Elgato is a company that has always specialized in components for players . If you have recently focused on those accessories that can improve your streamer’s station such as the Stream Deck , Key Light Air or the microphone Elgato Wave , in a first phase it had been able to win the attention of the player community for its solutions for the acquisition of the gameplay . In a historical period where sharing the gaming experience is increasingly important, Elgato has been able to be in the right place at the right time.

With quality solutions, easy to use and affordable for any type of player. But now we need to take a further step forward: with the introduction of the new generation consoles , capable of process images at 4K resolution , you need to record gameplay at high resolution and high frame rate. If then these products are equipped with technologies of passthough and instant views , which allow you to play consoles through a PC, is even better.

We find all these features in the new Elgato 4K 60 Pro , one PCIe capture card capable of capturing image streams up to 4K resolution at 60 frame per second and in accordance with the specification HDR 10 . Elgato’s capture card works instantly with all streaming software including OBS Studio, Streamlabs OBS and XSplit . It is then able to simultaneously acquire videos from multiple apps and it is possible to install more than one on the same PC, in the case of advanced and professional uses.

The card is robust and protected by a casing in black electrogalvanized steel . Like all Elgato solutions aimed at gamers, it is characterized by an attractive aesthetic, with sharp geometric edges, elegant grilles, well-highlighted door labels and iconic branding, which will certainly be appreciated by enthusiasts who want everything to be in order inside. del case, perhaps to show it off in a tournament. Inside the package, in addition to an HDMI cable, there is also full or reduced height support, for greater practicality in managing HDMI cables depending on the shape of the case.

The acquisition card, like all solutions of this type, it is equipped with a video input and a video output, both HDMI , so that you can capture from an external device such as a console and at the same time view the device’s image stream on a second monitor. The release also boasts lag-free passthrough, meaning it does not introduce latency to allow you to play through the capture card without compromising game performance.

The 4K 60 Pro is currently the most complete solution among those made available by Elgato for the acquisition. Going into detail in the specifications, it supports passthrough up to 240 Hz in 1080 p , so that you can take advantage of the latest high refresh rate monitors. In passthrough we also have HDR a 10 bit, also supported at the recording level. In addition, the card allows you to register and manage the passthrough to 1440 pa 144 Hz , allowing you to capture very fluid image streams (while giving up, in this case, the resolution 4K).

All this is possible through the technology that Elgato defines Instant Gameview , which allows you to manage image streams with very low latency. Even if you move a very large number of pixels, there are no delays and not a single frame is lost. In this way, as mentioned, it is also possible to play through the acquisition card, a very interesting feature that simplifies the configuration of the gaming station. Alternatively, in fact, the possible PC to be captured should be separately connected to a second monitor.

Elgato 4K 60 Pro is also equipped with dedicated software 4KCU , designed to make the most of the card’s features. The software allows you to capture in 4K at 60 fps and in HDR 10 while adding the vocals as a separate track for easy post-production. You can browse the recorded videos and customize them, while an archive allows you to organize the previous recordings and find them easily.

With the arrival of the new consoles, and with the diffusion of flows of images at 4K and high refresh rate, another need arises, parallel to what concerns the acquisition. That is the compatibility of streaming platforms with new formats. From the point of view of popularizers who want to show their readers the game images at their highest quality, YouTube and other streaming platforms place huge limitations. Not only for limiting the refresh rate to 60 Hz, but also for the way to manage the bitrate , the so-called bit rate.

We noticed this specifically when we reviewed the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and, specifically, when we wanted to publish their respective gameplay footage. The new consoles support i 120 Hz , unlike YouTube, and this remains a limit in communicating the full potential of these systems that for the moment is unavoidable. But, as we said, the discussion also concerns the quality of the images, which now benefits from very high resolutions.

When you upload a movie to YouTube, the compression algorithm of this the last one exercises adjustments according to the resolution and other technical characteristics of the uploaded movie . As you can see here, bring the bit rate to 53 – 68 Mbps in case of image streams at 2160 p with frame rate of 48, 50, 60 fps ea 35 – 45 Mbps in the case of frame rate of 24, 25, 30 fps. Speaking of HDR movies the bit rates are 56 – 85 Mbps for 48, 50, 60 fps and di 30 – 56 Mbps for 24, 25, 30 fps.

The problem is that in the case of videos in 1080 p the bit rate is reduced to 12 Mbps in the case of frame rate of 48, 50, 60 fps and 8 Mbps in the case of frame rate of 24, 25, 30 fps. In other words, if the uploaded video is at this resolution, YouTube greatly reduces its quality, because it evidently believes that those who are sharing it are not very interested in details. For almost all of the videos this reduction is fine, but in the case of streams drawn from graphically very complex games this can become a problem.

We realized this when we loaded this gameplay footage recorded on Xbox Series X with the game DiRT 5 . Codemasters guide title turns to 120 Hz on consoles, and unfortunately, with the tools that YouTube makes available right now, we can’t show that feature. But we still wanted to show the quality of the graphics. Here is the video in question.

What happened? This game movie is very particular due to the presence of mud, dust and many particles that conflict with the compression algorithm, which in fact very often simplifies the voluminous squares. When YouTube did the processing of the movie it checked the resolution 600 eg then made a significant reduction in the bit rate. We captured the gameplay with a previous generation capture card unable to handle the stream at 4K. Here is what happens when we redo the same acquisition, on the same track (Foci di Giovo) of DiRT 5, with 4K 60 Pro (select 4K mode 60 fps in YouTube) .

This footage was recorded at 68000 Mbps and YouTube has not compromised its quality. If in the latter you go back up to 1080 more big squares due to low bit rate will return. Conclusions? 4K gameplay needs to be captured and shared in order to preserve the quality we need. Which is possible with the new 4K 60 Pro, not with previous capture cards .

We also repeated the experiment with Spider-Man: Miles Morales for PlayStation 5. The differences in this case are minor, precisely due to the different conformation of the images, which in the case of DiRT 5 does not suit the operating logic of the YouTube compression algorithm, but in any case the movie in 4K makes a much better figure than the corresponding to 1080 p.

Perhaps it is worth pointing out that in this article we did not want to point out that the 4K resolution guarantees a quality higher than 1080 p, it would be like “discover hot water”. We simply want to bring to the attention of the player how modern acquisition solutions are more effective with the new consoles and in all those cases where 4K resolution must be managed, also depending on the limitations posed by network sharing platforms at this stage.