So I have been using this capture card since June of 2014 (eventually replacing it with an Elgato HD60 when 1080p 60FPS finally hit YouTube), and if you want a capture card that can stream/preview with no delay, record at a pretty great quality, and has a big red button...this card is almost perfect. Unfortunately, the Live Gamer HD hits a lot of areas almost perfectly...then it feels like a train wreck almost everywhere else.
Pros:
- No delay during streams or on the preview window is great. You could almost play games straight off of the preview window if you're not all that sensitive to an absolutely miniscule button delay.
- It has almost no presence CPU wise, at max taking up 2%-3% cpu process (with an i7 2600k) even with a maxed out preview window. Compared to the now 20-30% CPU hit I take with the Elgato HD60 if the preview is up...and yeah it was good.
- After upgrading from the 14Mbps Hauppauge HDPVR 2, the visual quality of the 60Mbps recordings is wonderful. Watching back videos at maxed out quality was almost visually on par as playing the game directly.
- The big red button is absolutely useful, especially if you record PC games that lack a good Fullscreen Windowed mode since you won't have to alt-tab out and risk a crash/messed up recording.
- The software is cheesy, with spinning logos and bright blue buttons, but its thoughtful about options. You can go between 3 different modes (Newbie, Amateur, and Pro) that unlock more customizable options, plus you can set up different saved profiles
- File sizes aren't nearly as large as Fraps files, which is a massive plus going from hundreds of GB being used on a single short recording...to maybe 20-50GB for hours of footage.
Cons:
- Its an internal capture card, so you do have to unplug everything and fit it into a PCI slot. Minor inconvenience for outright performance, but it does mean that its not all too portable.
- Software installation was almost a nightmare. If you read the reviews and watch videos like I did, you would know that a lot of people outright bricked their capture card after installing the firmware. I avoided that by...using outdated drivers and never updating to the v22 firmware.
- Trying to record with the MP4 option created problems with game sound sometimes gradually desyncing and the .ts files put into Sony Vegas would not have an audio track. So in order to use the recordings in Sony Vegas, I had to use a third party demuxer (the one I eventually found that worked was simply named tsMuxer) split the audio from the video so I could use both. This took me a month of troubleshooting to figure out.
- The default way to be able to record PC audio is DREADFUL in comparison to HDMI/console audio. What you're suppose to do is get an audio aux cable, run it from speaker out on your PC to the audio in on the capture card. While that's not complex, the resulting audio in both the recording and to your headset/headphones will be AWFUL in quality. Its low volume, lots of static, incredibly tinny, and unbelievable that it was even approved. The quick solution to the PC audio problem was to seemingly simply use the HDMI as the sound input instead...but this came with its own set of problems. These problems took me 3 months to iron out.
(Note: The HDMI PC Audio issue is something that might/can affect any capture cards being used to record PC gameplay, since you are more than likely wanting sound with your videos (along with wanting to be able to hear the game), I'll put my whole situation and solution to this problem at the bottom of the review, in case it sparks any similarly convoluted solutions.)
- You can't stream and record at the same time unless you're recording through your stream software rather than RECentral. This is problematic since recording through stream software starts negating that lovely low CPU usage bonus if you're playing something on PC, so it can be both a quality and FPS hit.
- Driver and firmware support is poor. The exact same drivers and card-bricking firmware that were there when I bought the card in June of 2014, are still the latest options on their website now in April of 2015. You'd figure maybe they'd have updated them so that the drivers were kept up to date with the years, but so far no. (There is/ a beta update...but that was from November of 2014, and since I can't even trust their latest firmware update, I don't trust their beta updates)
- No 1080p 60FPS. This was the killer that made me stop using it as my main recording capture card, now that YouTube has 1080p 60FPS as an option for videos, not being able to go beyond 720p 60FPS/1080p 30FPS is a let down for those looking to keep up with quality (though this is more just a time problem since the card came out years ago and AverMedia has the ExtremeCap U3 which can record at 1080p60FPS)
- RECentral software sometimes has really odd errors. This could be attributed to me not using the exact latest version of drivers/firmware (though we know the reasons for that), but sometimes it wouldn't pick up the card or it would...freeze. Thankfully it didn't happen often, but once my card wasn't being picked up for like a week straight...which definitely helped me make the decision to change cards.
