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Palm Discovery gives a BIG THANKS as always to Sammy of Palm Addicts for the recent mention of Palm Discovery on his website. Also, BIG THANKS goes to Treobits and P@ssioneMobile for the recent linking to my Brando Mobile Phone Telescope review.

Palm Discovery would like to extend a BIG THANKS to Thomas of USB Fever for providing the product for this review.

Ever want to access all those camcorder recordings directly on your computer? How about the video from your cable or TV? Well, now you can! USB Fever’s Easy Cap Audio-Video Capture Adapter can help you access the video stream from your TV or cable box, or practically any media source either via analog connectors (RCA plugs) or via digital connector (S-video). The Easy Cap adapter plugs directly into your computer via the USB 2.0 port.

The package includes a CD that contains the necessary drivers and the Ulead Video Studio DVD SE program that enables you to create your own professional looking video. You’re expected to first install the drivers from the CD (making sure to NOT plug in the Easy Cap yet). When instructed to do so in the driver installation process, plug in the Easy Cap and let the hardware wizard detect the new device and go through the procedure of pointing to the CD for the drivers. Afterwards, you can install the Ulead Video Studio program which enables you to edit your video.

For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

Due to the high resource requirements of this device, Easy Cap will NOT WORK on USB 1.1 ports or hubs so you must install it on a computer that has a USB 2.0 port. Trying it on a PC Card 2.0 USB cardbus won’t work either. I’ve tried it myself on my laptop with an iogear PC Card USB cardbus and it doesn’t work.

As well, there are a variety of vendors that sell a similarly looking video capturing device to the Easy Cap model DC-60. Although they may look the same, they may not necessarily be the same. I am reviewing the Easy Cap Audio-Video Capture adapter model DC-60 sold by USB Fever. Drivers obtained on the internet may or may not work with the Easy Cap DC-60. I have not tried them so I can not comment on them. Please keep that in mind.

Also, the Easy Cap DC-60 was only successfully tried on a Dell laptop running Windows XP with USB 2.0 ports. On the package, it states support for Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

You may encounter some difficulties when installing the device on the computer, especially during the hardware detection phase. Originally, I was scratching my head over this myself as I kept getting an error 10 saying that the device can not be opened when I tried to install the drivers. After a bit of digging and searching on the internet, I discovered that it was Logitech that was the cause of the problem, or more specifically the Logitech webcam drivers that did not completely remove itself from the computer and causes conflicts with other imaging devices from registering. So, if you encounter problems plugging in the Easy Cap adapter, you may want to check whether you have previously installed Logitech webcam drivers and removed it. If so, re-install it and Easy Cap will then be able to detect the adapter. It may not necessarily be only Logitech related but could also be other imaging devices as well so try to remember if you installed drivers that may possibly be conflicting with your Easy Cap.

If you were successful so far, then it’s very likely that your Easy Cap will work as most of the problems with Easy Cap DC-60 is usually due to drivers and the detection of the adapter. If you are encountering problems, you may want to try to search the internet for possible solutions. Again, please do not contact me with your questions as I will not be able to answer them.

Once everything is installed and connected, all that’s required is to run or launch the Ulead Studio Program and enable the capturing feature. You should be able to view what the video source is streaming in the program’s Preview window. All that’s required is to start the capture process and stop when you’re done. Then you can edit and manipulate the video to the way you wish and produce a professional looking video with all the available tools found in the Ulead Video Studio program.

Pictures of the Easy Cap Audio-Video Capture Adapter

Click on the thumbnail images for a bigger picture

Product Videos

Video at YouTube

Video at YouTube

And here’s an overview of the menus in the Ulead VideoStudio program that is bundled with the Easy Cap Adapter

Overview video of Ulead VideoStudio program at Blip.tv

If you wish to view the presentation in a higher resolution, you can download the entire avi file (approx 38 MB) on your computer and view it. Download it from my site here.

Please note that the Ulead VideoStudio provided in the package is version 10. I may have made a mistake of mentioning it’s version 8 in the videos.

More details (taken from USB Fever’s website):

Features:

- EasyCap USB 2.0 DV / TV / VHS Video / DVD Audio-Video Capture Adaptor x 1
- USB Cable x 1
- Quick Installation Guide x 1
- Software on CD-ROM x 1

The program works as described as you can see in my video review that I was able to capture the video from my camcorder to the computer using Easy Cap. Unfortunately, the resulting video of a few seconds took up over 300 MB of disk space. I believe part of that problem was I didn’t use a divx codec to compress the file and relied on the Ulead program to do it for me using whatever was in the default settings. I haven’t looked much further into that. Regardless, you will need to assign a huge amount of disk space if you are planning to capture video with the Easy Cap, as we are dealing with video and you know that video takes up a lot of disk space.

Here are my observations:

If you didn’t encounter problems with the installation of drivers or the hardware detection, Easy Cap should likely work fine. But, if you do encounter problems in the early process, you may find that it could a battle to find a solution to enable it to work. Again, Easy Cap will only work on USB 2.0 connections due to its high resource requirements.

As long as you can provide an output of the media that you wish to capture with Easy Cap (ie. analog signals via the RCA connectors or digital signals via S-Video connector), you should be able to capture that with Easy Cap. Please keep in mind that you will need to allocate a lot of disk space as the resulting file may take well over a few hundred MB to a few GB of space, depending on the length, the quality and other attributes of your file.

The Easy Cap adapter does get a bit warm after a while, thus why you can see there’s a number of holes on the accessory to allow for heat to escape. With that in mind, please take precaution to ensure that the adapter is not mistakenly covered or blocked in any way or you may damage the unit or cause other hazards.

It is fairly easy to use as the connector are clearly marked with color connector plugs (red and white for stereo audio input, yellow for video input, S-Video for digital input) and a white tag on the wires themselves.

The included software, the Ulead Video Studio version SE is slightly outdated. The current version from Ulead is version 11. You may be able to dig into the CD for the manual, or check out the online manual from Ulead’s website. According to the CD, it lists the program as version 10.

Review Summary

USB Fever’s Easy Cap Audio-Video Capture Adapter is a relatively inexpensive way (compared to others in the market) to access media from a source such as TV, cable box, DVD player, gaming consoles, etc on your computer and capture it for manipulation and editing later on. This is one product that if you can get it to install on your computer, it will likely work perfectly fine. But, for those who struggle with it, unfortunately, your main source for a solution is via the internet. Most likely, it may be due to drivers and the original installation process and possible conflicts (as I’ve mentioned with Logitech drivers previously) or it may be something else. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated hardware support for this Easy Cap adapter and with so many vendors selling similar products, it can be quite hard to determine what works and what doesn’t. Again, your main source for support is via the internet and trying things out.

The included Ulead Studio Program offers a variety of professional looking enhancements to help you create your special video presentation ranging from titles, to frame transitions, audio embedding, time line editing and much more. The included software, version 10 is an older version as Ulead Video Studio is now at version 11. Regardless, the program is a fully working and registered version (you will need to register it). You can dig into the install CD for the manual and help.

Easy Cap is not without possible problems with regards to the initial drivers or hardware installation depending on your computer setup and possible software conflicts. But if you can get it to install, it will likely work as indicated.

Check out EasyCap USB 2.0 DV / TV / VHS Video / DVD Audio-Video Capture Adaptor at USB Fever.

Again, Palm Discovery thanks Thomas of USB Fever for providing the product for this review.

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