If you're thinking about capturing your own videos, you need to make sure you have (or can get) the following equipment:
A computer with at least a 1.7GHz processor. My capture card said I need a 900MHz processor, but if you want to capture decently (ie. with quality), you will want something with some grunt.
At least 2GB free on your hard drive. When making a raw video, the quality is huge. A two minute video could be about 600MB. You'll want heaps of space free on your drive for videos like this.
Lots of RAM. 128MB is barely enough, 256MB is okay, and 512MB is plently.
I find it's much easier to capture with Windows XP, but whatever operating system you use might be easy for you.
A capture card. It doesn't matter what brand or type, but it must have AV inputs (yellow/white and sometimes red as well). Make sure it says on the box that it can capture. There's no use getting a capture card when you can only view things on it.
An AV cable. If you capture card doesn't have one, make sure you have one already.
A VCR, duh.
Setting it up
The first thing you need to do is put your capture card in the machine. If you've never seen the inside of a computer case before, I strongly suggest you get someone else like a technician to do this. If you're comfortable with putting it in, you may do so.
Some basic guidelines:
- Turn off the computer like normal, then turn it off at the wall and unplug the power cable from the box.
- Unscrew the side of the case and take itt off.
- Find a free PCI slot and push the capturre card into there.
- Make sure all the ports stick out the baack nicely, then put a screw in the right place so it stays put. Be sure that all the connectors are in place or you could smoke it.
- Shove the side of the case back on, connnect the power, and fire it up.
So now your capture card is in the PC. After turning it on, whatever operating system you load will probably detect the new device and ask you for drivers. Your capture card should have come with an installation CD, so put that in your drive. If anything starts up from the CD, just close it. On the installation dialog box, make sure it searches the CD. Click Next a few times, and it should install itself.
If it doesn't install (because it didn't find the drivers on the CD), close that box and go into My Computer. Double click your CD drive to make the CD's menu thing appear again, then look for a link or button to install the driver. That should work.
Once it looks like it's done, go take a peak at your Device Manager. In the latest OS's, that's in Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager. Make sure there are no question marks, exclaimation marks or anything weird next to your capture card in the list (if you can't see your capture card immediately in the list, it's fine). If there's something weird there, double click the device and it should say what's wrong. If it says the driver's aren't installed, try installing them again. If it say's there's an IRQ conflict, try putting it in a different PCI slot. If that fails, get someone else to help you.
It may or may not ask you to reboot.
Capture programs
You'll want to install the program which came with your capture card so you can see what does first. To do that, just go into My Computer and double click the CD drive to open the CD menu, then click something along the lines of "Install". Most of the stuff will be default: Default location, default type of install (typical), etc.
Now you'll want to run the program. It probably placed an icon on your desktop or start menu, so run that. I can't explain in detail what you'll see next, as that depends on what program you got with your capture card. You should be able to see a display window. That window might be a solid black, solid blue, solid green, or static. That's normal. That indicates your capture card is working.
Most of the programs which come with capture card are real bombs. Some of the popular capture/video editing programs out there are:
- Adobe Premiere 6.0
- Windows Media Encoder 9
- Windows Movie Maker (WinXP only)
- VirtualDub
Which one(s) you get depend(s) on a lot of things. VirtualDub is good for making huge AVI files, which are great for editing because they have heaps of quality. Those are the big 600MB video files. You'd then edit it if you wish using Adobe Premiere, or Windows Movie Maker. Premiere compresses the video and outputs them as AVI. Windows Movie Maker compresses them as well and outputs them as WMV files. Remember, you won't be using VirtualDub alone. No one wants to be on the receiving end of a 600MB video.
My personal favourite is Windows Media Encoder 9. It can convert/compress any file into a small WMV, which is great for the finishing touch on any editing you'll do. You can also capture directly into it, and it will automatically compress it and output as a WMV while you capture.
What you use is your choice, so I won't assume you went for any certain one. I suggest you try them all out to see which ones you can use easily.
Your first capture
So now we've chosen a program, downloaded and installed it via the setup file. Start it up and dig around for some options...
- If you live in Australia, England, or annywhere which uses PAL, find the PAL_B option and choose that.
- If you're in America, or anywhere which uses NTSC, find the NTSC_M option and choose that.
- If PAL is your normal console, but you have NTSC as well, and record your NTSC onto a PAL VCR, use PAL_B for your PAL videos and NTSC_M for your NTSC videos. Your NTSC videos will be black and white.
- If PAL is your normal console, but you hhave NTSC as well, and record your NTSC onto an NTSC VCR, use the PAL_B option for both your PAL and NTSC videos. Your NTSC videos won't be full screen.
- Frame rate should be 29.97 fps.
- A good screen size is 320 x 240.
- Video source should be Composite.
- Set the capture file. Where do you want to save it? (it may ask you this after you finish capturing).
Now go get your VCR and cables, then sit them next to the computer. Plug one of the yellow plugs from the AV cable into the Video Out on the VCR, and the white cable into the Audio Out on the VCR. If there's another Audio Out on your VCR, plug the red one in there. On the other end of that cable, plug the yellow plug into the Video In on the capture card, and the white/red into the Audio In on the capture card. Your capture card should come with a small cable. Plug that from the Audio Out on the capture card to the Line In(put) on your sound card.
Assuming you set it up correctly, and remembered to plug the VCR in at the wall and turn it on, you should get some form of display in your capture card program. Put any tape in the VCR and play that while we figure out how to set this up properly.
Do you hear the audio from the tape through your computer speakers? If yes, that's great. If no, check the following:
- Make sure your speakers are turned on annd have a good volume.
- Double click the speaker icon in the botttom right. Make sure everything is up loud here and not muted (if the icon isn't there, you can enable it in the Sound option in Control Panel).
- Make sure you set the source as Compositte.
- Does that part of the tape even have souund? Is it playing in the VCR correctly? Do your speakers work with other sounds?
I had a problem where I could hear audio when I was using Windows 2000 Professional. This was instantly fixed when I upgraded to Windows XP.
So now we're actually ready to capture. Look for a button that says "Start Capture" or "Start Encoding". After a few seconds, click "Stop", and find the file on your drive you just made. Watch it. If it jumps around a lot, you might have your frame rate set too low, or it make be because your computer isn't powerful enough to capture. Try closing some programs before you capture and try again. If you heard audio while you captured, but it's not in the video, try going into your Audio Properties (double click the speaker icon in the bottom right). From here, choose Options > Properties. Choose the Recording button, then make sure "Line In" is ticked in the list. Hit OK, then make sure Line In is turned up. Then try to capture again.
Editing the videos
Two programs are good for this: Adobe Premiere and Windows Movie Maker V2.0 (get version 2.0 from WindowsUpdate.com - Again, XP only). Using these programs, you can add title screens which then fade into the video, backgrounf music, or both. I prefer to use Windows Movie Maker for editing, though.
Here's a tip: For background music, you can usually do it automatically by playing the song on your computer while you capture!
