Capturing tutorial

Since there's been a lot of interest in it, I've written this liddul tutorial on how it works. First of all ty to madition who introduced me and guided me through all the settings and stuff. Some things might be very unclear but feel free to ask away, and I'll try to edit the tutorial accordingly if things need to be explained in more detail.

A few things you need to know beforehand:

- yes, it requires two pc's. it might work on one too, but it wont make you lag any less then using fraps for example, i think. you don't need that much pc power to capture on a second pc, so a very crappy one will do too.

- recording this way limits you to playing at 1024x786.

- advantages are that you can compress at the same time as you capture, producing fairly small filesizes - no lag on main pc - smooth picture, etc.

Step 1 - Hardware
Buy and install a tv-card on your second computer. Connect this one with an s-video cable to your gfx card. For me it looks like this:

Main pc:


Second pc:


Step 2 - Enabling the tv-signal
To get your gfx card to output the tv-signal, you need to follow a wizard, atleast with nvidia cards. Rightclick on your desktop and click properties (i think, stoopid dutch XP translates everything, the bottom option anyway). Its showed in the following picture. Make sure you have rebooted your computer since you have connected your tv-card to your gfx-card, or it won't be recognised.

Step 3 - Capture settings
I use virtualdub to capture the tvsignal, it should work with any capturing program but vdub is free and it works great.

Once you have downloaded and started up vdub, go to File > Capture AVI.



At the bottom of the screen it should give a message like this:



When it's connected to your tv-card, there's a few settings you need to set or doublecheck. If it doesn't connect to your tvcard, you can select it in Device. Note: If it's not in the list of devices, it's not been installed properly.



Then you need to make sure the source is set correctly in Video > Video source:

Doublecheck if the video standard is set to PAL_B in Video > Capture Filter:



In the same dialog you can add brightness and so on, personall I raised it from 5000 to 5600, which looks good at day and night.



Then, go to Video > Set custom format and copy these settings. You can alter them as much as you like, but I prefer the following:



Personally I use picvideo mjpeg 3 codec to compress the footage while its capturing, this saves a lot of hd space and it hardly gives a loss in quality. Once you have installed the codec, go to Video > Compression and select the mjpeg3 codec, and click Configure. I use the default settings, with quality set to 19:

If you want to capture audio too, make sure its enabled in the Audio menu. Note that this doesn't record your gamesounds, it records the sounds on your second computer. When I recorded the WI videos I joined ventrilo on my 2nd pc and captured the vent chat in the same file as the video. Saved me a lot of hassle to get them synced



Make sure video > preview is enabled to verify it works. I'm not sure if its a bug I have, but I have to enable preview first and then open Video > Set custom format and close the dialog without changing any settings before it actually starts previewing.

Once all the settings are done and you're happy with how it looks, set a capture file (a name for the file your footage is captured into. Personally I use names like jan15-ns-1.avi, jan16-eld-5, etc.



And to make it easy, enable auto-increment for filenames. This way you can cancel the capturing (hotkey is ESC), and re-start it quickly (hotkey is F6) without having to set a new file, it will automatically change the filename from capture1, to capture2, capture3, etc.



Extra notes
A few important things:

- Picvideo codec is not supported by Adobe Premiere (the editing program I prefer). I downloaded a trial version of morgan's multimedia codec and this one decodes the picvideo files just fine, and this one is supported by premiere. So, you can encode the captured footage with picvideo on your second pc and decode it for editing purposes on your main pc. Just make sure you don't install picvideo on your main pc, or you might get strange bugs. If you use vegas or anything else, it doesn't matter which one you have on your main pc.

- Having torch on increases recording quality a lot, even though it makes you light up. Most of the time I record I have torch on and removed the button because I tend to spam it on and off at times for some reason.

- There are certain scan converters for sale that allow you to play at higher resolutions, you plug a vga cable (if you have two on your gfx card anyways, you need one for your monitor obviously) into it and it downscales the signal to 1024x786 to send it over the s-video cable without getting pieces of the screen chopped off.

