Console Gaming in OSX

blog@undefinedrange.com (Vincent Woo) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 01:03:00 -0800

A year ago, I made the switch from the PC world to OSX rapture – specifically a 15 inch MacBook Pro. It greatly improved my workflow but gaming is definitely a weak point. While there are a few OSX native games that spark my interest, I seriously doubt they’d run well on a laptop. Also, I was given a friend’s old Xbox collection that I could put to use.

Thus began my quest for a cheap USB video capture device. The only find was this product called the EasyCAP. Despite all the negative reviews and comments and the fact that it was Windows only (Parallels should take care of that), I went ahead and bought one of them off eBay.

It was as all the naysayers said it was: a massive disappointment. To its credit, it did manage to work once, though choppy in both video and sound. Nevertheless, No magic incantations or configuration would revive the usb device afterwards. Instead, the laptop locked hard several times.

After all that frustration, salvation was found in VideoGlide, a collection of native OSX drivers and video capture software. It just works and it worked the first time. That’s really all that needs to be said about it. It just works.

Update: July 26, 08: The VideoGlide webpage now lists support for EasyCAP009, EasyCap DC60+ models. EasyCAP DC60, however is NOT supported.

Also, thought I should post some of my config in case it might help people setup their video capture.

Under “Record -> Video Settings…”, make sure that the correct input is selected and/or choose the auto-detect option.

This is what I have under “Record -> Sound Settings…”.

Finally, select the right digitizer. “USB Video Class Video” is for the built in webcam.

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Console Gaming in OSX