My apologies for this long review. Hopefully, though, it will be useful to someone.I'm writing this review from the standpoint of someone looking for a video transfer product to convert camcorder and VHS tapes into digital files for preservation and editing. If you going to use this product to record a gaming session, or to convert high-def video, please see the many other reviews here.
I've spent some time the past 2 weeks comparing competing products for transferring home videos into digital format on my Windows 7 PC for long-term preservation and so that I can edit the videos on my PC. I tried or considered three different products including this Hauppauge HD PVR, and one high-end video transfer company, all on the same Hi8 analog video cassette with a family video that is 15 years old. Along the way, I have gotten some familiarity with the various technologies available today for transferring magnetic tapes into digital form. I found out some interesting things, and thought I would share them, in the hope that it might help others.
First, and you probably already know this, if you have any video memories on magnetic video tape, you want to get them transferred into digital form onto your PC or DVD or Blu-ray as soon as possible, before the video badly deteriorates. This especially includes regular VHS tapes, Video8 tapes, and normal Hi8 tapes, all of which are analog formats and are particularly susceptible to deterioration starting after about 10 years. Somewhat less susceptible to deterioration are Digital8 (which is also recorded on Hi8 tapes) and MiniDV tapes, because those are digital formats. But even for digital tapes, it is still magnetic tape which deteriorates over time, and you need to get those videos off of there. Seriously, at the risk of sounding like a doomsayer, if you have precious memories on magnetic video tape, you need to transfer that video off of those tapes and into digital form as soon as possible, or risk losing them forever. It's not hard to do, and you'll sleep better at night when you get it done!
In my case, I have a bunch of precious Hi8 family video tapes recorded on a high-end Sony consumer camcorder between 10 and 19 years ago, and I am rescuing these Hi8 videos a little on the late side. I wish I had started this project 5 years ago instead. These tapes are still watchable, but they have developed some lines and drop-outs and "hiccups" and digital artifacts. With multiple playback retries, I can fortunately still coax out fairly high quality from these tapes.
A quick note: Digital8 and MiniDV video tape camcorders have USB ports on them for digitally transferring your videos to your PC or Mac. If this is your situation, there is NO need to purchase one of these video transfer products (like Hauppauge HD PVR). You will get the best quality, by far, by using a USB cable to connect your camcorder to your PC or Mac, playing back your video in the camcorder, and using any of a whole bunch of different inexpensive software products on the market that will allow you to capture video from the USB port on your computer. This way, you are getting the digital video in its original form, which is great. You will get worse quality if you use a video transfer product that captures the video off of the video ports on the camcorder, because the camcorder is converting the digital video into analog, then the video transfer product converts the analog back to digital (not ideal, for sure).
So, for the rest of this review, I will assume you have analog magnetic video tape (like VHS, Video8, or normal Hi8), in which case you need a video transfer product like this Elgato Video Capture or something similar.
A note about video resolution: The analog video tape formats (VHS, Video8, and normal Hi8) all have native video resolutions less than 640x480. All of the video transfer products on the market record the video from these formats at either 640x480 or 720x480. It doesn't really matter which of these two resolutions the product records at. The point is, all of the video transfer products record at higher resolution than the original video, so you are capturing all of the resolution of the original video when you do the video transfer, which is good.
A note about overscan lines at the bottom of captured video: As documented all over the Internet, when capturing digital video from an analog video source like an analog magnetic video tape, you will end up with some additional fuzzy lines at the bottom of the captured video. This is totally normal. When played back on a regular TV, these overscan lines are usually chopped off because they appear "below the bottom of the screen," but the digital capture grabs them (including with the Hauppauge HD PVR). To get rid of those lines, you can crop or zoom in slightly when you do your video editing. Interestingly, the Elgato Video Capture device (see below) automatically does a minor zoom on all captured video to remove those fuzzy lines.
A remark about video editing: Two of the products below (Elgato and Hauppauge) produce video files that use H.264 compression. This is an excellent video compression standard for viewing, and is supported by just about all video editing software. However, if you are going to do significant video editing, you may want to use some video conversion software to convert these video files to uncompressed or MJPEG-compressed AVI or MOV files for editing. (There are many inexpensive or perhaps even free software packages that will do this conversion.) The problem with editing H.264 compressed video files directly is that the extreme compression, which crosses video frame boundaries, can cause problems for video editing software, resulting sometimes in digital artifacts or out-of-sync audio in the final edited video output. An uncompressed or MJPEG-compressed AVI or MOV video source file avoids these problems.
