Homebrew Discussion Switch HDMI output to other devices

[Omniscye]

Hello all

I made a thread a while ago about the Switch possibly having a screen recorder but I was thinking.

Most of you made valid points about the Switches overall power in doing so .But I totally forgot that the Switch outputs HDMI through USB-C!

It's a good discussion I think and I am going to test it out because I can't find any real info on it. Trying to get the Switch to output to an Android device ( it would need to accept video input through USB-C ) or any other device in general .

The issue here is, when you put it in the dock does it check to see if it's in the dock and then output from the Switch, through USB-C and then HDMI to TV? If not, itishould be possible to intercept the video output/use it on another device that can view the video.

Output to android device screen , record gameplay Profit? Yes I know ! Capture card "cringe" .

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hello all

I made a thread a while ago about the Switch possibly having a screen recorder but I was thinking.

Most of you made valid points about the Switches overall power in doing so .But I totally forgot that the Switch outputs HDMI through USB-C!

It's a good discussion I think and I am going to test it out because I can't find any real info on it. Trying to get the Switch to output to an Android device ( it would need to accept video input through USB-C ) or any other device in general .

The issue here is, when you put it in the dock does it check to see if it's in the dock and then output from the Switch, through USB-C and then HDMI to TV? If not, itishould be possible to intercept the video output/use it on another device that can view the video.

Output to android device screen , record gameplay Profit? Yes I know ! Capture card "cringe" .

It checks the hardware info of the connected device, and won't output unless it matches what is expected. Hence why you can't use just any MyDP/SlimPort adapter, it has to be made to specifically support the Switch. And I don't think you can change the hardware info of the Android device so that it matches what is expected. Nor do I think Android devices are capable of acting as the receiving end of a MyDP/SlimPort adapter.

 

[Omniscye]

It checks the hardware info of the connected device, and won't output unless it matches what is expected. Hence why you can't use just any MyDP/SlimPort adapter, it has to be made to specifically support the Switch. And I don't think you can change the hardware info of the Android device so that it matches what is expected. Nor do I think Android devices are capable of acting as the receiving end of a MyDP/SlimPort adapter.

Ah ok cool. I thought it would be a good discussion. Thanks for your comment! It was informative

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Ah ok cool. I thought it would be a good discussion. Thanks for your comment! It was informative

You might be able to get a USB capture card working in Android though. There are Linux drivers (through V4L) that could be compiled into the kernel, you would still need software for Android capable of using the capture card, but it could probably be done with an existing command line program, like ffmpeg.

 

[Omniscye]

You might be able to get a USB capture card working in Android though. There are Linux drivers (through V4L) that could be compiled into the kernel, you would still need software for Android capable of using the capture card, but it could probably be done with an existing command line program, like ffmpeg.

Yes but my whole thing is about capturing Switch gameplay without a capture card . Other thread, people were saying a "streaming" app maybe for homebrew. Because making a Switch program to record realtime would probbaly lag it out haha

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yes but my whole thing is about capturing Switch gameplay without a capture card . Other thread, people were saying a "streaming" app maybe for homebrew. Because making a Switch program to record realtime would probbaly lag it out haha

The Switch is already recording everything in realtime, but it only saves 30 seconds of it when you press the capture button.
I don't think it would be too hard to make it save everything to a file on the SD card in realtime through CFW.

 

[Pleng]

The Switch is already recording everything in realtime, but it only saves 30 seconds of it when you press the capture button.
I don't think it would be too hard to make it save everything to a file on the SD card in realtime through CFW.

Well that depends... Presumably the 30 seconds is being saved in RAM somewhere and only dumped to SD when the button is pressed*. Constantly writing a video stream to the SD card while also playing a game (which also needs to read/write from the same SD card) might cause playability issues.

*even then, the dump may still be stored in RAM for a while until the Switch detects that there is a decent window in which to dump the data to the SD card.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Well that depends... Presumably the 30 seconds is being saved in RAM somewhere and only dumped to SD when the button is pressed*. Constantly writing a video stream to the SD card while also playing a game (which also needs to read/write from the same SD card) might cause playability issues.

*even then, the dump may still be stored in RAM for a while until the Switch detects that there is a decent window in which to dump the data to the SD card.

Which is why you would store the game in the internal memory
Although with how fast SD cards are now, and games normally not loading a lot of data on the fly but instead using loading screens (plus it's mostly reads not writes) I think it should work anyway.
Edit: And we might be able to control the USB connection and use it to send the image data to a PC for processing. Doing it over wifi should also be viable (more so than on the 3DS) since the Switch has fast wifi.

 

[Omniscye]

Well that depends... Presumably the 30 seconds is being saved in RAM somewhere and only dumped to SD when the button is pressed*. Constantly writing a video stream to the SD card while also playing a game (which also needs to read/write from the same SD card) might cause playability issues.

*even then, the dump may still be stored in RAM for a while until the Switch detects that there is a decent window in which to dump the data to the SD card.

Yes that is why maybe a streaming app, like N or something . But I'm pretty sure a Mod will hate us on here because my other thread was about "Recording software" lol.

This thread should be hardware related for video bypass from the Switch haha . Here's the other thread I made a bit ago. https://gbatemp.net/threads/possible-screen-recorder-eventually.509181/page-3 software related. ( I just don't want to get in trouble by a mod )

 

[Omniscye]

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