The HD PVR Rocket is a high definition H.264 portable video recorder. The Rocket can record HD video either stand alone (to a USB thumb drive) or connected to a Windows PC. The Rocket can receive video from either HDMI or compenent video and will record up to 1080p30 onto an attached USB thumb drive. The Rocket is USB bus powered and can be powered by a USB port on your Xbox or Playstation game system. The Rocket has a built-in audio mixer which will take microphone audio and mix it with game audio so you can add game commentary to your game play recordings.

The Rocket can also be connected to a PC, which we call the 'PC connected mode'. In this mode, recordings are made to the hard disk inside your PC and the USB thumb drive is not used.

No. The Rocket can be used either with or without a PC. When used standalone it records to a USB thumb drive which is plugged into the front of the Rocket and power is provided from the USB port on the back of the Rocket (5v at 1.0a minimum needed).

When connected to a PC, you can use Hauppauge Capture to record, upload and stream. Recordings are made to your PCs hard disk drive.

When PC connected, settings such as the video and audio source is 'sticky' and will be used when standalone.

The Rocket can record from HDMI (without HDCP), Component video and composite video. Video input resolutions can range from standard definition 720x480 up to 1080p60.
Common examples are:

• video cameras with HDMI out
• game consoles such as the Xbox One, PS4, PS3, Xbox 360
• PC Graphics cards (from the HDMI port on the graphics card) so you can record your PC screen
• cable or satellite set top box can be recorded from Component video and composite video. HDMI is often blocked with HDCP copy protection on cable and satellite boxes, so you should use Component (red/green/blue connectors on the back of your cable/satellite box) for best results. Some people have reported they can record HDMI from a cable/satellite box, but many boxes block the HDMI port with HDCP copy protection.
• to record composite video (the yellow connector on the back of video cameras, VCR's and cable/satellite boxes) with the Rocket, you connect the yellow connector from the video source to the Blue connector on the Hauppauge AV cable, and then in Hauppauge Capture, set 'Video In' to 'Composite'.

The Rocket will record to NTFS and FAT32 formatted USB flash (thumb) drives. But if you format as FAT32, due to the 4GB file size limit of FAT32, every 4GB (about 1 hour) of recording will result in a new recording.

With NTFS, there is no file size limit so one recording can be the size of the thumb drive.

Please note: most Sandisk USB flash drives are formatted at their factory as FAT32. So, to get one long recording on a Sandisk flash drive, you should reformat it with NTFS

Yes. We have tested the Sandisk Ultra Flair USB 3.0 Flash Drive and the PNY Elite-X Fit USB 3.1 flash drive with the Rocket. Note: these thumb drives come from the factory formatted as FAT32. To get large continuous recordings (greater than 4GB), you will need to reformat the thumb drive as NTFS.

If you have a self powered hard drive ('self powered' means it has its own power supply) which is USB connected, you can plug the USB cable from the hard drive into the front of the Rocket in place of the USB thumb drive. The Rocket itself does not have enough power to drive a hard drive, so it must be self powered.

Changing the Rocket bitrate (quality) and audio/video source settings is done through the Hauppauge Capture application. Connect your Rocket to a PC, install the Hauppauge Capture application. Then open Hauppauge Capture and adjust the bit rate (Quality) up or down using the bitrate slider. You can also change the audio/video source and the main audio volume.

Then close Hauppauge Capture.
Any adjustments you make in Hauppauge Capture (except for the microphone audio volume, which is adjusted standalone from the control panel on top of the Rocket) will be saved when you exit the application and be applied to standalone mode.

In stand alone mode:

• Blinking Blue - The blue light blinks while the Rocket is powering up, and then will blink blue if there is no Video or video is out of range
• Blinking Red - no thumb drive or a badly formatted thumb drive
• Blinking Green - HDCP detected
• Solid Green - Ready to record
• Red Record Ring - Recording!
• Solid Green going to Blinking Blue: this means the Rocket cannot 'see' an analog video source. In this case, you need to change the Rocket firmware to .43 (see this page at the bottom for instructions on how to change to .43 firmware)

When Rocket is PC connected:

• Blinking Blue - Applying a new setting - wait until the light goes to green (see the note below if the Blue light does not stop blinking)
• Solid Green - Ready to Record
• Red Record Ring - Recording!

First, we assume that your retro gameplay is coming in from composite video (the yellow cable) and left/right stereo audio.

OBS by default uses HDMI audio/video, so you need to change the source in OBS to composite video and left/right stereo audio. If you have the Hauppauge Component AV Cable (Part number 6021333), connect the yellow jack from your video source to the Blue RCA jack on the Hauppauge AV cable.

Here are the steps to setup OBS:

• First, make sure you have removed any HDMI cable connected to the HDMI In port on the back of the Rocket.
• Now, open Hauppauge Capture. In Hauppauge Capture under Video In, select Composite and under Audio In select AV In. Make sure you can see your retro game video in the Hauppauge Capture preview window. If not, check your cables. You must see video in Hauppauge Capture before you can move onto OBS
• Once you can see your video in the preview window, close Hauppauge Capture and open OBS
• The first thing to do in OBS is add a new Video Capture Device. In Sources, click the + and select Video Capture Device
• If you are using the Rocket, select IT9910 Capture and click OK
• Next, click Configure Crossbar. A few seconds later you should see the video source setup for the Rocket. Choose the source you are connected to, such as Composite In. You will have five choices: 0 Video Parallel Digital In which is HDMI, 1 Video YRYBY In which is Component video, 2 Video SVideo In which is S-Video, 3 Video Composite In for composite video and 4 Video RGB In
• Then finish the setup: click Apply, OK and then Deactivate, Reactivate and then OK

In about 15 seconds you should now see your composite video source in the OBS Preview window.

