Review: Hauppauge USB-Live2
Don Bradbury looks at an inexpensive, potentially complete Windows system for digitising analogue recordings
| Product | USB-Live2 |
|---|---|
| Company | Hauppauge |
| Web | www.hauppauge.co.uk |
| Price | RRP: £44.99 incl; Discounted, about £38 incl |
| We like | Comprehensive software package. |
| We don't like | Driver installation was problematic via WinTV v7; slight loss of lip-synch in the output of ArcSoft ShowBiz. |
| Rating | 7/10 |
| Requirements | Windows 7 and Vista with latest service packs, XP SP2. PC with 2.8GHz CPU and at least two cores; integrated audio; USB 2.0 port. |
While many families value their collection of analogue video tape recordings, perhaps made years ago when the children were young, they sooner or later have to face the fact that this old technology has had its day. The hardware to play it will not receive support forever, and there's the fact that although such recordings are generally of mediocre quality by modern standards, it means they will have to look to systems such as this, designed to digitise them for storage and replay, typically on archival-quality DVDs.
So the Hauppauge USB-Live2 is a potentially complete package. Coupled with a software bundle consisting of WinTVv7 and ArcSoft ShowBiz v3.5.16.69, it can digitally capture your analogue recordings, and in the process edit them in a basic way, add scene transitions and so on, carry out a complete production process, and then burn the files to DVD for you. It can also prepare your footage for production on FaceBook if that's among your intentions.
The package we received for review included the USB-Live2 device itself, which incorporated the USB lead for connection to the PC, plus a short clip-on lead bearing Composite or S-Video and Audio Jacks. That lead was detachable from the USB device so that you could leave it connected to your analogue source device if you considered that appropriate.
For our tests we took output via a Scart adapter bearing appropriate plugs to connect to the Live2 device, the Scart plug itself being connected to the output of a VCR. But because we were operating at several feet range from the PC, we interposed a 9ft, high quality, USB extension lead to connect to the computer's USB port. That arrangement worked well.
Driver Installation
We encountered our first problems when we tried to use the WinTVv7 application to install the drivers for the USB-Live2 device by following the instruction leaflet. Although claiming success, repeated attempts were seen to have failed, and in the end we had to resort to uninstalling the drivers - which hadn't worked, as detected by the lack of activity of the connection and digitising LEDs on the device's body. We used 64-bit Windows 7's Device Manager's right click option to uninstall the drivers, and then downloaded and re-installed them as suggested by Hauppauge Support:
http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/support/support_all.html?prod=44
The drivers could be extracted from that download, and then in Device Manager we browsed for the extraction Folder to install the drivers on our system. That worked, and when all was up and running we ran our first tape, using a portable TV set connected via a Scart splitter to monitor progress and using the supplied software to manage the recording as described.
In fact we didn't actually need to monitor the analogue output as we did. The ArcSoft ShowBiz software displayed it on the PC screen as it was playing, though starting up only after an annoying few seconds delay which, unless it didn't consist of blank tape, could mean missing that bit of footage from the digitisation process. But we hit another snag. The ShowBiz software was quite intolerant of any glitches, ie frames that were 'broken', and at such points the software would simply stop recording with the report:
"Cannot record video. The current content is copy-protected"
It wasn't, of course, it was our own footage, but at such points - and we had several on some of our recorded tapes - we had to stop the tape player, rewind to a location that was after the glitch, and start a separate digitising file. That wasn't a major problem in terms of the final recording because the output files could be capably joined together in ShowBiz later. The main problem was watching out for such glitches and taking appropriate action. It effectively meant we had to watch the display constantly to look out for stalling, and that could be an unwelcome task if you had many tapes to process.
Television recording
The USB-Live2 does not incorporate its own TV tuner, but for those who are already suitably equipped, WinTV v7 could be used to select channels to play, record them, take snapshots of particular frames, or work from a TV scheduler. There were several other useful options as well, including pause and replay. That was possible because the PC was constantly recording the TV output. The default file output was in .TS (transport stream) format, or it could be auto-converted to MPEG format.