- I had huge problems with interferance leaking into the tv-signal, it appeared my soundcard was the problem. When I removed it, the signal was nice and sharp again, if you get the same kind of interferance make sure there isn't any other cards near the gfx-card.

- FH doesn't allow me to edit or use more then 4 images per post so I had to chop it in pieces, if anyone wants to host it, by all means feel free to

- It's just the way it worked for me, I'm no expert in any way, so if someone with more knowledge could add or modify info that'd be very nice. These are just the things that worked for me

- The reason I posted it in this section is because its mostly people from here that have watched my vids, and asked me how I record.

Rep point to VF.

I'll write a short tutorial to. Have someone send fraps to you. Hit f9 when you have inc lag. Hit f9 to stop recording after you pwned those nuubs.

hope i got it right in one time cus stoopid fh wont let me edit. ;d

if anything is unclear feel free to ask away, but theres no guarantee ill know the answer since im a noob to all of it too.

great stuff

I do have one question, personally my 2nd computer is a laptop wich means I have to order the USB version of the hauppage wintv card. Now my question is do you think USB will transfer data fast enough or do i need the USB2 version?

nerd

Brilliant, thanks alot, rep point given

Thanks VF, this is what I needed when we spoke last week or whenever it was
If you need bits editing, gimmie a shout!

great, think I will start to capture somewhere in the future, can this thread be stickyed?

Wrong forum though .

Castus said:

Wrong forum though .

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aww, hope you can sleep at night because i wanted to reach everyone who asked me with one thread instead of having to link all of them to a forum only a small percentage reads

Look forward to the strafe like a bitch tutorial then.

"ok"

omg that was so precious shrewsie

one thing though VF, that cable you have shown in your pics is not the standard s-video cable, like this one



any idea of a model number/manufacturer of the cable you are using?

another i need rep points post
but since you putted lots of work in this post i'll forgive you and give one aswell

the connector is exactely the same as on that picture, im very sure its a standard svideo cable tho it was the 'expensive' version with gold stuff on it, they didn't have anything else

Carter said:

another i need rep points post
but since you putted lots of work in this post i'll forgive you and give one aswell

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actually i just wanted to be able to give people a thread to read so it saves me replying the same thing over and over again, and considering its not easy to explain it in a few sentences im sure i forgot some things rep is just a bonus!

well, i found what i am looking for

TV-in card
http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=15409359540&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=98130

It looks as though it comes with the cables you need, if you gfx card comes with a TV out it should have been packaged with the cables you need too.

the cable VF uses is something like this;

http://www.ebuyer.com/customer/products/index.html?rb=15409496869&action=c2hvd19wcm9kdWN0X292ZXJ2aWV3&product_uid=86006

bit pricy though

good stuff!

now i can respec to battlewarden and make a vid of total pwnage

:d

nah rav, i dont spend that much cash on a cable when im a poor student. its this one, costed 9 euros i think



the pictures are kinda vague because there isnt much light in my room and im not an expert in taking pictures in the dark - you might have confused it with the bundle of cables that came with my gfx card, its got loads of different connectors but im only using the tv-out :d

heres a picture of that bundle:

Very much <3 VF, finally got my goddamn stuff to work aswell
Lub you wifv mouth :]

duact said:

I do have one question, personally my 2nd computer is a laptop wich means I have to order the USB version of the hauppage wintv card. Now my question is do you think USB will transfer data fast enough or do i need the USB2 version?

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go copy 1 gig with USB 1... and if you still don't know what the answer is after that:

nerf i have had all the needed stuff since i started playing, too bad none wrote this kind of tutorial b4

raid said:

nerf i have had all the needed stuff since i started playing, too bad none wrote this kind of tutorial b4

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so come play again! daoc isn't half as fun without our precious mamba

Vodkafairy said:

nah rav, i dont spend that much cash on a cable when im a poor student. its this one, costed 9 euros i think

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Great, thats the one i thought it would be, saves me ~£60. cheers

Vodkafairy said:

so come play again! daoc isn't half as fun without our precious mamba

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arid agrees :<