Customer Reviews

Elgato Video Capture Device 10020840

5 star:		(130)
4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(18)

 

 

I read the reviews here and went ahead with my purchase anyway. I'm glad I did.

It couldn't be any more simple to record from an analog source to the Mac. My project is converting some old VHS home movies to digital videos. I wanted to try a test before I jumped into the real projects, so I decided to encode a small section of a VHS tape purchased around 1992.

I popped the software disc into my laptop and it installed in a few minutes. When finished, I launched the application and it presented me with a screen to test the video signal. I plugged in both ends of the device and I saw what was playing on my VCR instantly. The next screen made sure I had audio. Once set-up was out of the way, it was off to the races. I tested with a 10 minute section of the video and the software stopped recording exactly when I told it to.

I wanted to address the "issue" the other reviewers mistakenly have with this product not outputting H.264. The first video I captured has a file extension of ".mp4" and the description is "MPEG-4 Movie" in Finder. When I right-clicked and chose Get Info on the file, under Codecs, I see H.264, AAC listed. This proves H.264 encoding works with this product. I request the reviewers who said this is not working do the same and report the results.

Bottom line, this is a very simple to use product and I am looking forward to using it to convert those old movies from VHS. MUST BUY.

Length:: 3:38 Mins

If you are like us you probably have hours and hours of home movies that are slowly decaying on VHS tape. In the ideal world I would have all of our home movies on my computer where they can be made into DVDs or sent to a media player (I am using Apple TV with 160GB Hard Drive - MB189LL/A since it works seamlessly with my Mac). I happy to report that the Elgato helps to solve the problem of how I am going to get this media into my computer. I will say that there are other options such as buying a VHS/DVD recorder and then using software such as Handbrake to rip the content off of the DVD. I am sure there are others ways too... but using the Elgato Video Capture was the choice I used.

Pros-

- Easy set-up (less than 5 minutes)
- Cost effective
- Works for all media types - if it has a RCA or S-Video output you are in business - This includes a my mini-DVD video camera, Slngbox, DVR, or your TV
- Will record directly from your Tivo (see above)
- I didn't have any of the problems with the video/audio syncing
- Works perfectly with a Mac (PC users have other choices)
- Will publish directly to YouTube and ITunes

Final Verdict - Works perfectly for me and I couldn't be happier!

If you're like me, I have way too many old VHS tapes that I want to convert to DVD, but haven't found sofware/hardware combination that is easy to use, and does a great job.... Well, I've solved that problem with Elgato's Video Capture, it's so easy to use and understand. This company comprehends what we want and gives it to us. Yea.

Ok, all I need to do was first install the supplied software, hook up my VHS player with the included cables, and then read the well written instructions by Elgato. Sound easy, it is.

I looked up the first tape I wanted to do, and it had the time of it, so I set that up, All of the steps were made even easier with the step by step video/slide training on Elgato's site. Each step showed what I was to do, cables, plugs, settings, all of it there.

So once I made my first DVD from VHS, I was able to trim the boring stuff at either end, good idea. Then I was asked if I wanted to:

Play with Quick Time Player that's already on your Mac
Add to iTunes
Edit with iMovie
Upload to YouTube

I chose iTunes, so I could watch it on my iPhone/iPod or on the computer. I highly recommend it. no issues found ...I looked and could see that I could also use my camcorder, DVD player, and other analog video to my Mac via USB 2.0. The software that Elgato gives you yields H.264 or MPEG-4 that I easily sent to iTunes. Great!

Elgato Video Capture Technical Information:

Elgato Video Capture automatically detects NTSC, SECAM, PAL, and PAL/60 video formats for worldwide compatibility.

Video resolution: 640×480 (4:3) or 640×360 (16:9)
Video format: H.264 at 1.4 MBit/sec or MPEG-4 at 2.4 MBit/sec
Audio: AAC, 48kHZ, 128 kBit/sec

Generated files can be synced with video capable iPods, iPhones and Apple TV and can be edited in iMovie `09 without re-encoding.

System Requirements:

Macintosh computer with Intel Core Duo processor
512 MB of RAM
Built-in USB 2.0 port
Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard (or later)
QuickTime 7.6 (or later)
iTunes 8.1 or later

I've recorded about 20 8mm camcorder tapes onto my Mac Mini (1.66ghz cpu, 2gb ram) using this device. My system isn't powerful enough to generate H.264 files, but it produces mpeg4 files that play fine, they just take up about 1gb per hour of video. Video quality is about the same as the original tapes.

