In December when I bought my PS4, I had already planned to
start and grow a YouTube gaming channel. I was on the lookout for a capture
card that would work well with my PS4. After some research my 2 choices were
narrowed down to either the HD PVR or the Elgato HD 60. I ended up choosing the
Elgato HD 60 mainly because of all the positive feedback and user reviews I had
read about this device. Another important factor could have been that I knew
someone personally who had one and they had nothing bad to say about it.
So my mind made up I began the hunt for deals like any
sensible person would do and realized that I had JUST missed a big sale on the
device at the big retailers BEST BUY and FUTURESHOP where the device was being
sold for $159 instead of its regular price of $189. Unfortunately I found out
about this sale too late (maybe like a day late) and most places were already
sold out and out of stock.
Disheartened I decided to just wait it out for another sale
and buy it then. A month goes by and absolutely nothing to be found. I decided
to wait another month and still no sales on the Elgato HD 60 to be found
anywhere. Finally with my growing impatience I reluctantly ordered the Elgato at
its full price of $189 and had it shipped to my house. Let me tell you that while having a deal on this expensive toy would have been great, it is definitely worth even the full price.
I read the piece of paper that comes with the Elgato and it
tells me to download the software from its site which I did. I then plugged in the
device and I’m instantly in business. The device had no problems when first plugged
in and I was able to record video from my PS4 right away. The software seems ok, nothing too great but not bad either, it is very intuitive and fairly easy to
use in my opinion.
Recording a video is as simple as hitting a big red record button when you want to start recording and hitting the same big red button when you want to stop recording. The device has a feature that lets you record footage even if you accidently forgot to hit the big red button and it can go back a few hours apparently. I have personally not tried this feature yet but I am sure it’ll come in handy quite a few times down the road.
Recording a video is as simple as hitting a big red record button when you want to start recording and hitting the same big red button when you want to stop recording. The device has a feature that lets you record footage even if you accidently forgot to hit the big red button and it can go back a few hours apparently. I have personally not tried this feature yet but I am sure it’ll come in handy quite a few times down the road.
The only problem I have at the moment is when I get the
video that I recorded in mp4 format and use my editing software (not the Elgato
one) to edit the video and then render it, the quality of the final video seems
to be lacking a bit. I am not sure what the source of the problem is at the
moment, whether I need to tweak the settings on the Elgato or my editing
software before I render the video. It just seems to me that the final video
doesn’t look as good or as sharp as it did on my TV. I have a feeling this has
more to do with the editing software because WHILE recording the playback
screen on the software shows an almost identical quality to my TV. I am not
100% sure of this, which is why I will have to further investigate this issue.
To illustrate what I am talking about below are 2 Test
videos I recorded with my Elgato HD 60.
This one is a cinematic from the game INJUSTICE: GODS AMONG
US
This one is FIFA 15 Gameplay
To me even though I set the Elgato settings to record in
1080p and 60fps with the “Best” quality setting, I feel for some reason that
the video is somewhat lacking in overall quality and ‘sharpness’.
Other than this minor annoyance which I’m sure is more my
fault than anything, the Elgato performed really well as I recorded over 20 videos already and had no problems with it so far.
0 comments:
Post a Comment