Ok I know a lot of people are going to come here and recommend elgato, but please if you do go that understand what you're getting into. The elgato has an audio/video delay that makes the game feed play later than anything else on your stream so if you are streaming with mic then there are times where you might audibly say "I died" and then everyone doesn't actually see you die until a second later. To me I find that really hard to watch, but I do believe there are ways to delay your mic on stream to get around that, just extra work you have to do.

I personally recommend the startech which you can get cheaper from amazon than their actual site. You'll also need 3 HDMI cables and an HDMI splitter so you can have the feed going to the capture card and the monitor/tv you play off.

Edit: Not going to reply to the comments that are talking about input delay and just bold that part showing that I wasn't talking about input delay.

What we use at SG

I swear by it. Incredible little card. There's a USB 3.0 version you can use if you only have a laptop to work with.

As for editing software, Adobe Premier and Sony Vegas are fantastic pieces of software, though they may take a little effort to learn.

EDIT: I should note that due to the StarTech cards lacking any sort of pass-through, you'll need a powered splitter if you want lagless output to both your stream TV and the card itself. This is what we use

Such devices exist, but aren’t that cheap and tend to introduce too much latency for gaming. If you want to watch the steam live, you may need even better hardware to keep up with playing the video and transcoding the input in real time.

For example: StarTech.com HDMI Video Capture Device - 1080p - 60fps Game Capture Card - USB Video Recorder with HDMI DVI VGA (USB3HDCAP) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PC5HUA6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_gO5hDbQZ13G3R (this was the first hit I found on google. I have no idea if it’s actually a good product or not.)

You should look into the Startech cards. They have made a few clones of Micomsoft cards (including the PEXHDCAP60L, a clone of the SC-512N1) that are significantly cheaper, however they don't have any video passthrough so you have to split the signal before the card. I own the Elgato Game Capture HD as well as the Startech USB3HDCAP (a clone of the Micomsoft XCAPTURE-1) and they both capture 240p/480i fairly well although the USB3HDCAP has better image quality because it doesn't do any hardware compression to the video. I use a YPbPr Distribution Amplifier made by Radioshack to split the video signal before the capture card and there are DAs for pretty much any connector you can think of.

Startech PEXHDCAP60L: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00U8KSSRY

Startech USB3HDCAP: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00PC5HUA6/

There are some issues with the current drivers for the USB3HDCAP but TheThrillness on shmups made a specific set of drivers from the XCAPTURE-1 drivers that fix those issues. Check out his review here: https://thethrillness.blogspot.com/2015/01/startech-usb3hdcap-review.html

The HD Retrovision cables have compatibility issues and are very picky about what they are hooked up to, I had to buy a Startech capture card because my old Elgato wouldn't recognize them. The Startech was well worth the upgrade and it has worked with all of my consoles, as well as the HD Retrovision cables.

The Elgato HD60 is an absolutely abysmal capture card, and /u/OathToAwesome is wise to avoid it. USB 2.0 cards are already bad enough, and trying to capture 1080p60 over USB 2.0 is a complete joke.

I highly recommend the XCAPTURE-1 as a very good card. There's also the new Startech USB3HDCAP (The XCAPTURE-1's little brother) which can capture 1080p60 but has no passthrough (so you need a splitter to play on your TV, usually not too expensive). Avoid the Extremecap U3 -- it has...issues (like not being able to maintain a 60fps capture sometimes, or capturing bad frames here and there). The Live Gamer HD is a good standby for 720p60 or 1080p30 capture over PCIe. The AVerMedia c027 is also another option for 720p60, but can't capture 1080p.

Just...avoid USB 2.0 capture cards. They have a built-in delay due to the need to compress video to fit it over USB 2.0 bandwidth, and you will be saving yourself a lot of headache from dealing with the sync between the console, mic, and webcam if you avoid them. Stick with PCIe or get a USB 3.0 capture card.

NTSC Video Capture:720x480 @30FPS :/ although its a great price and probably 30fps is totally fine

can't find much footage of that, this is what i found from quick googling for a good and muich more expensive alternative http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-Device/dp/B00PC5HUA6

I'll just give you the quick answer first, if you foresee the need to do this multiple times (or even if rarely but in critical time) just buy a monitor + keyboard + mouse. It's cheap and most importantly, very reliable.

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VGA in.

You need a capture card for this. Very few - if any - laptop would have this natively, though external USB card like this exists

Capture software.

This (in combination with the capture card) will be the most annoying thing. If you follow any twitch streamer you'll see how often this setup breaks - it almost depends on your windows update.

USB-to-USB.

