Back to School Now with Video

As you may have known, school has started for both Jacob and I recently.  For me the first week has just passed and going forward from here, our schedules will be packed pretty tight.

So some things I have been planning to do are videos and LOTS of them.  To accomplish this, I have purchased a Hauppauge HD PVR.  This baby is an external capture card that does all the encoding in the device itself.  This means absolutely no overhead for your CPU as you’re busy playing the game.  Previously, I would use FRAPS to record game footage, while this worked for older titles such as Half-Life, Starcraft, and Quake, new titles won’t cut it.  Fraps would virtually make the game unplayable frame rate wise.  This of course can be avoided with a quad core processor but I don’t have the money for that.

I purchased the HD PVR for 200 dollars (some places have deals for $150) and I can say it was a great purchase.  Not only can it record your game console, it can also record your PC.

Here is a basic overview of the device:

• Built-in hardware H.264 high definition encoder, for high performance, high quality TV recordings
• Component video input from most high definition cable TV and satellite TV receivers. Optical or stereo audio inputs.
• Record high definition video at up to 1080i resolution, 720p or VGA/D1
• Record at datarates from 1Mbs to 13.5Mbs, constant and Variable Bit Rate
• Make Blu-ray format AVCHD recordings, so you can burn your TV recordings onto a standard DVD disk (up to 2 hours of video at 5MBits/sec) and playback on Blu-ray DVD players
• Includes HD software video player, so you can playback recordings to your PC screen
• Audio / Video component video loop through to allow HD recording and viewing at the same time
• High Performance Noise Reduction Function
• NTSC,PAL and SECAM Support
• IR receiver for remote control
• IR Blaster to change the TV channels in your set top box

It fits all my needs of a recording device, recording at 1080i up to 13.5Mbs, is very good in my book.  My Geforce GTX 260 has a HDTV out and with that I have a HDTV to component cable adapter so it is compatible with the HD PVR.

My setup is like this, I have the video card route to the HD PVR, then I have a audio splitter that splits audio from my sound card two ways, in one port I have a stereo to RCA splitter that then routes to the HD PVR audio in. Finally, the USB connection from my HD PVR connects to my MacBook where it stores the video information.

So with this, I am currently recording every game I play, making tutorials on PCSX2 and Dolphin and other things I have not though of yet, the possibilities are endless!

Stay tuned for forthcoming videos and another post about the Sanyo Xacti CG10 I bought as well.

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