You probably used a FAT32 formatted USB thumb drive. If you format your thum drives as NTFS, you can make one recording as large as your thumb drive.

• On the PS4, go to Settings: from the main user interface, push up on the DualShock 4 to reach the top-level of the system’s menu, and select the toolbox labelled ‘Settings’
• Enter the System submenu: When the long list of options appears, scroll down to the icon named ‘System’ and select it
• Turn off HDCP encryption: You’ll find another long list in Settings. Scroll down to ‘Enable HDCP’ and ensure that the box to the right of the label is not ticked. It will be enabled by default, so simply click on it to disable the irritating feature. If you have any applications open, the system will ask you to close them, so make sure that you’ve saved your game before completing this last step.

The following information comes from the Xbox support site

Problem: Playing premium content on your console establishes an HDCP connection with your television. Some unintended video and sound behavior may occur if you plug in a DVR or home entertainment system while the console is turned on.

To resolve this problem, try the following solutions:

• Restart your Xbox One console:
  • Press the Xbox button on the console for ten seconds until the console turns off.
  • Touch the Xbox button on the console again to turn it on.
  • Try to play the content again.
• If your Xbox One console is in instant-on power mode:
  • Go to the Home screen.
  • Press the Menu button on your controller and select Settings.
  • Go to Power & startup, then Power options.
  • Select Power mode and then select Save Energy.
  • Turn off the console by holding the Xbox button.
  • Turn on the console by pressing the Xbox button, and then try to play the content again.

Hauppauge Capture uses any webcam, either HD or standard definition, as long as it has a 'raw' YUV or YUY2 mode. MJPEG and other compressed formats are not used. Your webcam can be 4:3 or 16:9. Popular webcams include the Microsoft Lifecam HD-3000 plus, if you have a laptop, the built-in webcam.

Hauppauge Capture chooses the most suitable video mode supported by your webcam. You can set the size of the video, and the format (4:3 or 16:9) in the Settings menu of Hauppauge Capture.

The Rocket records in standard video resolutions: 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p as well as several PC specific resolutions. When connected to a 1080p60 video source (HDMI from a game console or PC or Component video), the Rocket will record at 1080p30.

Using Component video, the Rocket can record up to 1080p at 30 frames per second.

Yes, the Rocket has a no delay pass-thru via HDMI Out so you can see your game on your TV set and at the same time, record your game play.

The red button is used to start and stop recordings while in standalone mode, and to start and stop streaming in StreamEez.

While in standalone mode, recordings are saved on a USB flash drive which is plugged into the front of the Rocket in an MP4 file format.

When in the PC connected mode, recordings are saved to your PC's hard drive. The default folder is c:\users\public\videos.

In standalone mode, recording length is only limited by the size of your NTFS formatted USB thumb drive. For example, a 32Gb NTFS USB thumb drive can hold up to 8 hours of video.

*PLEASE NOTE*: When recording to a USB thumb drive, unless the USB thumb drive is formatted as NTFS, your recordings are formatted in 2Gb file "chunks".

Yes. When the Rocket is used stand alone, you can plug your microphone or your headset's microphone into the 'Mic input' jack on the front of the Rocket. Then you can use the mixer panel on the top of Rocket to adjust your audio volume. In the stand alone mode, the recordings made onto the USB thumb drive have mixed game and microphone audio.

18Mbit/s

When used stand alone, the Rocket does not need any software to operate.

But the Rocket can also be connected to a PC so that you can record to the PC's disk drive. This is called 'PC connected mode of operation'. When PC connected, the Rocket works with our Hauppauge Capture software for recording and most third party editors for editing.

The red end of the USB cable is for power only: this is used when recording in standalone mode. The black end of the USB cable is used when operating in PC mode.

You can plug both the black and red ends into two USB ports, which will provide more power to the Rocket and is useful with certain low power USB ports.

Yes ... but.

You can plug an SSD drive into the Rocket's USB port, but the SSD drive needs to be 'self powered'. The Rocket on its own does not have enough power for the SSD.

This panel controls microphone settings. You can adjust the microphone audio volume, mute the microphone or add a +20db audio boost (used with unpowered microphones).

Yes. If you have a cable TV or satellite TV set top box with component video outputs, you can connect it to the Rocket using the supplied Hauppauge A/V Cable set. When using component video, you must use Hauppauge Capture and select 'Component Video' for video, and 'AV In' for audio.

You can also try to record TV shows from HDMI, but some shows have HDCP copy protection and cannot be recorded.

No, the Rocket is powered over USB. You can use a USB port on either your PC or game console. If you are trying to record a source without a USB port, you can use a standard USB power adapter as long as it is rated at 5v 1amp (minimum).

• Go to the Xbox Guide Menu.
• Go along to settings.
• Select Voice.
• Go down to voice output and select 'Play though both'. This will make the audio play out your TV and through your mic at the same time.

Depending on what game you are on, I highly recommend you turn down game volume as well as sometimes voice chat can't be heard because the game volume is too loud. However I guarantee that there will be a way to turn down your audio setting on whatever game you are on. Make sure you make it loud enough to hear, but quiet enough to make the voice chat clear and easy to hear.

Yes. The latest version of Hauppauge Capture includes StreamEez, for streaming with the Rocket to Twitch and YouTube.

To record audio from the Microphone input jack, there also must be some audio coming from either the HDMI or Component Video connectors on the back of the Rocket.

If your HDMI source does not have audio but you would like to record audio from the Microphone as your only source of audio, here is a work around: in Hauppauge Capture, select the audio source as 'AV In'. Even though you don't have an audio source connected to the Hauppauge AV connector on the back of the Rocket, this will allow audio to come from the Microphone jack.

Our tech support department made a video showing how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo74kk4kuRI