Over at Pro Tip of the Day I occasionally have to capture video to illustrate whatever tip I’m going over that day. But what hardware do I use to make that happen?
Good question!
Initially, I used a Hauppauge WinTV-PCI, which was cheap, and produced decent-quality video. See exhibit A.
But times change, hardware ages, operating systems change, and consoles evolve. So I migrated to the Pinnacle Video Transfer, which proudly proclaims that you can use it to capture video from your favorite video game console. But there are two main problems I had with it: 1. There’s no video output, so it’s kind of tough to see what you’re doing and 2. consoles manufactured earlier than about 1999 won’t work with the thing, which means no SNES, NES, Genesis, or anything else of that vintage.
So, I settled on the Diamond One Touch Video Capture, which allows me to capture footage from just about any source, and has the added benefit of attaching to my computer via USB. And all that really means is that I can use it on a laptop and take it to my game console instead of installing it into my PC and taking my game console to it. Also, it was relatively inexpensive, which was right in line with what I wanted to spend on it. Plus, it captures some decent footage (exhibit B).
So, which one should you use? I dunno. But this is what works for me.