HauppaugeUSB-Live2 Model 610 Analog Video digiizer and Video Capture Device Black

I recently purchased the Hauppauge 610 USB-Live2 converter in order to capture video from a VCR so that I could save VCR tapes in digital format and transfer some to DVD. I was somewhat hesitant as anytime you are working with video conversions and using multiple devices and formats you are usually going to have a frustrating experience. My experience did have some `learning' associated with it, however, overall this device exceeded my expectations in ease of use and quality of results. You have to keep in mind that at best you are going to end up with a good representation of the original VCR tape, which will not be nearly as good as a commercial DVD. However, if you have home movies or videos that you've taped that are not available commercially, this device will allow you to preserve them in digital formats.I read the instructions and installed the Win TV software for capturing the video from a VCR. This went fairly well although at first I thought the process was hanging up as a Windows warning box popped up behind the Win TV box on the screen and it took me awhile before I saw it in the task bar and clicked on it to allow the software to go ahead and load. I first tried this device on a Windows 7 desktop machine with a Quad Core 2.8 GHZ processor. Capture worked very good even at the highest capture rates. Since this was my main system and I didn't want to tie it up, I next tried the device on a laptop running Vista. It had a Dual Core processor running at 1.66 GHZ (slightly below the recommended specs). The results with the Vista machine were not good; jerky video, drop out, hangup, etc. Next I tried this with a similarly configured laptop running XP. This arrangement produced good results even at the fastest capture rates and so this is the configuration that I used for most of my conversions.I will mention also that I took the digitized files and then used Windows Live Movie Maker to convert the .ts files to .wmv format. I did try using the Arcsoft software that comes with the device and it seemed to work OK, I just didn't want to take the time to go through the learning curve to be able to do with it the things that I already knew how to do with Movie Maker. I will mention one issue that has been mentioned by others and that is if I tried to capture in MPEG format and convert with Movie Make I sometimes experienced the audio and video out of sync issue. However, using the .ts files didn't seem to result in this issue and I don't know whether or not using Arcsoft would have given the better results. Once I hit upon a satisfactory process, I didn't experiment with alternatives. One other issue that I observed and never did eliminate was that at the bottom of the screen the first few lines seem to have a video foldover effect which is worse with some tapes than others. In researching this on the web, I found that this is probably an artifact of the tape and there isn't much that can be done about it unless you want to do some fancy post processing of the video.Bottom line is that I am very satisfied with this device. If you want something to preserve you VCR tapes and don't mind spending some time experimenting to get the best results using your particular equipment this device should be very satisfactory.

I had fairly low expectations for this product, given how inexpensive it was. However I was willing to try it because the source material I was capturing (old VHS home movies) wasn't of the best quality. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by how well it functioned (I never had any throuble getting it to do what I want) and the quality of the output.I used this device to capture VHS from a run-of-the-mill VCR (some sort of JVC) that I've been holding onto for awhile. I captured using the "Best" setting in the included software. My process was to record a while tape at a time, basically pressing "Record" and coming back in six hours to stop it. Other comments suggested that I might want to set the Process Affinity for both WinTV and the USBDecoder process to "Realtime", which I did out of an abundance of caution. The resulting files were MPEG2 encoded at a rate of around 3GB/hr-4GB/hr. The quality of this video was as good as I'd expect given the poor quality of the originals, however I did an additional step because A) I felt the need to de-interlace the video; B) I wanted to split the hours-long recordings up into shorter segments; and C) I had 100+ hours to convert and wanted to save space...I used Handbrake (free software, available separately) to convert the captures .ts files to H.264 (to save space), at the same time sitting the files into the desired segments, and de-interlacing the files. This is moderately complicated software, so I wouldn't recommend it for a novice doing a few hours of capturing. But for me it was just what I needed. I used the slowest encoding and de-interlacing settings, and a CQ=19 to retain as much quality as possible and I noticed almost no loss.The software worked as advertised although it wasn't purpose-made (it was designed for watching TV, rather than video capture). Still I was expecting it to be very buggy and instead there were just couple of odd design decisions to work around. Once I learned how to use it, it behaved predictably and reliably.Overall I had low expectations and this product far surpassed them. For my own home movies I feel this device was more than adequate. However if someone was paying me to convert their VHS, I would want to explore more professionally-oriented products.