[eN] -- Detailed Capturing Tutorial With Screenshots

[eNet]

PLEASE ASK ME IF YOU WANT TO COPY THE TUTORIAL TO SOME OTHER SITE, RESPECT ME, PLEASE I SPENT COUPLE HOURS FOR IT FOR THIS

This is not a tutorial of mixmaking, this is tutorial for those who would like to have footage in the right way, I decided to write about capturing, what in few years I have realised to do better, to get the best quality, size and so on. Some bolded words are clickable, so click it and you will see a screenshot or will be taken to some place for a download, if needed

I) Basics about capturing
II) Prepare for capturing
III) Capturing process
IV) Rendering


Basics about capturing


Capturing is simply rip (record) programs from TV. The way I use is with TV Card as known as Capturing Device (not the one with TV-Out in your graphics device), I use Leadtek Winfast XP/2000 TV, which costs around 50-60 dollars, if you haven't a TV Card ripper, I recommend you this, because it's pretty cheap and you can get pretty good quality of the video. And overall, Leadtek TV Cards are the best ones yet from which I tried (I sticked with the current one though). You have to got a good computer, processor, especially, to capture in highest quality, otherwise frames may drop. On my Pentium 4 2.4 GHz, I never got dropped frames, when I captured this way I wrote below. You need LOTS of space to capture at best quality, like 20 GB for one hour (of course, you can make the file smaller at the beggining, but quality will be lower a bit too, read more in III) Capturing). Also you need a fast hard drive (7200 rpm recommended). It is also good for both, capturing and rendering, to have a codec pack with much codecs, I prefer Ace Mega Codecs Pack


Prepare for capturing


a) Capturing programs, types of drivers

Usually the software you get with bought TV Card sucks, as much I have tried, it causes some various problems (like big audio/video desynchronisation, which is unfixable, or without a reason hue/saturated colors), so we should use some program from internet. There are two types of capturing drivers - VfW and WDM. VfW is not used anymore, as new, WDM drivers were made. Depends on which drivers are installed on your system you should choose a program, personally I use iuVCR and it is working really fine, I will talk more about this capturing program below. You can also capture with VirtualVCR. These are few WDM drivers' programs. VfW programs are VirtualDub, VirtualdubMod, i'm not sure but both of them supports WDM too, I think. If you do not know which type of drivers are installed on your PC (VfW, or WDM) you should try just both supported programs to find out which you need to use.

b) Codecs

Codecs is most important part of capturing. In the beggining you have to choose a loseless codec (which means, you wouldn't lose quality at the first step of ripping). I have tried to use two codecs - HuffYUV and PicVideo MJPEG. I use PicVideo codec, because somewhy HuffYUV didn't work for me (I wasn't sure but it seemed like I had installed old version of it, which only worked with VfW drivers, then I sticked with PicVideo for long time), PicVideo costs though, if you capture with their trial version, when decompressing it makes such a logo, or writing I don't remember. If you will really want it, you can easily find a crack/serial for it in internet (I'd post it by myself but i'm not sure if it is allowed in rules to do that here). The rest of tutorial is with PicVideo codec, but i'm really sure it's easy to handle HuffYUV too.

c) Misc

I haven't much to say here, only if you want to have scheduled capturing, right click on the Desktop, then click properties, click on ScreenSaver tab, in the bottom see for a 'Power' button, click on that. It should be set like that:

Power schemes: Always On
Turn off monitor: Never
Turn off hard disks: Never
System standby: Never

This is only if you want to capture by setting tasks (scheduled), otherwise if system gets to standby, or turn off hard disks you would lose data/video, which you of course do not want to. You also have to clean your hard drive for some space.


Capturing process


a) General Tab

So, you have downloaded & installed some programs i offered you to and decided to capture some video. Go to iuVCR (by default it's in Program files\iuLAB\iuVCR), you should see something like this. Set the location you want the file would be captured to (press on that little yellow blank, near the white box, under "Name". Be sure "To add timestamp" has a V, so every new cap would get a new unique name, there wouldn't be any overwritten files.

b) Video Tab

Click on Video tab, set your Capturing device, and the compression (it should be PicVideo or either HuffYUV codec). Here is how it is looking in my pc. Click on Capture Format, now you may set it customly, as you better want, after few tries you will realise which is better, but remember some things:

- Color format/compression should be set to YUY2
- As much bigger resolution is the better quality is on the same (or almost same) filesize of smaller resolution
- As much bigger resolution is the more resources it takes to capture (if you have a really bad PC you probably start dropping frames while capturing)
- As much bigger resolution is the more time it takes to render (I remember rendering full games at 720x576 resolution for 15 hours with my pc, it probably would take even longer with a bad pc (over 24 hours or more).

