Elgato Game Capture HD Linux driver

This project provides a userspace driver to support the Elgato Game Capture HD under Linux. This is an unofficial driver and therefore not supported by Elgato.

Use at your own risk! This software is not intended for production use.

Firmware

This software needs Elgato Game Capture HD firmware files to work. They're not part of this repository, so you need to extract them yourself. A brief instruction:

1. Download Elgato Game Capture HD Mac OS X drivers version 2.0.3 from their official website: https://www.elgato.com/de/game-capture-hd-support

2. Install dmg2img and hfsprogs. Please refer to your specific Linux distribution for more information.

3. Uncompress Elgato Game Capture HD Mac OS X drivers:

   dmg2img gchdm_203_970.dmg -o gchdm_203_970.dmg.img
   

4. Mount the uncompressed HFS+ image with root permissions:

   mkdir /tmp/dmg
   mount -o loop -t hfsplus gchdm_203_970.dmg.img /tmp/dmg
   

5. Copy mb86h57_h58_idle.bin and mb86h57_h58_enc_h.bin from /tmp/dmg/Game\ Capture\ HD.app/Contents/Resources/Firmware/Beddo/.

6. Place the firmware files into this project's firmware folder.

Install

1. Install the following dependencies. Please refer to your specific Linux distribution, as package names might differ.

• libusb >= 1.0.20
• clang (make)
• make (make)

2. Compile the driver:

   make
   

Usage

According to your HDMI source, run ./elgato-gchd -r 720p or ./elgato-gchd -r 1080p with root permissions in a terminal and leave it open. This driver will create a new file /tmp/elgato-gchd.ts.

Please note, that this file is actually a FIFO pipe and will not grow. You will need an external program to record footage.

You can open up this file using any media player, which supports reading from pipes. There will be a slight delay, which is hardware limited and can not be worked around.

After closing the file, you will not be able to reopen it again. You will need to stop the terminal using "Ctrl + C", disconnect and reconnect your Elgato Game Capture HD's USB cable and start over again.

Currently, 1080p30 and 720p60 are supported.

Contributors

• Join our official Groupchat at Gitter: https://gitter.im/tolga9009/elgato-gchd
• Special thanks to jedahan for writing openvizsla2c utility

License

This driver is made available under the MIT License.