Magewell Pro Capture DVI 4K

About this product

When the picture you need to record is another computer's screen, a workstation, an imaging system or a high-resolution display feed, the Pro Capture DVI 4K is built for the job. It takes one digital video signal through a DVI connector and makes it available to software on your capture computer for recording, streaming or processing. It is a one-channel 4K capture card that fits inside a computer, and it accepts dual link DVI, which lets you take very high resolution computer outputs directly.

What goes in

• One DVI input. It accepts DVI-D 1.0, single or dual link, and HDMI 1.4 signals.
• Resolution: input resolutions up to 4096×2160 pixels.
• Custom EDID: you can set what the card tells the source it can accept, which helps when a computer needs to be told to output a particular resolution. That saves the source falling back to a format you did not want.
• To the computer: a PCIe Gen2 x4 connection carrying the video to your software.

Made for digital sources

The card works with DVI-D and HDMI 1.4, which are both digital signals. That makes it a natural match for the DVI or HDMI output of a computer, workstation or imaging system. For analogue sources such as VGA, ask us and we will point you to the right model in the Pro Capture range.

Single link, dual link and 4K

The card’s capacity is set by pixel rate, which is a measure of how much picture data arrives each second:

• Single link DVI or HDMI: pixel rates up to 165 MHz
• Dual link DVI: pixel rates up to 330 MHz

Dual link DVI uses the extra pins in a DVI connector to carry twice the data, which is how computers drive very high resolution screens over DVI. Because the card accepts it, you can capture those outputs without converting them first. The frame rate you can capture at a given resolution depends on the source staying within those pixel rates. Tell us the resolution and refresh rate you have in mind and we will check it before you buy.

Connecting HDMI sources and audio

The card’s connector is DVI, and it accepts HDMI 1.4 signals through it. The box contains the card and a low profile bracket, so allow for a DVI to HDMI cable or adapter if your source is HDMI. On sound, the card can extract audio format information and channel status data from the digital signal. The DVI connector is an input only: there is no loop-through output and no analogue audio input.

Processing done on the card

The card does part of the video work itself, before the pictures reach your software. That keeps your processor free for the recording or streaming application:

• Two video processing pipelines with about 360 megapixels per second of processing bandwidth, and full 10-bit processing
• Scaling, cropping and de-interlacing, plus aspect ratio, colour format and frame rate conversion, so you can crop to one window or scale a large desktop down on the card
• On-screen overlay (OSD composition), where a graphic is laid over the picture
• Unlimited capture streams for the input channel, so you can record at full size and stream a smaller copy, and a latency of 64 video lines

Works with the software you already use

Magewell supplies drivers for Windows 10, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2016 to 2025, for Linux on x86, x64 and ARM (kernel 2.6.35 and above), and for Mac OS X 10.9 / macOS 10.12 and above. The card is then used through the standard capture interfaces of each system: DirectShow on Windows, V4L2 and ALSA on Linux, AVCaptureSession on macOS. It works with VLC, OBS, XSplit, vMix and Wirecast among others, and there is an SDK for developers.

Fits compact and full-size PCs

It is a low profile PCIe x4 card measuring 92.76 × 68.88 mm without its bracket, so it suits compact computers as well as full-size ones. A 16-position rotary switch numbers each card, so you can tell them apart when several share one computer. The card is built for continuous 24-hour, 7-day operation, which suits recorders that are left running. Maximum power consumption is about 7.28 W.