Overall, once I got past most of the problems (some requiring third party help along with some money spending) and found a rhythm with recording, the card works splendidly.
Honestly, I still use it whenever I stream since now I can record with my Elgato HD60 and have the no delay of the Live Gamer HD. If the Live Gamer HD could record 1080p 60FPS, I would definitely have kept using it over the Elgato...But at this point, unless you really need to have no delay in streams or it goes on sale for less than the $176 its currently at, you're better off buying one of the other 1080p 60FPS cards that are out on the market around the $180-$200.
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Okay, so this section is going to be talking about that HDMI PC audio issue I mentioned above. I'm going to go in a bit detail here, because solving this took me 2-3 months and maybe it'll be helpful to someone in the future. Note: I have a very specific set up and so most of this...probably won't apply to you. Almost at all. But hey! If you have a need to use a stereo headset, want to hear from both your consoles and your PC at the same time (so you can hear Skype while playing consoles), and for some reason have the same issues I have with other solutions...this might be for you!
Now, my core problem is that when I used HDMI as the sound input when using my capture cards for PC recording, I had to somehow get sound going through it rather than my speakers/headset port. This almost meant not being able to hear what was going on, since sound either had to go to HDMI or Speakers (where my headset would pick it up). At first this wasn't too big of a problem to solve, because you can either get a monitor/TV that you can hook your headset up to...or you can duplicate Stereo Mix recording to go to the HDMI playback. Now I couldn't do the monitor/TV thing, since the audio out on mine suck, and buying new monitors would've been really costly (plus I was already content with my triple monitor set up).
As such, I tried to go with the stereo mix solution. Unfortunately, while at first it seemed perfect, I had two sub problems:
1) I found that when using Stereo Mix, my voice would get faintly duplicated into the background. That might not seem bad, especially since when you're recording you won't hear it, but add that to the audio desync the MP4 recordings had, and for like a month my videos had a ghost me who would either speak before or after me in recordings, causing a sometimes noticeable echo (especially when yelling).
2) Stereo Mix would sometimes...just not work. I don't know why this happened, but sometimes Stereo Mix would randomly stop copying sound to the HDMI playback. This meant that some of my recordings would not have sound, since its completely dependent on Stereo Mix working. Its not very pleasing to record 2-3 hours and find out there's no sound at all.
I eventually found out that sound was somehow transmitting through my headset despite it only being hooked to speaker out, and that lead me to thinking about the convoluted set up I have now. I figured, if I couldn't have my headset hooked up to my computer because of the sound leaking and stereo mix would sometimes break (for which I still don't know why)...I would have to eliminate the chances of either of those completely by both separating my headset AND setting HDMI playback as default.
Then, in order to get around my issue of not being able to hear through my computer itself, I began using the 4x2 HDMI switcher I originally bought just because I have a bunch of consoles to get sound to my headset since it had an RCA out (which I used RCA to Stereo cables to convert). Then I bought another 4x2 HDMI switcher to split up the console audio from the PC audio, then I bought 2x1 HDMI splitter to split up the video feed to both of my capture cards...then I bought a 4-channel audio mixer to be able to hear Skype when I'm recording console...yep.
So, now I have a $300-$500 set up that allows me to hear 3-4 different sources of audio through one headset, and multiple HDMI splitters eventually that go to both my AverMedia Live Gamer HD and Elgato HD60. By doing this, my headset isn't plugged up to my computer so my voice won't get leaked through a different source than my actual mic (which is separate from the headset), and since the sound is going to HDMI by default on the PC rather than through Speaker -> Stereo Mix -> HDMI, I cut out the middle man that would sometimes not deliver when needed and always have audio going through when I record PC stuff, as well as console stuff.
| Brand | AVerMedia |
|---|---|
| Series | MTVLIVGHD(C985) |
| Item model number | C985 |
| Hardware Platform | PC |
| Item Weight | 1.81 pounds |
| Product Dimensions | 12.91 x 8.58 x 2.68 inches |
| Item Dimensions LxWxH | 12.91 x 8.58 x 2.68 inches |
| Color | Black |
| Processor Count | 1 |
| Computer Memory Type | DDR3 SDRAM |
| Department | Tv tuner |
| Manufacturer | AVer Information Inc. |
| ASIN | B007UXJ6LE |
| Is Discontinued By Manufacturer | No |
| Date First Available | April 27, 2012 |
