Ever since I’ve had a Nintendo Switch, it’s suffered from a strange problem: whenever I open up my Recording software (in this case Elgato’s Game Capture HD), my monitor begins blanking every so often, effectively blinding me for 2-second spans of time whenever recording. Everything behaves normally and without blanking when recording software isn’t open, strangely enough, and this whole situation has been a major mystery that’s made recording video a serious pain. All sorts of factors appear to influence how often the screen blanks, and the internet has proved useless for troubleshooting; the best guess of various forum posters is that it has something to do with HDCP protection, and yet hooking it up to my splitter that strips out that protection only reduces the amount of blanking rather than eliminating it entirely. That’s just one of several troubleshooting steps I’ve taken, actually—I’ve tried using OBS Studio instead of Game Capture HD, messing with the RGB range settings on the Switch, and even stripping the audio out of the signal to try and confirm that it’s the fault of the video and not something else entirely.

In the process, the only thing I discovered is that the color theme and RGB range are connected in some way, with the screen blanking constantly whenever I had “full range” and the white theme selected together, or the “limited range” and dark theme selected together (though less with the latter, and it could be worked around). It also didn’t take long to notice that this is only a problem at 1080p, with 720p and lower resolutions causing no problems whatsoever. That was a workaround of sorts that made it possible to record whenever blanking became a problem, but reducing the resolution is a significant compromise, and I kept my eyes peeled for a real solution for recording at 1080p without screen blanking.

You wouldn’t be able to see the black screens above even if they occurred since they don’t show up in recordings, but the white theme used to blank the screen like crazy. Now it doesn’t.

Fast forward to today: I recently acquired a new sound system thing (specifically, a Denon AVR-1312) that someone was giving away due to a move, and since a bunch of the indie games I put in keys for haven’t gotten back to me for whatever reason, I took the time to hook it up into my PC/PS4/Switch/Android recording setup that goes through my Elgato HD60 recording device. Here’s where things get interesting: in addition to accepting analog inputs, the AVR-1312 accepts HDMI inputs. Basically, it takes the video/audio signal in, and you can choose whether to have it send the audio to the speakers or pass through the device. Out of curiosity, I used a couple of spare cables to send the Switch’s HDMI signal through the AVR-1312 before going into the capture device and was blown away when the blanking problem disappeared entirely. The only downside to this approach is that the speakers can’t be used (the AVR-1312 can’t mix analog and digital signals, so having the video go through HDMI means that you can’t get audio by plugging in a 3.5mm TRS cable from your monitor to play the HDMI audio at the end of the chain), but having to use headphones while recording is a small price to pay for being able to record in 1080p without any black screens whatsoever.

Obviously that’s not going to be a solution for everyone since the Denon AVR-1312 isn’t made anymore and costs around $150 USD used, but I noticed that it spits out a signal even when the Switch is off. I think that’s the underlying key here; my best guess is that by feeding the signal into something that spits out a continuous signal (so that the monitor displays a lit black screen rather than turning completely off when the Switch isn’t on), it circumvents whatever the problem was and makes it possible to play without blanking. It might also be possible to achieve this by sending it through an Xbox One, or some kind of cheap 1080p upscaler—the latter of which likely wouldn’t actually do anything since the signal would already be at 1080p. It might also be worth looking into some splitters, as it’s possible that those whose problems were solved by sending the signal into a splitter before reaching the recording device were helped not because it eliminated HDCP protection, but because their particular splitters spit out a continuous signal. That would explain why some people were helped by splitters while others only saw a minor improvement.

The post The black screen/blanking problem on Nintendo Switch: a fix appeared first on Killa Penguin.