screen capturing visulisations

[Skwish]

Hi all

Couple of questions if possible

Ive got Camstudio and what im looking to do is capture some visulisations from my Winamp while its playing on my desktop to play about with in Vegas for a little home movie im doing(trying to learn about vid production at the min).....if you use winamp you'll know which i mean, the random patterns etc in the Visulisation plugin.

My prob is when capturing its really bad quality, stuttery if you know what i mean, like a dodgy animated gif. Ive had a mess about with the frame rate etc but being a newbie i cant figure out good settings to get smooth videos like see on screen.

The video file size seems to be massive aswell, a 25 sec capture was 68MB , settings where 30
frames/sec @ 520x352 using the default 'TechSmith Screen Capture Codec' without audio capturing the winamp window.......can anyone shed any light?

Or if anyone can recommend any better ways/apps to capture the vid would be much appriciated

thanks alot

[daamon]

Hi Skwish,

Have you read this:

www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=460#460

[Skwish]

Hi Daamon

thx for the quick response. Not really what im after, i can get Camstudio to capture the winamp visuals, the prob is the capture avi is really bad quality, really jerky. The visuals look fine when im not recording, smooth etc, but when recording and playing back the avi theyre really 'animated gif' looking. What im after is the sort of settings in Camstudio that would be good for capturing, frame rate that sort of thing if anyone has any ideas.

cheers anyway, appriciated

[CrustyCurmudgeon]

I don't think you can get a good high frame rate capture unless you shrink the capture area size way down. like 160x120. Even then, it may not be possible to hit 30 frames er second.

If you do the math for a capture area of 640x480 at 30 frames per second you'll see you're trying to grab 27 megabytes per second from the video processor. If it's AGP, it won't be able to handle that. The AGP bus is very fast moving data from PC to video card, but much slower going in the opposite direction. I don't know if this is due to the video drivers or the bus.

I do know my old PCI bus Riva TNT video card could easily manage this sort of speed though.

[olyteddy]

Hmmm...If I wasn't recording Family Guy right now I'd try it: Connect your computers TV out to your Capture device input and record that way...

[daamon]

Not really what im after, i can get Camstudio to capture the winamp visuals, the prob is the capture avi is really bad quality, really jerky. The visuals look fine when im not recording, smooth etc, but when recording and playing back the avi theyre really 'animated gif' looking. What im after is the sort of settings in Camstudio that would be good for capturing, frame rate that sort of thing if anyone has any ideas.

Oh well - it was worth a try.

As others have said, it may be that your hardware can't cope or it may be a limitation in CamStudio.

I've used Fraps successfully before. Details here:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?p=1371583#1371583

See if that helps any... Good luck!

[olyteddy]

Hey, feeding the Video out from the laptop into the Hauppauge card worked. The visualization flows pretty smoothly, but there is a bit of tiling becase of the high rate of change in the delta frames. I can probably fine tune that a bit. Cool...

[Skwish]

cheers for the replys guys , i'll keep at it

[Skwish]

thx for the help guys, tried Fraps and it seems to do the trick for the most part...couple of the winamp visuals cause a bit of jerkyness but most are ok at 30 frames/sec so thx for all the help, appriciated 8o)

[daamon]

thx for the help guys, tried Fraps and it seems to do the trick for the most part...couple of the winamp visuals cause a bit of jerkyness but most are ok at 30 frames/sec so thx for all the help, appriciated 8o)

As you're in the UK, you're in the PAL region. PAL specs for video is 25 frames per second. I mention this for two reasons:

1) Capturing at 30 fps when it's being delivered at 25fps may be causing your jerkiness.
2) If you're planning on using the captured visualisations in an (S)VCD or DVD, you'll want it at 25fps.

So, in short, try re-capturing at 25fps and see how you go - I doubt it'll make it worse, it could make it better, and it'll be at the right frame rate for your home movie.