Turtle Beach Video Advantage USB

Forget the capture card, now you can record directly to your computer using a single USB port.

If you hadn?t noticed lately, the age of digital entertainment is more than upon us. Your old analog VCR and camcorder which served you so well through the early 90s are wearing down, as well as the tapes you use with them. It is time to digitally convert and backup your old wedding and graduation videos if you hope to keep them for the future. Turtle Beach, a maker of PC audio solutions, thinks they have an easy solution to help in this endeavor in the form of the Video Advantage USB.

The Video Advantage USB is a pocket sized black box which acts as a go between for your analog video devices and your computer. It sports a multi-pin connector port on one end, which hooks to an A/V cable (with included S-Video support), and a USB 2.0 connector on the other. Its main function, working in conjunction with a software suite installed upon your computer, is to capture the analog video as it plays from your VCR or camcorder and convert the signal to a digital format such as AVI, DV or MPEG.

The Video Advantage USB fits in the palm of your hand

The specific format the video is captured under is determined by which part of the software suite is being used. AD FullCap allows for video captures in AVI or DV (types 1 and 2) formats, while Cyberlink PowerDirector does its thing with AVI and MPEG (formats 1 and 2). The latter program also allows for the authoring of movies and photo slide shows, as well as saving the movie files in a variety of formats for later transfer to DVD, VCD and the like.

Other programs in the Video Advantage Suite include Cyberlink PowerProducer Express, which assists in preparing and transferring the movie to DVD, SVCD, VCS, DV tape or streaming video for the Web, and AudioSurgeon, which allows for the recording and editing of digital audio files which can be inserted into a PowerDirector authored movie. Also thrown in is a sound library of pre-recorded music and sound effects.

The sides of the Video Advantage USB

The Video Advantage Suite also includes the ability to directly capture video from a digital camcorder without the need for the USB converter, provided the receiving computer has a 1394 port. The captured video can be saved to DV-AVI or MPEG. Direct transfer from a digital camcorder to a burnable DVD drive is also possible.

Other useful features of the Video Advantage USB include drawing power directly from the host computer?s USB port and support of NTSC and PAL. Items included in the device?s packaging include the USB video capture module, a CD loaded with the Video Advantage Suite and USB and audio/video cables.

The Video Advantage USB is priced at $129.95 and can be purchased directly through Newegg or other retailers.