Recording HD video from HDMI

Hey guys,

I've been working with video for a few years but for the most part I was doing freelance work with my Canon 5D. I've recently stumbled upon a job that would require me to record videos from HDMI-out sources.

I was wondering if anyone could suggest an affordable way to ingest footage via HDMI with high quality.


For a little background, I was recently contracted by a new video-game journalism website that's located in my area. My job entails recording gameplay footage off of devices such as PCs, XBoxes and PlayStation3s. They do not have a video department yet and they're testing things out with me. Does anyone know if there's is an affordable solution to recording all three of these devices?

I've looked at AJA's IO XT but it runs for about $1495.00 which is a bit out of my own personal budget as well as the company's initial fees. I like the IO XT because from what I've seen it has Thunderbolt as well as HDMI out and in. To be honest I don't know what it's fully capable of and I've only did a bit of browsing so far. I know asking for Thunderbolt is gonna run rather expensive so I know not to expect anything from that end. I just want the best bang for my buck in terms of video quality.

FCP.CO Forum, any suggests?

The IO is overkill. You get simpler solutions from BlackMagic or Matrox from $200-300 and up.
Make sure they work with your NLE and GPU.

All the cool kids use something like this Hauppauge device.
It has lag-free HDMI pass-through, and has a USB connection for direct connection to a PC or Mac.

The earlier version of this had info about Mac software, but that's not there yet for this one.

I've never used one of these things. You might find additional info on a gaming forum, including capturing live gamer gameplay audio. Ideally you could capture it all at once, grab the video, trim bits out, reassemble and push to the web with no delay.

The Atomos Ninja could be a possible solution, too.