Usefully, the file storage location for this and the other facilities within the package could be modified, and we used an external USB drive to handle all intermediate and final output, mainly to make the output easier to locate, manually setting up for the required transitional output in custom drive folders.
ArcSoft ShowBiz
ShowBiz was the main digitising, production, and burning software for analogue input, and digitised files were relatively easy to produce once we got to grips with the software; the range of conversion formats was quite large. After the Capture process, the ShowBiz program lets you edit the output, and it was at that point that we were offered the option to connect clips together, or add scene-joining graphics and titling from a decent supply of variants, and finally produce the digitised output in a state ready to burn to DVD using the Produce option of ShowBiz.
That, too, demanded some of our attention if the output was to be satisfactory. The range of options for customising the output was again large, and newcomers would have to devote some time to understanding their purpose if they were not already familiar. It's all too easy to produce your first few discs with inappropriate settings of the software, though some helpful defaults did assist here. So we'd suggest making changes only if you're sure of their effect. Leave the 4:3 aspect ratio at that default setting for old analogue recordings, for example, and settle for part-fill of your modern widescreen PC or TV display.
On-line help for ArcSoft was rather basic, and not particularly helpful beyond what was obvious from the app's menus, and it said nothing about the DVD burning part of the process. Users should bear in mind that the entire creation, production, and burning process is necessarily time-consuming. Each of the first two processes was typically measured at around an hour for output sufficient to fill a 4.7GB DVD. The disk burning process was, of course, quicker than that, and dependant on the writing speed of the disk you provided.
Burning the output to DVD was easy enough using the Create DVD option in ShowBiz, and if all had gone well you would then have your digitised version of the tape footage available for display on a PC screen.
DVD Flick
We wanted to produce output that would auto-play on a TV set via a DVD player as well as on a PC, in the VOB format, and for this we made use of the free download application, DVD Flick. As expected, the final output was, if not exactly HD quality, at least watchable, though we did notice slight loss of lip-synch, probably introduced at the ShowBiz Production stage because it wasn't evident when the unburned file was replayed from the PC. This was considered tolerable, though we could perhaps have corrected that with further processing via additional software.
We opted to give our 2.9GHz, AMD Athlon II x4, 635 CPU the highest priority setting for access, and we also set for the highest quality output. Neither was justified in terms of output quality, perhaps, but further degradation of the already rather poor analogue source material was unwelcome. Many users would play their DVDs on a large LCD monitor or TV, and what was at one time considered state of the art (many years ago) would not bear comparison with normal PC or TV expectations these days. Learning to live with this is all you can reasonably do; it's part of your past that you'll be looking at.
In conclusion
The Hauppauge USB-Live2 hardware was simple enough to use once we had the driver installation sorted out, though we should not have had to make a successful installation in the manner we describe. In the end, though, it worked, and the output most users would consider satisfactory.
The software supplied with the USB-Live 2 pack might be necessarily demanding in terms of learning curve, but the options provided covered most of the requirements of the amateur photographer. If you need to tack on speciality software to meet your own requirements, as we did, there are lots of free options available for download via the Internet.
A couple of closing remarks.
Don't be tempted to use cheap DVDs for your final output. Their life expectancy would probably be short, perhaps a few years at best. This sort of work really demands archival storage, so choose from the better known brands and file them away carefully.
Finally, if you intend to process analogue tape recordings, the chances of success will be greater if you can use the tape recorder you originally used to produce the tape. That's because tape player head alignment is critical, and a different play-back device might produce a corrupt picture and prove useless for the process we have described. As a case in point, not being able to use our original recording VCR we had to try three different machines that came to hand before we found one that replayed our tape footage without significant corruption. Just bear that possibility in mind.