A word about using an outside company to make a high-quality transfer of your analog video tape: A search of the Internet reveals many companies that will transfer your video tape into digital form, and send the digital files back to you on a fairly inexpensive USB hard drive that you can supply yourself or that they will sell you. Some of these companies are better than others. A few of these companies are very high-end, using expensive video transfer equipment. I used one of these very high-end video transfer companies, using their most expensive Premium service, to transfer the very same 15-year-old Hi8 tape that I also tried at home with the video transfer products below. I discovered that the transfer done by the outside company was significantly WORSE (lots of lines through the video and tracking problems) than what I was able to do at home with the products below. I don't necessarily think this is the fault of the video transfer company. At home, I was able to use the very same Sony Hi8 camcorder to do the transfer that I originally used to shoot the original video tape. My suspicion is that, especially for older analog video tapes, it helps to use the same camcorder for transfer as you used to shoot the video originally, so that any idiosyncracies in tracking or video head alignment won't be as much of an issue. Just food for thought.
Anyway, as noted above, I have done an experiment over the past 2 weeks, transferring the exact same 15-year-old Hi8 tape to my PC using the high-end video transfer company (above), plus two different video transfer products at home (Elgato and Hauppauge, below), and I also considered a third video transfer product (Blackmagic, below), to compare the pros and cons of each of each approach. Here's what I found out:
Elgato Video Capture: Gets the best reviews on Amazon for a relatively inexpensive product for video transfer on both Windows and Mac. It captures video at 640x480 resolution, which means it grabs the full resolution and more of VHS, Video8, and normal Hi8 tapes. This worked great on my 64-bit Windows 7 computer. I just downloaded the latest driver and software from the Elgato web site, installed them both, and I was ready to go. It's incredibly easy to use. It connects to any USB 2.0 port on your computer. There are really no settings; the software guides you through the very simple process, and it transfers your video to your computer as an MP4 file. In case you are curious, the MP4 file it writes uses H.264 compression at 640x480 resolution and (basically) 29.97 frames/sec (standard NTSC) and a video data rate of between about 1100 kbps and 1500 kbps, depending on the complexity of the particular video you transferred. The audio in the MP4 file is AAC format at 48 kHz 16-bit stereo with an audio data rate of 128 kbps. When capturing a 2-hour video, I ended up with an MP4 file that was 1.5 GB in size. This Elgato product scores big points for ease-of-use. However, the video quality, while quite good, is not as high as the Hauppauge HD PVR (see below), because of the heavy video compression the Elgato uses to make a relatively small MP4 file with fairly low data rates. If you look closely at the captured video from the Elgato product, you will notice some minor squares of slightly distorted color at times, where the video has been over-compressed. Also, as noted above, the Elgato Video Capture automatically does a minor zoom on all captured video to avoid the fuzzy lines at the bottom of the captured video. On the plus side, this saves you the step of doing that zoom yourself in video editing. On the minus side, it is cropping all 4 sides of the video slightly, which might not be what you want.
Hauppauge HD PVR (this product): The Hauppauge HD PVR exists in two very similar versions, the Model 1212 and the Model 1445 Gaming Edition, but the functionality of the two models is identical when capturing video from analog video magnetic tape. (I used the Gaming Edition.) Although designed for high-def video capture, it's by far the best product I tried for standard-def video capture as well. This product gets excellent reviews on Amazon, and rightfully so. It works out of the box on Windows (including 64-bit Windows 7, which I use), and also supports the Mac with separately downloadable software. When transferring standard definition video, the Hauppauge product captures video at 720x480 resolution, which means it grabs the full resolution and more of VHS, Video8, and normal Hi8 tapes. Like the Elgato product, the Hauppague is very easy to use, though the software give you a few recording options, unlike the Elgato. The Hauppauge connects to any USB 2.0 port on your computer. It gives you a choice of recording video in three different formats: .TS, .M2TS, or .MP4. It doesn't matter much, choose whatever format is most convenient for you; most digital video editing applications can handle any of these formats with no problem. In all three cases, the output file uses H.264 compression, is 720x480 resolution, 29.97 frames/sec (standard NTSC) and a user-selectable video rate between 1 Mbit/sec and 13.5 Mbit/sec. I chose 5 Mbit/sec, and ended up with a crystal-clear video capture with a variable video data rate of 20 kbps (MUCH higher data rate and much lower compression than the Elgato, which means a clearer picture). The audio is AC-3 format at 48 kHz and a data rate of 384 kbps (again, much less compression than the Elgato, which means the Hauppauge perhaps yields slightly higher audio quality). If these technical details sound confusing, it's not important. The point is, the video capture from the Hauppauge product is significantly higher quality than from the Elgato, at the expense of significantly larger output files, and like the Elgato, can be edited with most video editing software. (A 2-hour video capture on the Hauppauge gave me a 5 GB file, as opposed to the 1.5 GB file from the Elgato for the same video tape.) Note that, like most video capture devices, the Hauppauge gives you the full captured video frame, which means you end up with some fuzzy lines at the bottom, as explained above. You can eliminate those fuzzy lines during editing with a crop or minor zoom.
Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle: This is the cream-of-the-crop for video capture. It comes in either a USB 3.0 model for Windows or a Thunderbolt model for the Mac. It captures both high-def and standard-def video in full, uncompressed format, so there is no loss of video quality for compression. For true archival quality of your video memories, this is the Rolls Royce option. However, there are two trade-offs to obtain this quality. The first is that your uncompressed video takes a LOT of disk space. The second, and more important, consideration is that you need a computer that can handle the extremely high data rate coming from the Blackmagic device (since the video is uncompressed). If you run Windows, you need a high-speed computer using an Intel x58 based motherboard, a true USB 3.0 port, and the latest USB 3.0 drivers. Most computers don't meet this requirement, even when they have a USB 3.0 port. There is a list of officially tested motherboards on the Blackmagic web site. My 1st-generation Dell XPS 17 laptop (which has two USB 3.0 ports) does not meet this requirement, so I can't use the Intensity Shuttle, and thus I haven't tried it. Though not officially listed as a supported system, there is a YouTube video called "Intensity Shuttle and Dell XPS Laptop From Scratch Tutorial" that explains how use a SECOND-generation Dell XPS 17 laptop with the Intensity Shuttle if you re-install Windows 7 and strip down the software running in the background to the bare minimum. Many people who want to use the Intensity Shuttle will buy or build a computer specifically for this purpose. If you don't already have a computer that is compatible with the Blackmagic Intensity Shuttle, and you aren't willing to invest to purchase or build one, or you don't need the full uncompressed archival quality video that is captured by the Intensity Shuttle, go with the Hauppauge or Elgato products, above.
I hope this comparative review is helpful to someone. Good luck, and good for you for transferring your precious older analog video tapes!
This review will focus on the difference between the 2 HD PVR's available on Amazon but as an HD PVR that I constantly use for gameplay captures both of these will work aces if you're looking to capture 720p gameplay or video. And I exclusively use mine for console gameplay captures and have no experience using it to capture TV programs. I gave it 4 stars in this regard because I would like to recapture at 1080p but at the moment these devices only allowed 1080i as an option and the signal looks kind of week at 1080i but the 720p capture from these devices looks tiptop!
I wanted to quickly bump out this review to help you compare the 2 Hauppauge (what a horrible company name) HD PVR's that you see here on Amazon. One of them is " the gaming edition" while the other it would seem from their button above " is not compatible with console game systems". And this is simply untrue, now I'm not sure if it's an error on Amazon's part but it should be set straight. (and please note if the 1445 price falls below $200
and or has free shipping I might just be the better deal)
The Hauppauge 1445 & 1212 Are the exact same device hardware wise it seems from my initial look if this is untrue after further research I will let you know. Basically all the 1445 comes with that is different from the 1212 is a component cable that you run from your console/ game system to the HD PVR. Now this table can be bought on Amazon for less than $10 which makes the 1212 seem like a better purchase if you already have video editing software. When we explain that a little further.
The reason I want to put this review up was to explain that both are compatible with game systems many of the commentators on YouTube who do gameplay use the 1212 at the moment as the 1445 seems to be a relatively new device. But the Way, Amazon has a categorized you would think that the 1212 is not compatible with gaming systems which is untrue. The 1445 simply comes with the cable and some better editing software than the 1212. I have not done a lot of research on the arc soft editing software that comes with it though I do believe it retails for around $80 but I use premiere Pro from Adobe and many commentators use Sony Vegas which I believe are way more powerful than the arc soft editing program. But all in all if you don't have any editing software and one of simple one-stop shop package then the 1445 is an all-around good deal for a little bit more money.
