In the Spanish side i have a more robust review, but i feel all the main points are here, if you have any question and i can answer don’t hesitate to ask in the comments.
Live Gamer Portable 2 is the latest product from AVerMedia to capture video, its 2 main selling points is that you don’t need a PC (well you do, but it can work without it fairly well, more about his later) and it can capture 1080p 60 fps in both modes, with and without computer.
PC Mode
In this mode you connect the LGP2 to the computer through USB 2.0 (that’s right, 2.0) and the computer recognize it like if it were a webcam, what this actually means is that you don’t need special drivers or programs, any program that can capture video through a webcam can technically use the LGP2, but if you wish, you can use the fairly good app from avermedia RECentral 3, which allow you to capture video, stream video and configure the No PC mode.
These are its characteristic:
Resolution: From 576×360 to 1980×1080.
Framerate: From 15 to 60 (including 1080p).
Bitrate: From 0.3 to 60 mps.
File type: MP4
Encoding: H.264, it can use your computer CPU or hardware acceleration (QSV, GPU).
RGB: Standard (16-235) or Expanded (0-255)
Connection between PC-Capturator: USB 2.0
You can do streaming directly from AVerMedia RECentral 3 or most common programs for streaming.
No PC mode
Resolution: From 576×360 to 1980×1080.
Framerate: From 15 to 60 (including 1080p).
Bitrate: 10, 15, 20 mps.
File type: Mov, each file can be of up to 4GB (long videos will use multiple files that you will have to join up).
Encoding: H.264
RGB: I think it’s Expanded (0-255), no way to change this as far as i know in this mode.
My previous capturator, the GameCapture HD II was (and is) beyond excellent, thanks to a on screen menu and a remote you can choose the quality, where you want to record the video (internal HD or pendrive), edit videos, upload them to youtube… it’s quite complete. In that sense LGP 2 is quite the let down, no menu, no remote… there is a big button to record and that’s it, you press it and the LGP2 will start recording at the micro SD (it will pick the right resolution), you press it again and it will stop… it just works; you can choose the video quality, but for this you need to connect it to the PC.
The video files saved in this mode are “mov” (you can rename them to “mp4” and they just work fine if you wish); each file can be of only up to 4GB which at maximum quality is just a few minutes, this doesn’t mean that you can only record “x” minutes at a time… you can keep recording as long as there is enough free resources at the microSD, but you will end with a bunch of mov files that will have to stich together.
The LGP2 will not show up any kind of information in the TV, so it will show up if it’s working properly or not using some leds… it works well enough, but we won’t know why it doesn’t like a certain video signal, just that it doesn’t like it… for some reason. It only happened to me once, but it worth mentioning it… just because the leds tell you that everything is OK and it’s recording properly, it doesn’t mean that’s the true, it happened to me that it was only recording the sound and no video (once again, it only happened to me once). If you are going to record something very important, it might be better to use the PC mode if possible… just in case.
At the end of the day everything comes down to the recording quality in a video capturator, and i’m quite happy with it:
PC mode | No PC mode |
9 mps | normal (10 mps) |
20 mps | good (15 mps) |
30 mps | optimum (20 mps) |
40 mps | |
50 mps | |
60 mps |