Hey folks,

Decided to make a new thread just for that question.

As I mentioned in another thread, I have a problematic laptop that uses Intel Iris Xe Graphics video card that dithers and gives me massive eye strain and headache on any screen (internal or external). Can't install ditherig because it's a work machine.

The user @karthi3219 proposed to me to use a video capture card to capture the HDMI output of my laptop and to display the video on another PC/laptop that has a 'good' video card. I bought a gaming video capture card (AVerMedia LIVE Gamer ULTRA) to test that but it was with terrible quality and high latency. And I am using 1080p with 60 hz monitor. Now, I am thinking of building a PC and buying a more expensive PCIe capture card (from Magewell or Blackmagic). But before I burn more money trying to find a workaround to this issue, I want to confirm with you guys whether it's a good idea or not.

Questions:

  1. Would such a setup work? Because in theory I am starting to think it shouldn't work - the video card capture device will capture the dithering, too. And the video will have the dithering effect. The difference would be one is HDMI signal, other is a video. So, maybe there would be a difference of how my eyes react to the video.

  2. Is it possible that dithering could downgrade the quality of the video? I suspect this might be the reason why I get such a bad video quality with my current video capture card.

I will be very happy if @karthi3219 could chime in on the thread, too. Maybe he could give insight about his setup and how is the quality, latency and how about the dithering that is also being recorded. I am also tagging @Seagull since he has done some testing with video capture cards and has knowledge.

Thank you for your time.

    Firemaker

    Could it work? Yes and no.

    If you capture the output without any loss in detail, no it shouldn't work as you will just be reproducing the same problematic output but with added latency that might make things worse for you. However, if you add in some compression there is a good chance it'll be okay - why am I so sure? YouTube. I've never gotten strain from watching a capture of someone playing a game on YouTube, despite it being very likely their graphics card / other settings would be a problem for me. The reason being YouTube applies a lot of compression so any artifacts like dithering will be lost to save storage space / bandwidth. My bigger worry was could I get enough compression to make it useable, without adding too much latency in - could end up getting motion sickness that way.

    On dithering and quality of your capture card, no it shouldn't affect the quality of your captured video. Dithering is very common, and your card will surely be able to cope with this.

        You COULD try the small steam link box… someone in the ledstrain telegram uses it and says no dithering.

        Seagull However, if you add in some compression there is a good chance it'll be okay - why am I so sure? YouTube. I've never gotten strain from watching a capture of someone playing a game on YouTube, despite it being very likely their graphics card / other settings would be a problem for me.

        In most cases software capture (i.e Fraps, Dxtory, OBS not using capture card) would work at a level "below" where dithering or other alleged output issues manifest. Meaning unless they're using a capture card and the dithering artifacts make it through several rounds of compression the experience of watching a direct capture output wouldn't necessarily be the same as what ends up on YouTube.

          Hi @Firemaker , I have found some better setups or ideas so I'm not using the video capture card approach right now.

          I tried the video capture card approach sometime back with my Apple M1 MacBook work laptop streaming into my good windows personal laptop setup through video capture card with OBS. I found that this reduced my symptoms and manage my work. Please note that it was not complete relief. I used very basic video capture card. I agree that screen was bad. It only support 30 fps so latency will be there. But my work involved only coding, web browsing , zoom calls. No video or display depending work. Initially I struggled to adjust to low latency. But after few hours, I have got used to it. So the latency was not a big problem for coding and browsing.

          I'm from India. I used this $10 card.https://amzn.eu/d/j5aMsgD

          My suggestion - use very basic card and check how you feel. Just check the eye strain part. Don't worry about the latency or screen quality.

          If there are no eye strain, you should start using it and few hours of usage, you will start adapting to latency and screen quality issues. If you feel the strain at the beginning itself, try different OBS studio settings and check.

          My experience is that don't spend too much money because any setup works initially might end up not working later because of some os updates. Every person is different. Setup works for a person might not work for others. So try different approaches for yourself but with minimum costs. Once you find a working setup, stick to it and don't modify anything on hardware, software level.

          dev