But if you're wondering if the 1212 is compatible with gaming systems it certainly is and if you buy the triple head component cable available on Amazon for $10-$15 you will be able to record gameplay from your system of choice.
If later on I find out there is a hardware difference or something has changed (besides the color of the LED which is blue on the 1212 and seems to be green on the 1445) I will update this review if you know something I've missed feel free to leave it in the comments below. Thanks or taken the time to read this I hope that it is helped you understand the differences between these 2 very similar HD PVR's.
FOR MAC USERS:If you're a Mac user and want to get into gameplay commentary or recording go with the 1212 as you will need to buy Elgato's Eye-TV software which retails for about $80 to get your Hauppauge to run on the Mac. But one thing I'd like to say about Eye-TV as a software package said it is way more powerful than the standard software that comes with the 1212 for Windows. So many more export features and the ability to edit your video recordings and export them before ever touching video editing software. It is a great software package if you're on a Mac and want to get into recording gameplay.
Game on gamers!I will not be going into a lot of technical detail, because there are a many great reviews on here that have already accomplished that, but there are a few complaints that just seemed to have gone ignored.
The biggest one I have is that this system cannot record SNES or NES video. After trying unsuccessfully on many different systems, I thought that my system may have been broken so I got a replacement. The exact same problems occurred and I realized it was a design flaw. Here is the email that I got back from tech support:
___
It looks as though these devices are sending out a video signal that the HD
PVR doesn't understand. For analog video the HD PVR is expecting 30 frames
per sec consisting of 30 odd fields per second and 30 even fields per
second. One odd and one even field make up a frame. Your older gaming
systems are using only odd or only even fields. The advantage to this is
that the video displayed is a bit clearer with no interleaving (or
interlacing) effect but the HD PVR's video digitizer doesn't understand and
cannot display this type of video information.
___
Since this was the main reason why I wanted the system, it was hearbreaking for me. The other major flaw is the high requirements for 720p-1080i output. I have a dual core laptop that was not powerful enough to output the display to the TV, so while the system was able to record properly, I would not be able to play a game at the same time.
After I was able to get by these rather dramatic disappointments, I am still fairly happy with the system itself, and I will be keeping it to record PS3 gameplay in the future. The cables that came with this version are pretty amazing. I highly recommend this system if you have a powerful computer and you only plan on recording video footage from dreamcast to newer systems.
Here's a quick run-down of what I was talking about:
Does not work with an SNES or NES (I've tried 3 types of each)
Requires a pretty powerful computer to output at 720p-1080iThis says "gaming compatibility" for marketing reasons only, the only thing different between this model and the cheaper 1212 model are the cables provided, how it looks, and the software that's included. With this model, Hauppauge includes a 3-way component cable which can be used for xbox 360, ps3, and wii. The same cable cost me $10 at gamestop.
The software is a bit trickier, I use 3rd party software so I don't know how Acersoft (or whatever it's called) works, but this model gives you software that's supposed to work with gaming consoles. The thing is that you can download the new software off the Hauppauge Support page, so it really doesn't matter which model you get, they both will work for recording gameplay.
I use the 1212 model for recording ps3 and xbox 360 gameplay, it's easy to use and easy to set up but I won't go into detail as this section is for the 1445 model. Just remember that the only difference between this and the 1212 is that the 1445 model has a green light, includes a cable that you can get for $10 somewhere else, different software, and cost $40 more than the 1212 model. Gotta love marketing.I bought the Hauppauge 1445 HD-PVR Gaming Edition to record video from my XBox 360. It works great, but after a day of struggling with the device and being ready to rip my hair out, hopefully I can give you some details and save you from similar frustration.
The box comes with everything you need to get started: the Hauppauge itself, an AC adapter, a component cable capable of connecting any of the current-generation gaming systems (PS3/360/Wii), a male-to-male component cable for passthrough to your TV, a USB cable for connecting to your computer, and a software disc. Keep in mind that you'll be doing all the capture on a computer; this device does not have an integrated hard drive, or the ability to add one.
