Magewell Pro Capture Mini HDMI

Magewell Pro Capture Mini HDMI: Half-Length Single-Channel HDMI Capture

The Magewell Pro Capture Mini HDMI is a single-channel HDMI capture card in a half-length low-profile x1 PCIe form factor. At £199, it is the most compact card in the Pro Capture HDMI range. The reason to choose it is not primarily the price. It is the physical dimensions. Some of the most common deployment targets for HDMI capture, compact rackmount servers, small form factor workstations, and edge computing hardware, cannot physically accommodate a full-length PCIe card. The Mini HDMI was built for exactly those situations.

Form Factor Is the Differentiator

Standard low-profile PCIe cards measure around 167mm from bracket to the far edge of the board. The Pro Capture Mini HDMI is a half-length card, measuring approximately 68mm from bracket to board end. This shorter length fits PCIe slots in chassis where the physical slot length is constrained by adjacent components, internal power supply units, or chassis walls that a full-length card would contact before seating fully.

If you have been specifying a capture workstation and discovered that your chosen server chassis will not accept a full-length low-profile card, the Mini HDMI is the solution. Same Magewell capture quality. Same FPGA-based signal processing pipeline. Same software compatibility. In a form factor that fits where the standard card cannot.

What the Card Captures

Capture performance is consistent with the rest of the Pro Capture HDMI range. The card accepts HDMI signals up to 2048x2160, covering the full range from standard definition through to 2K production formats. The onboard FPGA handles scaling, deinterlacing, colour space conversion, and frame-rate conversion in hardware. The host system receives a clean, processed video stream with minimal CPU overhead. This is not a 4K card. If your source is 3840x2160 UHD or higher, the Pro Capture HDMI 4K is the appropriate product. The Mini HDMI, like the standard Pro Capture HDMI, handles everything below that resolution ceiling. The card is rated for 24/7 continuous operation.

Software Compatibility

The Pro Capture Mini HDMI appears as a standard Magewell capture device in all supported software:

• vMix, where it functions as a standard HDMI capture input assignable to any camera or source layer
• Wirecast for live production and streaming workflows
• OBS Studio with the Magewell DirectShow driver on Windows or V4L2 on Linux
• Adobe Premiere Pro for direct capture and live monitoring
• FFmpeg for command-line and server-side ingest and encoding workflows
• Magewell Capture Express for standalone recording without requiring a third-party software installation

OS support is identical to the standard Pro Capture HDMI: Windows 10, 11, and Windows Server (driver required), Linux 3.x and later via V4L2 without an additional driver, and macOS 10.14 and later via the MWCapture SDK.

How It Compares to the Standard Pro Capture HDMI

The Pro Capture HDMI at £215 is £16 more than the Mini HDMI and offers the same capture performance in a longer board. The standard card also includes an analogue input header supporting CVBS composite, S-Video, and YPbPr component video with stereo analogue audio. If analogue capture is any part of your requirement, the standard card is the correct choice regardless of chassis space. If your chassis accepts a full-length card and analogue is not needed, the choice between Mini and standard is essentially one of physical fit and stock availability.

If your chassis requires a half-length card, the Mini HDMI is not a compromise, it is simply the correctly sized version of the same product. The capture quality, reliability, and software support are the same. For two simultaneous HDMI channels in a compact chassis, check whether your server accepts the standard Dual HDMI in a half-height slot, and contact us if you are unsure.

Buying from StreamKit

StreamKit supplies the Pro Capture Mini HDMI as an authorised UK Magewell reseller with the full three-year manufacturer warranty, free tracked UK delivery, and UK technical support. If you are not certain whether your server chassis will accept the standard or Mini form factor, contact us with your chassis model before ordering. We will confirm physical compatibility so you are not stuck with the wrong card.