capturing windows through software.. is it possible?

[cheftournel]

Hello,

Since I'm a musician, I don't have much experience with vj-ing soft. However, since I'm currently working on a multimedia project, I need to generate some video material that should come from a Commodore 64 software emulator on a Windows PC. Of course, the first suggestion would be to capture the ongoing action onscreen directly from the emulator onto my harddisk, if possible by using a windows program that can convert the screen images into a playable movie file. So my question is this: does anyone know of a program or utility that can do this, and do you any suggestion where I can buy/download it?

Thanks in advance
chefT

[sleepytom]

theres a load of screen capture utils - "snaggit" is popular apparently - trouble is that they are all made for making training videos and so the frame rates are very poor.

the best option is to use a scanconverter to convert your screen output to a video signal and capture this on another computer with a capture card in. you can rent scanconverters from any large av hire company if you don't want to buy one.

[eXhale]

Another one is Hypercam (http://www.hyperionics.com/hc/index.asp) but, as Tom said, this kind of software use almost all your computer resources and so you don't have enough left to run the software to create the visuals.

[infopocalypse]

A software scan convertor and AVI capture... I'd say we're maybe a month from beta.

[MoRpH]

hmmm well unless you have a composite video out on your PC it isn't a scan convertor but really a screen zoomer.... I am looking foward to this app though would be great to be able to zoom a part of the screen and then select where to send the zoomed signal too, like the composite out or VGA out on your laptop ot the second head on your dual head card or second video card or what eva :)

[infopocalypse]

On my Dell lappie today... we're going to tweak the GUI to allow mouse dragging (instead of by metrics) selection of area, and we're also going to add the AVI. On hardware accellerated systems (that being true Dual Head graphics cards, such as the Nvidia I tested it on), it works very well. On an AGP + PCI situation (two separate cards) you get lower framerates (30 fps on the Nvidia with almost no bang into the processor, 25 fps on the AGP + PCI situation, with a large bang on the processor). We'll put it through some more hardware difficulties, and I would prefer to get it tested under a Matrox dual-head and an ATI dual head (All in Wonder Radeon 7500s and up) prior to release. Hint hint to anyone who has that hardware... free copy is in it for ya.

James

[MoRpH]

what about selecting an area to send out the composite out on lappies???

[LEVLHED]

why would I want a program like this for my Matrox G450 when its software does this already?

maybe I'm missing something....

[MoRpH]

Because laptops are smaller and easier to work with and I don't know a laptop that has that matrox card in it!!! and since infos first post this has changed to a thread about laptops.

[infopocalypse]

Would be usefu. anything that will capture a zoomed AVI @ 25+ fps will be very useful for video sampling. I simply want to make sure that that half of it works on a Matrox, so I can market its compatibility for it.

[Bildersturm]

We tested a lot of possibilities to screen capture video and the best program we think in regards of image quality and frame rate gets Camtasia Recorder.
If you turn off hardware acceleration you won?t have any problems with frame rates even with bigger resolutions and the avi video will be captured in a properatry codec called "TechSmith Screen Capture Codec" that has an excellent quality.

But: You cannot capture sound at the same time (only a "narration" using a microphone) as this program is also targeted towards the training video folks.

I think Camtasia is a very useful tool for all kinds of quick VJ loop production tasks. You can evaluate it for free I think for 40 days.

Best regards,
Bildersturm

[infopocalypse]

Did some tests the last few days on SoftScan. Outputting to a 2nd monitor using SVI we got a grand 28 fps. AVI capture works perfectly, and we support any codec on any system, with the exception of DivX 5.0.2 ( a personal test caused quite a problem, and so we have decided to block DivX 5.0.2 until we determine what they did to cause such crash ). We also don't do audio, but you can layer on Audio with VirtualDub so this should not be a large problem.

James

[sleepytom]

video capture without audio is like cheese without biscuits

[infopocalypse]

What?

Forgive my Americanism but I've never had cheese with biscuits, and am not a big enough fan of cheese to have cheese on its own. Is this a good or a bad thing?

If it's a bad thing... how bad? Important enough that you would wait or pay extra for it?

James

[sleepytom]

video capture without sound is bad (as is cheese without biscuits) and theres no real need to do it as loop back sound capture is very easy to implerment (assuming your using directx)

--
remember audiovisual is the future - start supporting it now;)

[infopocalypse]

All right problem A isnt that you're dealing with window'd capture... it's that you'd have to figure out where the sound is coming from now as well... that's two separate devices you'd have to read and reading from the window is bad enough sometimes. Using DirectSound is a cheaper and easier solution, hence the narrate, but it would never support audio capture in the same way, nor is it really designed to.

It's designed to send output to a second monitor, with AVI input as a very nice perk. Furthermore it would never be able to do audio production, or sync audio in the same manner. If you want to capture that, save the audio separately and interlace with the video in VirtualDub... this will lead to much more imaginative stuff anyways.

James

[munecouno]

use camstudio, you can download it from http://www.atomixbuttons.com/vsc/

i'm using this software with good results. the problem is the hard disk usage, if you use the same hard disk to play software and save the capture avi file, you'll get some freezes, but if your capture on a second hard disk you'll get very good results

to capture the sound simply put your default audio record input (mixer, line-in, mic, etc.) and camsutdio will capture it without problems