I specifically bought the gaming edition so I could get the included multi-device component cable, because aside from my Wii, I hook everything up via HDMI. If you're buying the gaming edition for the green light on the device... go ahead. If the color of the light doesn't matter to you, DON'T buy the gaming edition. I made the mistake of believing that for five extra dollars, I was going to get a high-quality cable, despite being an analog signal split between three possible input connections. After plugging the cables, I realized my mistake. There was ghosting, what some might call the "halo effect", around everything. It was most pronounced around text. This effect appeared at 720p and 1080i resolutions, and also appeared in recordings, proving that the problem was with the cable itself and not with my setup. 480i and 480p had no ghosting issue, so if you're planning on recording Wii only, you can make do with the included cable. I had to go out and buy a dedicated cable for my XBox 360. I'd recommend you do the same, and stick with the cheaper "blue" model.
After that frustration, the biggest problem was getting the damn thing to actually work. I connected all the cables and the USB cable as instructed, popped in the disc, and installed the device drivers and the ArcSoft ShowBiz software. I launched the ShowBiz capture module, and ... no video! I had all the correct inputs selected (Hauppauge device, component input, rear stereo audio), and the preview window showed nothing. Trying to capture video despite that yielded an error when stopping the capture. I must have changed literally every device and format setting, trying to find whatever quirk in my settings was causing the issue. I even installed the drivers and software on another computer to see if it was my laptop's fault. As a last resort, I visited the Hauppauge website and downloaded the drivers from the Support page. After updating my drivers... lo and behold, the preview video was there! Why the included drivers didn't work from the get-go, I have no idea. What's even more confusing is that it wasn't included as a suggestion in any of the troubleshooting documentation I could find, nor did the driver changelog suggest that it was solving any problem in my setup. So, I spent the better half of my day just getting the capture set up and getting quality video going.
I'm happy to say that following those issues, the device works flawlessly. Once you start capture up, the device lights up bright to let you know that it's busy at work, encoding the video and transferring it to your computer according to whatever settings you have set. There's no lag on the TV itself, despite the Hauppauge being in-between. The video as well as the audio will be played back on the computer with a bit of a delay though, but you can feel free to mute your system while recording happens to avoid the distracting audio. You don't really need a powerful system to capture video, because all the encoding is done on the Hauppauge itself (editing is a different story). You have a large range of mbps/sec qualities to choose from, whether you want to bitrate to be constant or variable, and whether you want stereo sound to be encoded as AAC or AC3. In addition, you have a range of output formats to choose from, including .TS, .M2TS, and .MP4. These are organized according to whichever device you plan to use to play the media back (AVCHD, PS3, and XBox 360, respectively). I recommend recording in .TS format, regardless of what device you'll use. .MP4 has audio sync issues, so avoid using that format.
I cranked mine up to the highest variable bitrate and AC3-encoded audio at 720p in .TS format, and it cost me about 1.6GB for a 20 minute video. Not too shabby! I haven't compared various bitrates and their effect on file size, but you can probably make your space go a lot farther with a bit of experimentation. The quality was great; what I saw on my TV was what recorded, with no audio hiccups or stuttering of any kind.
If you're planning on doing some trimming of your videos, and maybe adding some transitions, basic effects, or text, then ArcSoft ShowBiz will do the trick for you, complete with the ability to upload directly to YouTube. For me, I needed something with some more options (no fade through black, ArcSoft? Really?). I used AVS Video Editor, which has a much more robust set of options, and best of all, takes your .TS format video without a fuss. Be warned that it will include a watermark upon publishing if you don't buy the full version. Unfortunately, you likely won't be able to "cut out the middleman", so to speak, when capturing video. AVS couldn't capture video from the Hauppauge, so I'm stuck with capturing the video with ArcSoft ShowBiz and opening up the video in AVS. I can't say for sure if any other Windows-based video capture software will work, but I had no such luck. Those of you using a Mac or Linux, there are third-party solutions out there to get you rolling. I haven't tested them yet, so I can't tell you what type of experience you'll have.
Overall, the Hauppauge HD-PVR does a great job of what it's supposed to do: Capture high quality video from your game console or other component video device and provide an acceptable set of editing and uploading options. I took off one star for the initial frustration and the poor-quality gaming cable. Once it's working, it does a great job of what it promises to do.
Happy recording! If you have questions, feel free to leave a comment on the review.
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