I don't know the exact the difference of 2x3, 3x4, 9x11, but it's like 3x4 is if you later want to burn it as DVD, it's PAL resolutions and 9x11 is NTSC. Not sure, though, I don't know much about those things, so I won't tell much. I didn't have any difference on PC resolution, so I took the highest possible, if it's a full game usually I take 352x288 or 512x384 resolution (so rendering takes less time), and for really good games, TV shows I take 640x480, 720x576 or 768x576 (takes lots of more time to render). Other TV cards can capture in bigger resolution like 1024x768, this was just an example with Leadtek Winfast XP/2000. Press OK, to go out from "Capture Format".

Click on (in the right of where you did set codec). Then press on Settings Tab there, it should look like this. Everythign should be like that, except you could change Compression/Quality setting, to have quality better, or filesize smaller (remember, every filesize would go to the same in the end, but quality would be different). If I set Compression/Quality to 19 it takes me around 15 GB for hour, 20 takes 30 GB and more for hour (I recommend to capture full games at 18-19 if you haven't enough hard disk space). Press OK to go out from this window.

Click , on Video decoder set your incoming signal (SECAM, PAL or NTSC, PAL is usually used in Eurpe and NTSC in North America, while SECAM is old format, probably you will have it in some old VHS tapes). On Video Proc Amp tab you may change Brightness, Contrast, Hue, Saturation etc, you may reduce all those things later, while rendering though. You may change nothing there if you don't need to.

Audio, Channels & other Tabs

Set here your Audio Device in Device settings, find the correct Mixer Input (for me it's Line In), to hear the sound. You can also adjust the volume of recorded video here. Press on Configure, under Format. In new opened window set Format to PCM, and attributes are set up to you (I use 48.000 kHz, 16 Bit, Stereo, 187 kb/sec). Press OK, pretty much everything done here.

Click on channels tab, press Scan so new channels are scanned, set the incoming signal format too (SECAM, PAL or NTSC). When scan is over you're done too. In some ways I couldn't scan, so if you can't scan, or you can't find any channels, just tell me i'll write about it (now it's too complicated to write about it for me).

I don't use other tabs, except Info tab when capturing, that's, because just I don't need them. You can browse through them and see if you find anything interesting.

Once you're done with settings click Enable Preview, if you see the view of the channel floating everything is ok, you may see lines (known as interlance), but don't worry about it as it'll be fixed while rendering.

Press Start record to start capturing.

As "The text that you have entered is too long (14260 characters). Please shorten it to 10000 characters long." the rest of tutorial is in post #2

[eNet]

The continued part of tutorial

Rendering


Once finished capturing you need to compress the file with some codec, that's what i'll explain in this part. Rendering with VirtualDub pluses over some other (lets say mixmaking) software like Vegas Video:

+ Faster rendering
+ Better output file's quality
- No effects, hardly addable logo

a) Preparing for rendering

For rendering it is enough to use one program (which is better than all other in my opinion), and which is also may be used for capturing -- VirtualDub. Download/install it. Make sure you have some good codec, like DivX, or XviD. Myself I prefer XviD, because it makes video's quality better with same filesize (if compared to DivX).

b) Rendering process

These codecs' examples are with installed of Ace Mega Codecs Pack, if you haven't one of those codecs which is written in this tutorial, download it here

Open VirtualDub. Click File -> Open and select the big file you finished capturing with iuVCR (or some other program). You should see anything similiar to this.

Make sure that Video -> Full processing mode is set.

Press Video -> Filters, new filters' window will open. Click Add, choose deinterlance, press OK, make sure that you set Blend fields together (best) and click OK. You should see a line, of added deinterlance filter should appear in filters window. In filters you can do whatever you need -- if your video is too dark, press Add and choose brightness/contrast etc., I offer you to check most of the filters yourself if you see anything more could be usable for you. After you added all filters you want press OK in filters window so it will close and get back into the same view you saw in the beggining. But now also you can see how filters will change the video, example of what did deinterlace filter change (the input and output to compare).

