EasyCap USB Review
Post by Charles
If you want to capture your favorite TV program right to your computer without any kind of fancy video card, usbfever has the answer. The EasyCap USB2.0 audio/video adapter captures high-quality video and audio directly through your USB port all while allowing you to record in your favorite DVD formats.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on one of these truly useful little gadgets and it did not disappoint. The EasyCap came with its own drivers and Ulead video capturing software that had me recording tonight’s Red Sox game in about 5 minutes. All I had to do was install the driver/software, plug in the EasyCap to my digital cable box, tweak a few recording options and to my delight I was recording in no time flat.
Nothing is better when something just works the way it is supposed to and the EasyCap is no exception. For those of you who don’t have a fancy video card with all kinds of inputs or like me have your computer in a place where you just can’t hook it up to your digital cable line the EasyCap, at only $39, is a great alternative to grabbing high quality audio and video for your desk or laptop.
36 Responses to “EasyCap USB Review”
I have ordered one of these for my wii and was wondering if there was any lag whist playing video games on it?
It was a choice between this and a gamebridge…?
please get back to me someone!
You are going to play on your Wii through your computer? I am not sure why but, to answer your question, if you have a high performance computer with decent specs you should be fine. I did not notice any lag while recording from my TV.
Has anyone tried this on a mac? Or does the software support Mac? Or any ideas for RCA to firewire or USB?
I’ve just bought this piece of hardware today and im very positive, works great on XP and VISTA, even can hook up my gaming hardware (PS3, Gamecube etc.etc.).
Very positive
I also bought EasyCap a week ago and having problems. Even a short clip (of couple of minutes) takes several GB of hard disc. At times the program does not find the capture driver. May be the problems are largely due to my ignorance, but I will appreciate if you could help me out and tell me how to use it and get things right. Thanks. — DRS
DRS,
I would try changing the recording settings. You should be able to specify the size of the video, encoding, and the compression all of which should allow you to reduce file size.
Thanks. Still, pardon my ignorance, how do I change those settings? I am new to all this, so it may be a silly question but I do need help. — DRS
Got a problem as well, after trying out this peice of equipment a while, i do not get any errors but a slowdown of the sound after a while. Im trying out media player classic but i still get it after 10 minutes or so.. its not that big of a problem, but its kinda anoing if your gaming and like to go on and on like me;) The record settings?? You got the program dilliverd by the hardware (Ulead) installed?? try film wizzard and change the settings there… no problem here :|…
This looks great, but capturing video is only one of the tasks I’m trying to perform. I also want to rip my fathers old vinyl records. I want to be sure that the included software will support capture of the audio in a format that I can make use of (like say… saving as a wav file) before ordering. Can anyone confirm this for me?
I have bought this but wondered if anyone had any advice on playing on my ps2 using my laptop monitor. any help or advice anyone?
After connected, how’s the performance when playing ps2 using laptop?
I bought the unit to convert old vhs tapes, and cannot get a picture. It is really scrambled and dark, but the audio is awesome.
Hey.
I really need some help i have everything installed but no video shows up when i plug a device in could someone help me please
Has anyone thought to contact the manufacturer? You’ll probably wind up with better results if you ask the people who actually make the product and the software. Just a thought.
I would like to connect a surveillance cam to my mac … I mean it should work since this product can transfer direct video signal into the pc (it should at least)… Does this work for mac??
Hi. Just got mine today and have been ages trying to get it to work. I have connected to my VCR with the red, white and yellow leads and pushed the Easycap into a USB port but nothing comes up. I’m sure it’s the format signal that is being from the VCR but don’t know how to alter it. I would appreciate any other info that anyone can pass onto me please. With the Ulead Video Studio I am sure that if and when I get it working it will be very versatile. Thanks a lot. Cedric
Hi
I bought it today. Surprised good for video. Very impressed BUT no sound.
I tried everything change cable and drivers etc etc etc nothing work :/
How do you work with sound ?
This line work ok with other USB TV
Hey
I bought this device off ebay to play my 360 on ma laptop. I have had success to a certain extent.
I’m not sure if its my Laptop of the device but i cannot play with my screen dispay 2 PAL60 without having a scrambled image (usualy what happens if your TV does not suypport 60Hz) unless i set the program to run through NTSC which is in black and white.
I mean yes I could play in colour if i used PAL50 however alot of good new games such as Halo 3 support only 60Hz mode. If any1 can find a solution to my problem please let me know. Also I HAVE tried other capture software with the same problem.
The specifications of the gadget seem to tempt many to have it, and am ready to buy one. But I wonder whether or not this easy cap cis capable of transfering /exporting video/movie FROM computer TO VCR (or Digital camcorder)
This thing works great for everything I’ve tried it on. A sugestion for you is to use Windows Movie maker, or Nero, for editing. Just use the Easycap as a device to capture to these programs. Easycap software isn’t the best.
i have just purchased the Easy Cap and trying to transfer old Reel to Reel tapes and cassettes to CDs to play in the car.
Can you help me with this. I have been able to record the music to the ULead software but not been able to get it into a format that will record to a CD and be playable in the car.
does it work well with 360? i bought a dazzle platinum which is rubbish. is this any good?