USB is not a peer to peer protocol, you need something called USB bridge like this to convert output one side to input at the other side. This is also a dying breed, very few - if any - PC, both desk- and lap-top would even have this natively.

Keyboard-and-mouse-output.

Once you have the bridge, you need a software that map your keystroke into USB output. You also need to simulate the handshakes that identify your laptop (indirectly through the bridge) as a mouse and keyboard. Off the top of my head, I don't know any such software, and if they exists, they may only work with very specific bridges.

Every one of those component can break, and because how uncommon this setup is, I'd imagine it's not easy to 1) set up and 2) keep it working. You'll almost need a dedicate laptop for it. That'll definitely be more expensive than a spare monitor + keyboard + mouse.

To add to the other two suggestions, I'll add what I believe are two far better solutions: The GV-USB2 and USB3HDCAP

The GV-USB2 is a USB dongle-style capture card that only captures composite/RCA video and S-video, which is the best you'll get from the Gamecube without expensive cables. It's about $35 USD.

The Startech USB3HDCAP is more expensive, but it will capture HDMI for newer consoles and PCs, as well as composite, S-Video, Component (the best video signal out of a Wii and easy to get cables for), and even RGB. It's probably the best quality card there is at its price and it's offered me a far better user experience than Elgato's devices have for me. I also know PJ DiCesare uses it for his runs and he has excellent capture quality. It's currently on sale for $182.

Importantly, both will capture video at 60fps which I'm not convinced the standard def EZcap will do, and without the added noise and delay I find Elgato devices tend to add.

Hopefully this helps.

I am an in-house corporate video producer that recently got into live-streaming for the job as they've ordered all the equipment/software/ and had the networking support and hardware to support it. To do "proper" live streaming on your own is just ridiculous. You need multiple camera operators, especially for sports. You need experience with a switching board like a Tricaster, you need network support, and you need a back end interface for managing the live stream "events" like Vbrick.

For a company that does thing and brings all their own equipment and people, they can charge anywhere from 25k to 50k for a half day shoot.

OR, you could just have a single camera attached to a HDMI capture card, run that into OBS and then stream that to YouTube. That is relatively easy for a single person to do.

Hey, I got a streaming pc because I couldnt stand input and fps lag in overwatch like you and I plan on streaming it full time for a bit.

I personally think its worth it for me, but its really up to you whether you can spare the money.

I got this capture card. Its basically Chinese copy of the SC-512N1-l which is the only affordable capture card that does 1080p60fps uncompressed video.

I spent AGES looking up other capture cards and this is the cheapest card that offers uncompressed unfiltered video. The popular elgato60 pro cards out there are the same price but give a washed out look to the stream which I hate and dont offer uncompressed video. Look at sodapoppins stream for what I mean, all the colours are always washed out no matter what hes playing. I've seen some streamers fix the colours for the most part but it still ends up looking a little weird.

Heres my last vod, I'm extremely happy with how my stream looks. 720p 60fps on medium preset 3500 bitrate.

I use a c920 set to 720p, basically all streamers use this, its more than enough for twitch, even at fullscreen.

In order to remove delay and more importantly tearing on stream, I dont clone, or use passthrough. Instead I extend the capture card as a second monitor and run a obs in fullscreen preview with "disable encoding while previewing" ticked.

This is the ONLY way to remove screen tearing with capture card setups. You can see streamers like Destiny use the clone method and still get tearing in fast paced games like overwatch despite having a 120hz ~£1000 capture card.

As for the stream pc graphics card. I tried to use the i7 6700k intel inbuilt graphics but obs was lagging with the settings mentioned above. I put my old ati 6870 (which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be worse than the i7 6700's graphics capabilities) and it fixed the problems. So it does seem to require a gpu, but any gpu will do fine.

This capture device from Startech, the western division of Micomsoft, who makes the Framemeister. I've had some issues with stretching and such but I was able to correct it in OBS. My Elgato didn't recognize the signal at all.

Desktops have more options, that's why I asked.

http://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00PC5HUA6 and a powered HDMI splitter.

The older elgatos I believe supported component/composite/s video with a little adapter cable. It’s usb 2.0 I believe. Any reason why you want 3.0 so bad? 2.0 can still do decent bitrate (480Mbps theoretical max throughput of 2.0 should be much higher than even a 1080p stream)

No idea if the elgato is Linux compatible though. And you would probably have to get it from eBay

Edit: what about the startek USB3HDCAP

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-USB3HDCAP-Video-Capture-Device/dp/B00PC5HUA6

1. Yeah, you can, as long as your console outputs the right signal through the right medium (i.e. 480p through SCART RGB is the best signal quality and medium).
   
