Magewell Pro Capture HDMI

Magewell Pro Capture HDMI: Single-Channel PCIe Capture Card

The Magewell Pro Capture HDMI is the starting point for most production capture builds. It takes a single HDMI source and delivers it to your host PC as a clean, low-latency video feed, ready for live production software, broadcast encoding, or direct recording. At £215 from StreamKit, it is the card most single-camera production setups should be running.

What It Actually Does

Connect it to a PCIe x1 slot and your HDMI source becomes an available capture device across Windows, Linux, and macOS. The FPGA on the card handles all signal processing: scaling, deinterlacing, colour space conversion, and frame-rate conversion happen in hardware, not on your CPU. The signal arrives in your software clean and ready to use without loading your production machine.

Maximum supported input resolution is 2048x2160, which covers everything from standard definition up to 2K production formats. This is not a 4K card. If you need to capture 3840x2160 UHD sources, the Pro Capture HDMI 4K is the right product. For everything below that ceiling, this card handles it reliably and is rated for 24/7 continuous operation.

The Analogue Header: More Useful Than It Looks

A question we get regularly at StreamKit: does this card capture analogue video? Yes, via the onboard analogue header. The card accepts CVBS composite, S-Video, and YPbPr component video, as well as stereo analogue audio, all through the internal header connector. This makes the Pro Capture HDMI genuinely useful in facilities with a mix of legacy analogue sources and modern HDMI gear. You are not locked into HDMI-only workflow even at this price point.

Software Compatibility

The card works with the major live production and editing platforms out of the box:

• vMix, including Basic HD and up
• Wirecast for live streaming and switching
• OBS Studio via the Magewell DirectShow or V4L2 driver
• Adobe Premiere Pro and Media Encoder for direct capture workflows
• FFmpeg for command-line and server-side ingest
• Magewell Capture Express for standalone recording without third-party software

On Windows 10, 11, and Windows Server, the Magewell driver package is required and available free from Magewell. Linux kernel 3.x and later registers the card natively via V4L2 without a separate driver. macOS 10.14 and later uses the MWCapture SDK.

Form Factor and Fitting

The card ships with both full-height and low-profile brackets, so it fits 1U rackmount servers as well as standard desktop workstations. The x1 PCIe interface provides sufficient bandwidth for single-channel capture at the resolutions this card supports. If your machine has a spare x1 slot, this card fits it.

Choosing the Right Card

The Pro Capture HDMI suits any workflow that needs one reliable HDMI capture channel below 4K: a single camera feed into vMix or Wirecast, a programme output being archived from a vision mixer, a switcher return being recorded for compliance, or a single stream source for OBS. If you need two channels on one card, the Pro Capture Dual HDMI scales the same architecture at £400. If your chassis cannot accommodate a full-length card, the Pro Capture Mini HDMI provides the same capture performance in a shorter half-length form factor at £199.

Buying from StreamKit

StreamKit is an authorised Magewell reseller. Every Pro Capture HDMI we supply comes with the full three-year Magewell manufacturer warranty, free tracked UK delivery, and access to our UK technical support team for driver installation, software configuration, and compatibility questions. If you are not certain whether this card or another in the range suits your setup, contact us before you order.