Opinions and experience with the Elgato video capture adapter for VHS

[alastair]

I was looking at the site's list of video equipment summaries, but I didn't see anywhere where windows 7 compatibility was listed. The closest I saw was Windows Vista, and it and Windows 7 are not fully compatible.

So I wanted to ask for experiences, recommendations, warnings about the Elgato Video capture, specifically with Windows 7, given the hardware and software environment whose description hopefully is connected with my messages.

The same with Ubuntu would also be appreciated.

I've been using (or trying to) a Diamond VC500cxt, with extreme frustration and lack of reliability. For instance, I'd just been given some good advice on trying to eliminate horizontal jitter, and was going to try it, when the VC500 started fighting all video capture attempts. At its most cooperative it ran a few moments of video, then froze on a single frame. Attempts to re-install, re-initialise, even find whether it needed a firmware upgrade, didn't change anything. Often it seems now that even DirectVideo can't see it. When I try it with VLC, with all the parameters I can identify looking correct (they worked in the past) the playlist just sits there with no video showing, and a check of the codec info shows that while it's playing 2 tracks, they're both audio. Utterly weird.

So having attempted to be economical about this conversion project, I'm now gritting my teeth and facing something more expensive.

Thanks for all help,

Alastair

[usually_quiet]

I don't have the elgato Video Capture product, so I can't tell you about my personal experiences with the device.

The manufacturer's product page says the elgato Video Capture is Windows 7 compatible.

elgato doesn't supply Linux drivers for this device, but it might work anyway: http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Conexant_CX2310x Also: http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Hauppauge_USB-Live-2

That being said, the cost of this capture product may reflect the cost of the bundled software or a smaller user base (OSX has fewer users than Windows) rather than the quality of the hardware itself. For example, according to the Linux resource I linked to, the Hauppauge USB-Live-2 has similar hardware, but it costs less.