Hey I would like to capture my switch gameplay and know that a capture card is the answer, but i have no idea what I need. From looking about, it's not making any sense to me, could i have some advice?

My first constraint is cost. I want to spend as little as possible. Secondly, I have a PC i can use and can plug into that, if needs be (i think this should lower the cost)

I don't need any bells and whistles, like (and i might be making some of these up) direct streaming, built in hard drive, microphone, floor sweeping capabilities, all I want to be able to do is send a signal to my PC to record.

I don't know if it would split the signal or if i'd play through my PC, but as long as there is 0 lag (so i can actually play it) then i'm happy.

If you can give some examples of the bog standard capture cards that would fit my bill, and mention any criteria I should be looking out for, then this would help so much.

Cheers, Kevichella

I got an Elgato HD60 Pro for capturing my switch, which also includes HDMI Passthrough, so I can play on an HDMI monitor without any lag. There's also the HD60S that doesn't require opening your PC to install a PCI-E card as it's a USB device instead, but I don't know if that comes with an internal splitter like that. The capture in OBS (added the card as Video Capture Device bypassing the HD Capture Software) looks about a second delayed to me, so likely not very playable without a splitter.

Note that if you happen to still be on Windows 7 you'll need to find the older version of the HD Capture Software and drivers (should be on the same page mentioned in the instruction booklet) and may also need a patch for it (I found the one for the HD60 Pro on reddit, posted by someone who works at Elgato and was marked as such by the subreddit moderators).

You do not need to bypass HDCP for Switch surprisingly. Just have a Capture card that allows Pass-through.