Elgato 10020840 Video Capture Device
- Transfer video from a VCR, DVR, camcorder or any other analog video source to your Mac
- One-click export to iTunes, QuickTime and iMovie
- Direct upload to YouTube
- Captures NTSC, PAL and SECAM. Features Composite and S-Video inputs
- Records in iTunes-ready high quality H.264 or MPEG-4 files
Product Description
Transfer video from a VCR, DVR, set-top box, camcorder or any other analog video source to your Mac as an iTunes-ready file. The easy-to-use software guides you through each step, from connecting an analog video source, to capturing video, to choosing how you will watch and share it. One simple click adds your captured video to iTunes to sync with an iPod, iPhone and Apple TV, plays it in QuickTime, or uploads it directly to YouTube. You can also edit your video right away in iMovie. Elgato Video Capture features composite and S-Video inputs which enables you to connect any analog video device to your Mac, and comes with a SCART adapter. Elgato Video Capture handles NTSC, SECAM, PAL, and PAL/60 video and records in iTunes-ready, high quality H.264 or MPEG-4 files. Select between 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios to match the source video for optimal playback quality. After capturing you can edit your video right away in iMovie… More >>
Elgato 10020840 Video Capture Device
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5 comments
Ruben Mera on December 18, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Pros:
- Video/Audio recording quality is good.
Cons:
- You wont be able to preview the video source in fullscreen, this software was made for recording only.
- You wont be able to use this hardware as a video input for other software on your mac!
I would be happy with this product if they fixed this software, and I say “fix” because I feel that not having a way to preview the input video/audio in fullscreen with an OPTION to record is a major BUG!
John Hillestad on December 18, 2009 at 8:55 pm
I want to convert some long six hour VHS tapes BUT the software timer wont allow me to set a custom or 6 hour timer so I have to monitor the recording also and a big problem for me is the output MP4 does NOT play back on a PS3 ! the sound works but the picture is black….. imagine dubbing a bunch of six hour tapes just to discover your media server (ps3) will not play back the file…. IF they ever fix the problem you will need to reconvert the tape again! I posted the problem on their support forum and still no response about it… you would think with a new product they would want user feedback and acknowledge a fix to the problem. The product itself is clean and very simple to use , the software for it needs work… I will update this review if things are fixed.
UPDATE(7/31/09): Still does not work with the PS3 and elgato may never make it work because that would be a ” feature ” . Timer functions have not been addressed either. Basically this product gets very little software support or attention from elgato…. with MILLIONS of PS3’s hooked to HD tv’s you would think you would want your MP4’s to play on them.
zero stars until this is fixed.
UPDATE(9/20/09): Still does NOT work with the PS3 ! un frickin real.
UPDATE(11/29/09): Still NO PS3 support! – and ElGato removed me from their forums because of this review. Instead of fixing the product they delete the poster who brought it to light — very laughable….. ZERO STARS for this LEMON of a product and I no longer trust ElGato as a vendor.
Marc Unangst on December 18, 2009 at 9:19 pm
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.
Salim Haro on December 19, 2009 at 12:02 am
this is s very good product for the price and very easy for use, so I recomend it.
Luca Marmorini on December 19, 2009 at 12:53 am
Elgato video capture is a simple device to use. The software is easy and immediate to understand.
Unfortunately after long discussions with Elgato Technical support I have concluded that the sotware/hardware has still some basic problems that can’t be solved without a major modification of the software/hardware.
For low quality video the quality of results is not acceptable. The decoded video shows continuous changes in luminosity that are purely linked to the Elgato system. Connecting the exit of the video camera to a monitor no problem can be seen.
The same problems occur using the Elgato system in different computers (so it is not linked to the perfomance of the computer).
No solution has been given by Elgato Technical Support after several movie examples have been shipped to them. The only suggestion is to return the device. Unfortunately the device in more than one month old so no way to get it back. And local dealers (Germany) do not see big problems as in some tapes the system works!
I think that it is mostly a software problem that does not occur if you use high quality s-Video input. Unfortunately this device has been thought to import old tapes and videos so I would say that unless some improvements are introduced by Elgato this makes this device useless for importing old movies.