For beginners..

Doctor DooM

I was in power city today and they're selling easycap/ dazzle style devices called video grabbers for 16 euro.

If you need a quick, easy and local device I would guess they're fine to start with.


I got one myself to mess around with, if anyone's used one let us know.

James Howlett

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I was in power city today and they're selling easycap/ dazzle style devices called video grabbers for 16 euro.

If you need a quick, easy and local device I would guess they're fine to start with.

I got one myself to mess around with, if anyone's used one let us know.

Hey man, just saw your post about this.
How has it been for you so far?
Am I right in thinking the set-up is that you hook-up your console to the device, a screen opens up on the pc/ laptop and you can record from there?

thanks,

(only saw this now and Powercity closed 20 minutes ago )

Doctor DooM

Yup you are correct. I got one to mess around with but I haven't used it yet- I have a hauppage hd pvr capture device so I don't really "need" it.

I am unsure how much lag you would see with it, you may need a splitter if you want to record live play with it.

James Howlett

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Yup you are correct. I got one to mess around with but I haven't used it yet- I have a hauppage hd pvr capture device so I don't really "need" it.

I am unsure how much lag you would see with it, you may need a splitter if you want to record live play with it.

Thanks for the reply. That's a good point about getting a splitter.
I'll pop up to powercity later and have see if they have any left.

James Howlett

another question for you if you don't mind:

I saw that you mentioned dads.ie on another thread and I came across these two below while doing a search.
Are these products any use do you know?

http://www.dabs.ie/products/pinnacle-systems-dazzle-video-creator-5D52.html?q=dazzle

http://www.dabs.ie/products/pinnacle-systems-dazzle-dvd-recorder-5D51.html?q=dazzle

It wouldn't be essential for me to be able to record live. If I could play a game normally and know that the footage was going onto a disc with no recorded lag I'd be happy with that as I could capture the required parts in premiere pro afterwards.

OR is Hauppauge HD-PVR really the only way to go?

I have a MAC but do have access to a pretty decent Windows 7 laptop. I'd spent the €25 - €50 on the above dazzle product and just record onto black discs for later import onto my mac however looking at the price of Hauppauge HD-PVR I'd really want to be able to use it on my mac, which if I'm right is not compatible?

thanks,

Doctor DooM

It depends, in essence, what you want.


I hear from most people a Dazzle doesn't actually do anything a easycap can't it's just sturdier. The three differences between an easycap/ dazzle and a hauppage are a) the hauppage will allow you to play laglessly as you record b) the hauppage will handle the brunt of the processing and c) the hauppage is HD. However a Hauppage is a couple of hundred quid

That's why I said for beginners- if you just want to find your way in recording, this'd be a great little device to start with.

James Howlett

I picked one up from powercity last night.

When I got home I thought I could just use the driver on my MAC and capture footage through Premiere Pro however the MAC wouldn't recognise the usb driver. I tried to find an app on apple.com that would do the job but was unsuccessful.

However this morning I installed the software on a laptop (running windows 7),the installation went well and the program runs fine. However the laptop in question won't recognise the driver! I'm using the software that came with the driver but the only source I can capture from is the built-in web-cam. It looks light there should be a light that comes on in the driver but nothing is coming up... did I get a fawlty one do you reckon?

Doctor DooM

James Howlett wrote: »

I picked one up from powercity last night.

When I got home I thought I could just use the driver on my MAC and capture footage through Premiere Pro however the MAC wouldn't recognise the usb driver. I tried to find an app on apple.com that would do the job but was unsuccessful.

However this morning I installed the software on a laptop (running windows 7),the installation went well and the program runs fine. However the laptop in question won't recognise the driver! I'm using the software that came with the driver but the only source I can capture from is the built-in web-cam. It looks light there should be a light that comes on in the driver but nothing is coming up... did I get a fawlty one do you reckon?

I was just looking at the box there and it doesn't say anything about working with Windows 7

That's a bit of a pain in the arse. There's got to be drivers out there somewhere.

James Howlett

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I was just looking at the box there and it doesn't say anything about working with Windows 7

That's a bit of a pain in the arse. There's got to be drivers out there somewhere.

Yeah I noticed that too but I was hoping that it would just work as a piece of hardware. I'll have to have a look and see if there is any windows 7 software available online.

That said, should the laptop not recognise the hardware in some way?

Doctor DooM

James Howlett wrote: »

Yeah I noticed that too but I was hoping that it would just work as a piece of hardware. I'll have to have a look and see if there is any windows 7 software available online.

That said, should the laptop not recognise the hardware in some way?

I'm not sure man, my last windows machine was XP (which I still run emulated on my Mac, actually).

You're not even getting the little "USB device detected" popup?

James Howlett

Okay bit of progress there;

Plugged it into an XP machine and it was recognised so it's not fawlty. I plugged it back into the Windows 7 laptop and ran a microsoft "Fix It" scan which is supposed to self-diagnose problems. Resulting from this the software now recognises the usb driver!
However no picture is coming through

I'll give it a bash again later on tonight on different consoles and see if I get anywhere.

Thanks for help Doom.

Mayo_Boy

Did it work for you in the end? Would be interested in getting one

James Howlett

No unfortunately it did not.

Problem could be that the laptop I'm working from doesn't have a video card but I don't have the money to experiment any further.

That said it could be that the hardware won't work on windows 7 but I can't imagine that's the case.

Sorry I can't help you any further pal, I know a thing or two about computers but obviously not enough

Bonesy.

do you know if this would run on xp or vista?