I bought one and it worked straight off - very pleasing!! I DID follow the instructions that said to load the drivers first and all was hunky dory…
I was able to watch my digibox on my PC for the first time. One downside was that once the signal was captured I could not record DVD to an external drive, but that may not be a problem exclusive to the ULead software. I also noted that if I used a load of effects, my laptop could not cope with the file and made a crappy DVD. All problems solved by buying a new internal DVD writer for my desktop….and cutting down on the effects (before I even considered this project I already upgraded my RAM from 512MB to 1.5GB and put a new 300GB hard-drive in my PC). I have not tried the record audio feature yet, but intend to try it soon - I tend to use MAGIX audio cleaning for this, but it would not recognise the EasyCap as a source.
I have written an article on converting cassettes to CD’s here:
http://www.cassette2cd.co.uk/DIY/index.php - follow the links to ‘cassette to CD’
If I can get the Ulead software to do this effectively I may have to write a new article. I have two experiments to perform with this:
1) can Ulead software effectively create a decent audio CD?
2) can Soundforge AUDACITY recognise EasyCap as an audio source?
@ Phil, get in touch at: mail@cassette2cd.co.uk and I will do my best to help you with your project
For info (re. Phil Bender’s comment) I could not get Easycap to import analogue audio via the Ulead software or via any other software for that matter - I am sure that the advertising says you can do this so I will try the Ulead software again… but so far no luck at all… [you did better than me by getting the audio into Ulead!]. If you can export as WAV files, you could NERO or similar to burn to a CD.
Hi
just wondering if it if possible to hook the easy cap up to a macbook computer.
Thank you
Sam strang
Hey there! I am looking for a good screenshot capture tool– I want to take my own shots for vidgame reviews instead of borrowing from other sites. Any opinions on if this guy will handle the task well?
I am a novice at this stuff and I would like to know if Windows Movie Maker will recognize
this hardware a a video device for the video capture command
have read all the comments so far but not seen any relating to a prob i have. loaded up program ok but when i go to capture/capture video i get a dialog box headed ‘change field order’ on my desktop this loads to 10% then freezes the whole program and i hve to abort. tried my laptop and it loaded ok twice then after i managed to capture some video it only loads to 50% then i get an error and have to abort. anyone any ideas??
I had problems with the EasyCap DC60+ USB video capture card recording only in B/W until I went to changed to NTSC_M as follows (in the ULead software that came with it):
Capture Properties
Video Capture Filter
Properties
Video Standard
and set it to NTSC_M
Also I had to set the MS-Windows Sound Driver to “Use only default devices” as follows:
Control Panel
Sounds and Audio Devices Properties
Audio
Select “Use only default devices”
Windows Movie Maker will recognize this device. It’s what I use, rather than the supplied ULead SE software.
I spent a couple of days trying to get anything at all to work with the drivers supplied on the CD. Then I downloaded drivers from the manufacturer’s site, but still not working too well. The drivers disabled my headphones and seemed to disappear from my PC’s device manager “sound, video and game controllers” list whenever I removed the EasyCap USB device from any USB 2.0 port. I had to roll back my system with System Restore to get my headphones to work again. And every time I plugged in the EasyCap (even before rolling back) I had to install the drivers all over again.
Then I decided to let Windows (XP Pro) find drivers itself, rather than using the supplied drivers, when I plugged in the EasyCap. XP applied drivers for a USB 2860 device (aka USB PVR-TV Device - check driverguide.com if not offered by XP during installation). And these drivers behaved well with everything, and the video\audo captures have been excellent - going from analogue VHS NTSC VCR tape to WMV 640×480, 25 fps digital video files. So, once you get this toy to work, you should be very happy with it. Good luck.
One final tip: - A laptop may only have a microphone in jack, which can behave as a line-in as well (only on a laptop). If you use a PC, then you cannot use the microphone jack to capture audio with EasyCap, you must use a line-in jack. Make sure that your line-in is not muted in your sound control or mixer panel for your sound card.
Ken
I have Ulead VideoStudio 11. Is it possible to use this instead of the old 8th version that is included with the hardware?
Have used Dazzle in the past, and captures (Video/Audio) well. Would not waste time with Ulead 8, not at all flexible, used extensively with Cyberlink Director suite, also a giveaway with DVD drives and some other hardware.
Have just bought this Easycap to trial, and will let you know how I get on,just wondering about speed, but does only use USB2.0,which is good.
Have used extensively, if you want know, Dart Recorder 4.0, absolutely the best for old Vinyl/Cassettes capture.
Other products need to plug into Audio socket on card for sound, does not sound the better way to me.
excuse me, has anyone played ps2 or other consoles using this device? does it lags?
i’ve searched everywhere but people that used other devices usually has the same issue , lags.
Please may you help me with my easy cap settings, the colour is in black and white. I was wondering if anyone knew how to change it to colour please message me back.
Thank you.
For any xbox 360 users with this device you can only use PAL-50 so if that is a problem go and buy another capture device i would recomend “Dazzle” very good got one myself top class.
When recording ot may look laggy but whatch it again.
Leave a Comment