The cheapest capture card money can buy.. is actually WORTH buying? (BlueAVS/Goodan USB 2.0 CamLink)
Why Hacker News recommends it
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.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Recommends novok · 2020-08 · on “Imaging Edge Webcam”
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]
Cites Nexxxeh · 2020-08 · on “Pi-KVM: easy and cheap DIY KVM over IP with mouse, virtual drive, VNC and IPMI”
There was some great discussion on the Show HN for the similar project TinyPilot: [LINK] It uses a Can'tLink: [this video]
Cites netsharc · 2020-10 · on “My Eight-Year Quest to Digitize 45 Videotapes”
Nowadays there are cheap alternatives on eBay/Aliexpress: [this video] Although presumably they don't do audio...
Cites kevincharm · 2020-12 · on “Why can’t you buy a good webcam?”
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]
Cites gsich · 2023-09 · on “Android 14 adds support for using your smartphone as a webcam”
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.