be very pleased, but in addition very irritated. So in case you’ve observed an absence of video content material from us, it was as a result of we couldn’t truly document something for positive, as a result of generally, frameskips would simply creep in.
I realise it is a very area of interest downside, and most of the people are going to be having Home windows machines with highly effective CPUs and big GPUs hooked up, and it’s all fastened now – however whereas the Elgato {hardware} is greater than able to no matter you throw at it, the software program nonetheless a piece in progress.
So in spite of everything that, yeah, this factor is fairly rad, and it’s fairly future-proof – as a result of even when Nintendo pull one other Swap out of their butts in a couple of years, this may probably assist it. However like, {hardware} is only one a part of the story, and software program left me, a Mac consumer, fairly chilly up till final week. That is the gold commonplace {hardware} for recording with out stepping into the tremendous high-end stuff, and for most individuals, it’s going to work with no stress.
