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Geek Culture / Video capture?

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Ian T
22
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Joined: 12th Sep 2002
Location: Around
Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:19
Hello all.

Before anything else, my system specs;

AMD Athalon 1ghz
384MB SDRAM
Radeon 9500 Pro
Windoze 98SE


Okay, now what I want to do is get a decent video from a fairly CPU-taxing game. I've been expirimenting with various video capturing tools for a while, and Camtasia Studio is the best (too bad my trial is expired ), but I still get very low performance. I wouldn't mind even 8fps, as I actually plan to speed the video up x2 in an editing utility, but I'm getting 4 (optimistic here).

I'm capturing the center of a 640x480 screen, so it's roughly 550x400 in size.

I know my video card should be fine, especially seeing as I have turned all video options (on card and in game) down to minimum, but I suppose my CPU falls short of what one would want...

I've heard that 2000/XP are the only decent OSs if you want to use video capture. Is this really true? I know they handle system resources better, but is there any way around it?

And is there any way I can utilize my video card's TV-out to capture video (might be a dumb question)?

Thanks in advance.
--Mouse

Famous Fighting Furball
andrew11
21
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Location: United States
Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:21
Your video card has a TV output, so can't you just connect it to a VCR and record?

"All programmers are playwrites and all computers are lousy actors" -Anon
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:28
1- I don't have a TV in my room and would rather not bring one up.

2- I don't have tapes to burn and no DVD-R drive.

3- I have no way of getting those tapes onto my PC anyways.

--Mouse

Famous Fighting Furball
andrew11
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:36
Who said anything about DVD's? I meant VCR. You know with the tapes. Connect a VCR, press record (usually "REC"), pop out the tape and there you go.

I think I am missing the point of this topic.

"All programmers are playwrites and all computers are lousy actors" -Anon
Ian T
22
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:42
You didn't read what I said.

2- I don't have tapes to burn

3- I have no way of getting those tapes onto my PC anyways.

--Mouse

Famous Fighting Furball
andrew11
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Location: United States
Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:47 Edited at: 24th Jul 2003 05:49
What????

VCR tapes are not used in the PC or whatever you think. VCR tapes are square and have a magnetic ribbon inside. The magnetic record head on the VCR (Ever hear of one?) passes over the tape ribbon and aligns the particles so it can store data. You said you have a video card with TV output. Instead of connecting it to the TV, connect the wire to a VCR.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/vcr.htm

"All programmers are playwrites and all computers are lousy actors" -Anon
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:52
Oh, god, you really don't get it at all...

I Do Not Have Any Spare Tapes To Record Onto

That one clear?

Next.

I Have No Way Of Transfering The Film On Those Tapes Onto My PC And They Are Of No Use To Me Off It

Got it yet?

--Mouse

Famous Fighting Furball
andrew11
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:54 Edited at: 24th Jul 2003 05:54
Ok, whatever, Nevermind. Misunderstanding. Sorry.

"All programmers are playwrites and all computers are lousy actors" -Anon
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 05:55
That's quite alright, I was just trying to make you understand . I'm not angry or anything

--Mouse

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Mattman
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Location: East Lansing
Posted: 24th Jul 2003 06:55
8 fps is slow, don't you think?

---Mattman
DID YOU KNOW THAT ???
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 07:03
4 fps tends to be slower, no?

--Mouse

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andrew11
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 07:05 Edited at: 24th Jul 2003 07:05
It dosen't really matter how slow it goes, just to make a video. You can always speed the video up, as Mouse said.

"All programmers are playwrites and all computers are lousy actors" -Anon
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 20:12
Anyone ?

--Mouse

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the_winch
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Location: Oxford, UK
Posted: 24th Jul 2003 21:46
There has been a similar topic before, despite people saying it is posible I think there is just too much information for the computer to cope with. I don't know what os would be best but xp is a cpu and ram hog and my experiance would say win98 would be better than xp.I don't know about win2000, never really used it.

The best posible way is with a video card with a tv out, a digital video recorder and a firewire card. If you don't have one you are just going to have to do it at 4fps.
Andy Igoe
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 22:29
I used to use Hypercam you might want to try that.

However you are never going to get amazing recording framerates of the action because Windows does not know how to assign task priorities. Your not using an Amiga here.

To remedy this you might wish to try generally speading the computer up by Ctrl-Alt-Del everything except Explorer and running at 640x480x256 resolution.

Additionally try slowing the gameplay down on the game, perhaps you have a joypad with an autofire that can pause/unpause the game? Or maybe you could just try loading tons of programms in the background so everything runs slowly and just maybe Hypercam or whichever program you use will get a higher priority...

My solution to this would be as the previous poster suggested streaming it off onto video tape and then grabbing the sequence back in, sadly though as you said you dont have any video grabbing hardware - that kinda puts pay to that.

Pneumatic Dryll
Ian T
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Posted: 24th Jul 2003 22:31
Oh well. Thank you everyone. I'll do what I can, I appreciate the information.

--Mouse

Famous Fighting Furball

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