Competitive gaming is a massive industry, with enormous prize pots, tournament attendance numbers, stream viewerships, and sponsorships. As popular games evolve players rely increasingly on video analysis of their matches in order to improve their strategies and study their opponents. This is easy for top players because their matches are broadcast on the tournament’s stream and uploaded to YouTube. For lesser-known players there is no guarantee that they will be recorded, removing a valuable tool for low and mid-level players. For these players, there are currently two ways to record their matches: end up on the tournament’s stream by happenstance or record the match on a phone camera. These are both poor solutions as one is unreliable and the other produces low-quality videos subject to blurring, crowd interference, and shaky camera operation. Twitch.tv, the streaming service where most gaming streams are broadcast has a “Clip” feature which allows viewers to download segments of streams in real time. The Clipper is a real-world analog to this Clip feature in the form of a portable device that records HD video directly from HDMI and component signals. The goal of this project is to facilitate self-reliance for players who want high-quality recordings of their matches, as well as to help players improve and share their matches with other players. The Clipper is operated by connecting the input source, checking the status screen for the go-ahead, and pressing the start and stop buttons to create recordings which will be stored on a removable USB drive. The device is built with a raspberry-pi, a video capture card, an SD card, a USB drive, and software to create and store video files directly from a gaming setup.
