With the growth of the YouTube gaming community, acquiring a capture device is essentially a mandatory part to a YouTube gamers today. It also raises a lot of questions in the process: What microphone should I commentate with? How should I capture my gameplay? Many companies have come out with their own capture card devices already out there so the question is, which one do you get? Luckily, Roxio has come out with the GameCap Pro HD for your capturing needs.
Design & Features
The Roxio GameCap HD PRO is designed to accept 2 different types of A/V signals, HDMI and component. This is great as it allows both types of connections to work without any type of conversion. It’s also very quick with the setup, just plug in and play. No extra set up needed. To connect your card to your computer, just use the USB cable provided. The final thing to say about the card that’s a plus is that it does not require an external power source. You do not need to keep the card plugged into your computer or plugged into a wall to make it work. It works completely by itself.
After installing the drivers and the software that came with it, I plugged it in and it came up right on the screen very fast. I was able to already hit the capture button and begin getting some game footage. What is also great about the onboard software is that you have the ability to adjust the picture right on the spot. There are options to adjust contrast, brightness, hue, and more. The video file is recorded in M2TS format at 29.97 frames a second. I was also able to drop this footage into Sony Vegas without any hassle and needing to convert it into a different format.
Cons/Flaws
While these aren’t any real flaws to the card, they certainly qualify as cons in my opinion. This card does not have a typical composite video in spot, so that mean you cannot plug in older devices unless you have a method of converting the video signal. So if you are looking for a card to plug in current a previous generation consoles, you may not like this card. Again, that’s not a real problem with the card as it is designed for HD capturing so I let this issue slide. One problem I do have with using the card on the computer is that you have to use the software that’s given to you when you get the card to do anything with it. This means you can’t add it as a video source into something like OBS or XSplit (at least with my testing). Now, this isn’t a huge issue and there are ways to work around it, so it’s only a slight inconvenience. Now these were the only real issues I had with the card and these aren’t any major problems which gives this card and extra boost.
Summary
The Roxio GameCap HD Pro is an excellent capture with built in features to get even the simplest of users up and running. The price tag may shy some people away with an average price of $130 but even then I recommend this card to people willing to get into recording a lot of HD gameplay and such. This card delivers very well in all the categories. Footage comes out in clean HD and 29.97 frames which is perfect for uploading to YouTube. Anyone who is thinking about getting into the YouTube gameplay scene should definitely consider this card in the future.
Pricing & Availability (Amazon):
UK: http://bit.ly/BagoRoxioUK
US: http://bit.ly/BagoRoxioUS