The software couldn't be simpler - just hit a record button. You can set it to automatically stop recording after 1,2, or 3 hours, in case you are recording overnight. There is a bare bones trim feature that lets you trim off extra video before or after your desired recording.

There is an encoding process that occurs when you are ready to save your video. It's very quick. On my relatively low powered Mac it takes about 10 minutes for a 2hr video.

My only problem is with dropped frames, which results in choppy video. It happens consistently on the first few seconds of every recording, and occasionally in the middle of a recording. It doesn't happen often, and I can just re-record the choppy scenes, but I don't know why it happens at all. I've asked Elgato on their forum, but no response yet.

Overall this has been an easy product to use. If I can figure out how to avoid the dropped frames/choppy video I'd give it 5 stars.

Update: I still don't know the reason for the choppiness, but I was able to associate it with unrecorded portions of the 8mm tape. Whenever there is an unrecorded portion of the tape, the video that follows will be choppy for a few seconds. This can be avoided by starting the Elgato recording immediately after the recorded portion of the tape begins to play. This is somewhat annoying if you have multiple recordings on the tape with segments of unrecorded tape in between them. It means essentially that you can't leave the tape unattended while it transfers to the computer. I've raised my rating to 4 stars based on my understanding of this quirk, but I would certainly prefer not having to deal with the choppiness at all.

It is possible that Elgato corrected this quirk. I've recorded all my tapes, and therefore haven't used the device in quite a while. There may be an update.

I bought this product because I had an aging library of analog video (3/4", VHS, and 8mm) I wanted to archive and edit digitally. I wasn't sure how the thing was going to work, and I was concerned it might take too long to convert or render the analog footage to digital. None of that has been a problem.

The hardware device works like a simple plug adapter from male USB to 3 female RCA inputs. You plug the USB connector into your computer and connect the RCA inputs to the analog video and audio outputs on your VCR, deck, or camcorder.

The software installs simply and works intuitively. You can see and hear your source video as it comes in. You simply start your tape, rough-cue it to the point you want to start transferring, and click "Start Record." The capture runs in real time, so a one-minute video clip takes one minute to capture. You click "Stop Recording" when you want the clip to end.

At this point you can trim the head and tail of your captured clip. You simply click-and-drag the pointer at either end of the progress bar to set your in and out edit points. You can adjust these frame-by-frame if you want to be more precise. When you've set your start and end points, you click "Continue," and the clip is written to a digital file (MPEG-4 by default.)

One minute of analog video converts to about a 20MB mp4 file. It only takes a few seconds to write 60 seconds of video. (I have an average older iMac; nothing special.)

Software updates are available free and automatically online. I recommend the update, since it allows you adjust the audio levels and the brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue of your video. You can make these adjustments before you start your capture, or you can make real-time adjustments during capture. The controls aren't terribly sophisticated, but they work fine. You can see and hear the effect of the adjustments as you make them.

You can opt to export your captured clip directly to iTunes, iMovie, or YouTube. (I haven't done that, since I wanted to edit first.) I imported my converted mp4 files directly to Final Cut Pro and was able to work with them normally without any problems.

The product is simple, elegant, and intuitive. It's very Apple-like in that regard, and works as advertised. I can recommend it without reservtion.

Like most people, I bought the Elgato Video Capture to digitize my analog family video tapes before they turned to dust. In three words "it simply works". I have digitized approximately 18 hours of tapes so far without any problems, without any dropped frames, and the picture quality is as good as the original tapes. The process is straight forward -- load the software, connect the camcorder to the capture device, launch the software (it will check for audio and video automatically). I have not tried saving for YouTube or iPod, but I do save for editing using iMovie and the process is just one mouse click after the video has been digitized. My workflow has been to capture using Elgato Video Capture, save as .mp4, edit using iMovie, and finally burning to DVD using iDVD.

