I've been meaning to post about this for a while, but kept forgetting. I've been meaning to put together a capture setup for months now and finally did so over the past couple of weeks. I've captured some footage but it's still very much a work in progress.
This was meant to be a short post but kind of blew up into a mini review.
I use a laptop as my main PC and I really don't have space for a dedicated capture rig so I wanted a USB capture device, which unfortunately eliminated the cheap and effective DataPath VisionRGB cards as an option. That meant going with a normal consumer capture device and some kind of scaler, which is not entirely a downside as it means I can capture HDMI sources and other sources with different converters as well. I was drawn towards the AVerMedia Live Gamer Portable line in particular because they can record to an SD card with no computer at all. I figured that would be very handy especially since my setup is a bit flaky.
I ended up with the Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus. I call it the Toblerone, because, well, it's shaped like one! It's a very nice unit physically; well-built, well-designed, and smaller than expected. It records up to 1080p60 using the H.264 codec at up to 50mbps connected to a PC or 20mbps to the SD card. It has HDMI in and out with 4K passthrough (though I'm not sure if it can downscale and record a 4K source), microUSB (only 2.0), a microSD card slot, and some kind of audio loop connection for recording voice chat or something. It has a volume rocker (though I'm not sure which volume it adjusts), a nice clickly mode switch (PC recording, PC-free recording, or USB mass storage), and big light-up button to start and stop recording. The box is very nice and it comes with several cables, which is a nice addition.
Recording quality is quite good, even in the more limited PC-free mode. I haven't noticed any compression artifacts- I'm sure they're there, but they're not perceptible. PC-free mode has worked a little better for me than PC mode; I've seen a few glitches in the latter and the framerate isn't entirely steady (though it could be my flaky setup). And... now we're getting into some of the downsides of the Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus.
Namely that the documentation is basically nonexistent and the software is mediocre at best. It comes with a page on how to hook it up and a link to the manual for the software, but if there's any information on things like what the light means (solid red is bad, solid blue is ready to record, blinking red is recording) or how the SD card needs to be formatted (FAT32, gleaned from another user's experience with a previous version of the device) I couldn't find it. The RECentral software is slow, unintuitive, and offers a dearth of options, although it does seem to work okay. Also, OBS Studio can be used as an alternative though I only tested it briefly.
The other big downside is that there's too much latency to actually play games through the preview window. If you're smart, you'd use the passthrough to an HDMI monitor. If you're me, you'd split the VGA signal before it gets converted.
In general, though, the Live Gamer Portable 2 Plus is a good little unit. If you're willing to spend the money (it's not a cheap device) and just want to hit a button and record, it's an elegant solution.
Okay, with that out of the way, on to what didn't work. I bought a cheap VGA to HDMI scaler off Amazon. Some people have had success with other cheap units (notably the Sewell Manta), but unfortunately the Portta unit can't do 720x400. It works fairly well in "normal" resolutions, with surprisingly good output quality. It does stretch the image to 16:9 and sometimes adds borders which would suck for live gameplay, but can be fixed easily in post. It also mixes in analog audio, and despite having the cheapest feeling jack I've ever seen, does a good job of it. It supports 720p and 1080p output but there's no indicator on the unit which is currently selected, and the same button is also used for auto-adjust.
I thought about returning it, but decided to keep it around. It works well for what it's advertised to do, it just won't do DOS resolutions. I've used it to record some higher-resolution footage, mostly from my cheap P4 (the GF2MX has much better output quality than the Mach64+Voodoo2 in my Pentium box). I have a bit of a wiring mess on the VGA side so I can play on an actual monitor at the same time, which adds some noise and darkens the image.
Here's an example of Quake 2 at I think 800x600 on the P4.
I've got a used Startech VGA2HDMIPRO on the way. I know it's not perfect, and I did look into other options, but I ultimately settled on this one for a few reasons. It's relatively compact (unlike, say, the Extron boxes) and uses a 5V power supply (I eventually plan on running the whole capture stack off a USB adapter). It has a proper HDMI output with audio mixing (I don't want to record separately or add an injector). And it's cheap on the used market, slightly cheaper than the Atlona version.
Fingers crossed that it'll work better than the Portta.