   
2. If this is a concern, I would just get a Retrotink 2x which accepts RCA, S-video, and Component and outputs HDMI with line doubling (puts CRT scanlines in the signal for that crisp display).
   If you have a Capture card that doesn't have HDMI pass-thru, then get a powered HDMI splitter to split the signal between your display and capture card without signal loss.
   
   
3. Yeah. Here's two:
   Startech USB 3.0, no HDMI Pass-thru
   Startech PCI-E 1080p/60fps, no HDMI Pass-thru
   
   
   I've streamed my retro consoles on twitch in the past, and there's a million ways to skin this cat. Depending on your ideal quality, the tools involved will be vastly different in configuration and price.
   
   
   Personally my setup is:
   
   
4. Console to Retrotink using either S-Video or Component (depends on console)
   
   1. Retrotink HDMI output to powered 1-in/2-out HDMI Splitter. Powered splitters are important, they act also as amplifiers preventing signal loss from splitting the signal. Some may introduce lag depending on their active circuitry, but good splitters are out there.
      
   2. One HDMI splitter output to monitor display, other to the capture card.
      
      Just going to put this out there also, but if you go the Retrotink route specifically with a SNES using an El Gato Game Capture HD as your capture card, it will not capture. That's what led to me getting the Startech capture card.

If you want the best way youd need a external video recorder

Avoid that card at all costs. I've gone through a few other branded devices that were pretty much the same build and possibly chipset. No lie, most "budget" USB 2.0 Capture devices like that either don't work or are going to give you pretty bad quality and possibly input lag and other issues. I have one of these and it works decent enough.

If you want something great for the money, you're going to be paying a pretty penny, though. Like this is what I want to get for my console needs.

Here's what I use. Not nearly the best, but it's manageable for the average Joe or group.

Current

• Streaming: OBS Studio (Win 0.14.x)
  
• Overlay: HTML/Javascript w/ StreamControl writing data to JSON and JS polling it.
  
• Capture Device: Startech USB3HDCAP + XRGB-mini Framemeister
  
• WebCams: 2x Logitech C920
  
• Audio Mixer: Mackie Mix 8
  
• Headsets: 2x Audio-Technica BPHS1
  
• Misc: Powered Composite Splitter, Behringer HA400 Headphone Amp
  
• Stream Tools: Nightbot, TwitchAlerts
  
  

  Deprecated
  

• Capture Device: Dazzle DVC 100
  
  BPHS1s are kind of the standard for accessible and reasonably priced xlr headsets.
  
  I was getting decent quality out of my old dazzle before I switched, people just need to learn how to setup their bitrate properly to reduce artifacts and how to deinterlace their capture via amarectv or using the built in obs plugins (I used yadifx4 for the longest time) which do a nice, respectable job. Would I recommend a dazzle? Eh, it produces decent video for the price (got mine on ebay for $20), but has some compatibility issues - if you do a quick search for audio issues with the dazzle you'll find a couple threads. There are workarounds, but it's finicky.
  
  Ideally though, streams should be capturing component video. It removes the need for software/external hardware deinterlacing. The issue here is that you either need a TV that supports component, or a component->composite converter, which I've seen people have performance issues with in the past.
  My current setup uses a Framemeister to upscale the composite signal and handle the deinterlacing, outputting HDMI to the USB3HDCAP. The advantage is that I get to feed straight composite signals to any plain old CRT, which is great because I've been recording out of a suitcase the last few months while I move around.
  
  I build my overlays in JavaScript and HTML; there's a layer of logic that polls a local JSON file written by StreamControl for changes and updates them on the page.
  
  Just taking off on a flight. More info later. (It's later)
  
  Sample with the Dazzle

There are many ways to record HDTV, yes. Here is an example.

Try the StarTech USB3HDCAP. It's more expensive than the card you listed, but it uses USB 3.0 and thus avoids the bandwidth issue that makes USB 2.0 capture cards perform so poorly.

It's also less expensive and far more flexible than the Elgato HD60 Pro that others here have mentioned. That card only accepts HDMI, but this one accepts HDMI, composite/s-video, component, and DVI inputs.

There's a review for the card at: http://www.thethrillness.com/2015/01/startech-usb3hdcap-review.html

Notably, it uses the same hardware as the Micomsoft XCAPTURE-1, to the extent that you can actually use the XCAPTURE-1's drivers with the card. Here's a review for the XCAPTURE-1, admittedly focused on retro system capture: http://sixfortyfive.com/streaming/xcapture1.html

TL;DR: Cheaper than the internal Elgato. Has no problem with 1080p60 content. Doesn't have stupid compression and lag because of USB 2.0. Can capture non-HDMI inputs, and does incredibly well.