For information:

Computer: MacBook Pro 5,1
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
2.4 GHz
4 GB Memory

Camcorder: Sony 8 Camcorder
Model FX330 (c 1993)

I was really excited to receive this product. I have countless VHS tapes that need converting. At first glance, the product seems easy to use. The truth is, its very easy to use! I popped in the software, did a quick installation and I was ready to go. It immediately read my VCR with no problems. If you love watching tv, you can even hook the cable up to your VCR and watch TV on your mac. This is excellent, since you can record your show (manually of course) and port them to your iphone or ipod touch. I strongly recommend this product. It has done exactly as advertised.

The Elgato Video Capture Device is simple to install and use. I installed the software. I connected the Elgato to my DVR and plugged its USB into my MacBook. Ran the software. The first screen asks for the name of the movie. There is also an option for selecting a time for automatically stopping the recording. The next two screens provide super-simple, one or two click setups for video and audio. The final screen has the Record button. It takes ten seconds to set up for recording a movie.

The software provides a video/audio monitor of what is being recorded. In the 1st screen, you select how long the movie will be. The final Record screen has the actual option for automatically stopping the recording, so, for example, if you find the time limit you set is too short, you can unselect the automatic option during the recording session and manually stop the recording.

Once the recording is stopped, they give you a simple utility for trimming the video using slider bars. When you slide the bars at either end of the movie, you see the video play - like in iMovie. This lets you trim the video to exactly the frame you desire. After positioning the bars for trimming, hit Finish button and it begins to compile the video. On my 2.0 MacBook, this takes maybe fifteen to thirty minutes depending on the length of the movie.

So far, I have recorded about ten movies from my DVR. The resolution is good enough playing full-screen on my 13" MacBook. I do not have HD video on my DVR, so I cannot speak to how well that works.

I like having the active audio/video monitor before I start the recording. This lets me mess around in my DVR to select which movie to record and to delete a recorded video from the DVR after I record it onto my laptop.

I have two complaints. Instead of allowing me to type in the number of minutes for automatically stopping the recording, I have to select between 30 min, 60 min, 120 min, or 180 min. Well, guess what - most of the movies on my DVR are 125 minutes! So I have to set it for 180 and then trim the video. I also have been recording the Olympics on my DVR, and some of those are 4 hrs long. The automatic shut-off is useless for these shows.

My other complaint is that there is no Pause button while recording. Sometimes it would be a great advantage to pause the recording. But you only have the Stop Recording button, and once you push that, the recording session is done.

After the video is compiled and saved to your hard drive, there are options for sending the video to iTunes, YouTube, and a few others.

I am very pleased with this product and highly recommend it. I am looking forward to a software update that will address my complaints, and then it will be perfect.

NOTE: This product does NOT have a TV tuner. This is strictly for recording off a DVR or VCR.

Elgato markets this as a H.264 capture device, but they only mention in the fine print (and nowhere on the Amazon page) that it does NOT include a hardware H.264 encoder. Instead, it uses your Mac's CPU to encode the video. This leads to two problems: first, your computer is basically useless for anything else while you're capturing video; and second, if your Mac isn't fast enough, it has to fall back to the lower quality (and less CPU-intensive) MPEG-4 codec. When I purchased this, Elgato's web site stated that H.264 was supported on machines with a 2.0 GHz Core2 Duo or better. In the latest 1.0.1 software update, they have revised this to a 2.33 GHz Core2 Duo, which puts my 2.2 GHz Core2 Duo MacBook Pro on the wrong side of the line. In addition, this device is very pricey for a software-only encoder -- there are other products available (albeit without Mac support) for a quarter of the price of this product that do video capture with software encoding.

The final nail in the coffin is that even encoding in MPEG-4, the video captured with this device has frequent frame drops and glitches, which makes the recordings unusable. I've wasted over an hour recording video that I had to throw away because of frame drops. For those that say it's "okay" because the frame drops are infrequent, I disagree -- I'm not willing to audit hours of captured video to find the places where it dropped frames and re-record those segments.

I'm going to be sending this back and trying either the Blackmagic Design H.264 Format Video Recorder (which does encode in hardware) or the Hauppauge 1212 HD-PVR High Definition Personal Video Recorder. Both of these are more expensive than the Elgato, but I'd rather pay more for something that works.

This product was able to perfectly capture all of our old Hi-8 videos off our old camcorder and put them onto our new Mac. Not a single frame was lost during this time and the videos look better than ever. Product installs quickly and is very intuitive in terms of use. A little pricey for what its worth, but it does its job perfectly.