1

I'm having difficulty finding a Independent Portable 4K Capture Device that Records at 4K 60fps to SD or MicroSD.

By independent, I mean it does not require a computer; it is its own computer by itself.

By portable, I mean that I don't want something as large as PC tower.

I want perfect pass-through 4K 60fps quality while viewing what I'm recording live, and I want the exact 4K 60fps quality while viewing what I've recorded. I expect this to be expensive; that's ok.

Improve this question
5
  • 1
    I don't think it's possible to do what you're asking for. HDMI is uncompressed video, 4K@60FPS is about 11.9 Gb/s. The fastest SD card you can get right now writes at about 2.4 Gb/s. Also, a 512 GB SD card would hold about 5 minutes of uncompressed 4K video... You have to reconsider your "I want the exact 4K 60fps quality while viewing what I've recorded" requirement because that is not possible with an SD card. Compression is necessary.
    – Romen
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 14:53
  • @Romen I guess nothing can do lossless compression on the fly to address the SD capacity issue?
    – Lonnie Best
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 18:17
  • 1
    Lossless compression is very sensitive to content. With HEVC lossless compression your best possible compression is aroound 5:1 ratio. That puts your expected bitrate at a minimum of 2.38 Gb/s. That's basically at the cutting edge of SD card performance and you can expect a maximum of 30 minutes of video on a 512 GB SD card. Since real life performance is not always at the optimal end of things, you will have to deal with frame drops or dynamic framerate to limit the bitrate to what the SD card could handle.
    – Romen
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 18:25
  • 1
    I suppose you could go another way and look for something that records to a SATA SSD instead of an SD card. Many professional 4K cameras work this way because they have to use something faster than SD. There are standalone capture devices (Elgato, Avermedia, etc.) that can connect to a USB 3.0 storage device. A good SSD writing at 5 Gb/s over USB 3.0 may be fast enough for recording 4K with lossless compression, but be careful because many of those capture devices only use lossy compression.
    – Romen
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 18:35
  • @Romen It sounds like you really know what your talking about. Thanks for your advice. I'd sacrifice portability and money for the quality I desire. I guess I'm looking for something on par with what the 4K professional cameras are capable of, minus the lens. I'll check out Elgato and Avermedia.
    – Lonnie Best
    Commented Dec 4, 2019 at 7:58

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

The Elgato 4K60S+ seems to check all of your boxes:

  • 4K resolution @ 60fps
  • Portable and Standalone
  • Perfect Pass-Through
  • SD Card slot

It also has HDR10 capabilities.

https://www.elgato.com/en/gaming/game-capture-4k60-s-plus

Improve this answer

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.