We will choose codec now, press Video -> Compression and choose codec from the list, I recommend to choose XviD MPEG-4 Codec. Once you choose that click Configure, settings should look like this, except the biotrate. Size of the file depends on bitrate, as bitrate is higher - the higher filesize is. Examples* for 1 hour len video:

<1000 Kbps is 500 MB or less, very low quality
1000-1600 is 500-770 MB, low quality
1600-1900 is 770-900 MB, good quality
1900-2500 is 900-1150 MB, great quality
>2500 is 1150 MB or more, very high quality

*All, if audio is 128 Kbps.

But actually you may not see the difference if you set bitrate to 2000 or 2500, both would be very good quality, but different filesizes, so you need to find the most optimal bitrate.Also, you can also press calc and calculate your bitrate by entering what video size is supposed to be and length of it. Once you are done press OK and OK, until you get into the window you started.

If you have audio/video desynchronisation press Video -> Frame Rate and under Source frame rate adjustment set it to Change so video and audio durations match, press OK. If it's still desynchronisated you would have to set the frame rate manually.

Set Audio -> Full processing mode.

Click Audio -> Compression, best codec for me is LameMP3 codec, if you have it - select it, in the right side select 48000 Hz, 128 Kbps, CBR, Stereo. Should be looking like this example. Click OK.

Now u're pretty much over with configuration, if you want to cut anything from the video (if it's a full game commercials or stuff like that). Use and to select the place which you want to delete and click Delete button on the keyboard. If you have like 10 seconds you want to save don't try deleting all the video around it, just select those 10 seconds, don't press Delete button, but do what's written below.

You're done. Finally

Press File -> Save as AVI choose the place you want to save the file and click save. And wait. Be patient

Later I'll also write about more Features, like scheduled capturing/rendering, or detailed look at VirtualDub.

PLEASE ASK ME IF YOU WANT TO COPY THE TUTORIAL TO SOME OTHER SITE, RESPECT ME PLEASE, I SPENT COUPLE HOURS FOR IT FOR THIS

P.S. My english is terrible at some points of tutorial but you should understand everything
P.S.1 If anything is not clear, or you just don't understand something - feel free to ask, I'll try to answer all questions.
P.S.2 Probably some mod could make it a sticky...?
P.S.3 Karma and points appreciated

[chezzy62]

OHHHHHHHH DAMN! Wow man this is simply unbelivable, I cap with a DVD Recorder, so im not gonna use this, but good god man this is huge, im gonna give you karma and 100 points I guess, wow man I really appreciate your contribution.

EDIT:

Whoa I didn't notice the rendering part, thats gonna help me cap full games for torrents and render em out. RESPECT. Mods, please make this a sticky for the cappers.

[Kobe MVP]

man can't u pm me tha mjpeg's crack?
karma will be donated of course

[FoC]

well done eNet I didn't learn anything new but still good effort writing it all down so other people can learn.

Good Job!

[EVM]

Or you could buy a DVD recorder for your TV and just import the footage you recorded onto a DVD; right from the DVD. Nice tutorial thoough...

[eNet]

Originally Posted by EaglesVideoMaker

Or you could buy a DVD recorder for your TV and just import the footage you recorded onto a DVD; right from the DVD. Nice tutorial thoough...

Well, DVD recorders are few times more expensive than simple TV cards (prices are from 200$, I believe), while TV card is really much cheaper, and the quality in the end is pretty the same. Of course, if you have money the better choice for you is DVD Recorder, as the whole process becomes faster.. But well, actually I have seen lots of such cappers (with DVD Recorders, I mean), but they don't even remove the interlance, so maybe at least rendering poart of the tutorial would be helpful for them..

I don't have the equipment need to cap, but I appreciate the time you've taken to make that uber post.

[ChApU#5]

This is an awesome work man, I use DVD Recorder to cap games but this is pretty useful for ppl that are going to start capping with TV Card.

I think I can't give you karma, I gave you because of your rare clips ;)

[Stevenson1]

dangg, sweet man
I cant believe I missed this..

Karma for you for sure.. such a sweet post.

and you can use this for live tv too?

does anyone in here use a video camera or dvd player to tape games and stuff..?