The cheapest capture card money can buy.. is actually WORTH buying? (BlueAVS/Goodan USB 2.0 CamLink)
EposVox1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2020–2023
demo · general · 2020–2023 on HN
EposVox reviews a very cheap USB 2.0 HDMI capture dongle sold under names like BlueAVS/Goodan, testing whether it works as an alternative to the Elgato Cam Link. He covers its quality and limits for webcam-style and camera capture use.
Commenters cite it as evidence that a roughly $12-20 HDMI-to-USB capture device is good enough for many uses, such as digitizing video or using a camera as a webcam.
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5 comments from Hacker News
At this point I would just buy a $12 HDMI to USB dongle and side step the need for any of these apps. Way better, no new software required, no OS specifics. Ex: ▶ this video
This might be implementation dependent. MJPEG per se is not bad as you make it out to be. Example reviews: ▶ this video and many more. They all boil down to the same thing: excellent device, even with MJPEG. Obviously it's more dependent on what you use as camera, than the encoding method.
I use a similar setup with a Panasonic GH5 I already had, but I bought one of those €15 Chinese HDMI capture USB UVC cards [1]. These work surprisingly well, and I've had zero issues using them for ~4 hours back-to-back Zoom meetings on my MBP. They've also received some good reviews on YouTube [2]. For audio, I use my Airpods. Great setup for meetings. Latency is good enough IMO. -- [1]: link [2]: ▶ this video
Nowadays there are cheap alternatives on eBay/Aliexpress: ▶ this video Although presumably they don't do audio...
There was some great discussion on the Show HN for the similar project TinyPilot: link It uses a Can'tLink: ▶ this video