Screen Capture to .AVI?
13 messages in this thread
I am looking for an alternative to Lotus Screencam for capturing "live"
computer screen activity and mouse movement to either an .AVI or .MOV file. Is
there any software out there that does this? I was thinking of feeding the
video output from one computer through a VGA to TV converter, then back into
the video capture board of a second computer. This seems like a lot of trouble
and I am concerned there would be a unsatisfactory loss of quality.
Any thoughts on the matter greatly appreciated.
Remy
Hi Remy,
VFW1.1 has a utilitie in it that does just what you are looking for. You simply
turn it on and it captures all screen movements into an .avi file. I have only
played with it a little as I havent had any use for it so far.
Cheers BH
I've used the screen capture to AVI utility quite a bit – it works well but you
need quite a bit of processing power especially if you want to capture a
multimedia application as it is running (I used this to create demonstrations
for use in on line help within a touch screen kiosk type apllication – it works
OK bur you are limited to 3 or 4 frames a second (Pentium 90/32 Megs RAM!)
Hi Remy-
Sorry, I don't have any answers for you, but I'm in the same boat. Have you
heard of a program called … CameraMan (I think?)? It sounds like it might do
the screen capture, but I'm not sure, so don't want to spend the money yet.
If you find anything that works well, I'd appreciate you passing it on…
THANKS!
Lauren Merrill
MERILab, Inc.
Merrill, Lauren:
>Have you heard of a program called … CameraMan (I think?)? It sounds like
it might do the screen capture, but I'm not sure, so don't want to spend the
money yet.<
HiJaak (don't remember the co. offhand) also does screen captures (at least to
.TIF or .BMP formats), and from there you can import it to .AVI format (if
you're doing stills, at least). As for capturing sequences, I'm not sure if it
does that yet…
Hope this helps,
Tim Liebe
Hi Tim!
Thanks for the tip. Actually, we have HiJaak, but I've never used it for that
purpose. I guess I need to take a better look at it. However, I *am* more
interested in the sequences for training purposes, so I'll keep looking. As
usual, the endless search for the perfect software program…
Thanks again!
-Lauren
I use the screen capture that comes with Video for Windows 1.1 quite a lot. It
works very well for our purposes. We've created a promotional package and some
training material with it for a software product we have developed. It works
well for that. It creates good AVI files of whatever size you want in however
many colors your screen driver is. We then OLE them into PowerPoint and have a
compact little presentation of the system.
Thanks for the reply, Patrick!
Do you use it just to get a "screen dump" screen-by-screen? Ultimately, I'd
like to be able to "film" the correct sequence through the screens. For
instance, show the main menu, then the arrow-cursor moving up to File, then
down to Save, then show the Save dialog, etc. Do you know if this is possible
with Video for Windows 1.1?
Thanks again!
–Lauren
Lauren:
>Thanks for the tip. Actually, we have HiJaak, but I've never used it for that
purpose. I guess I need to take a better look at it. However, I *am* more
interested in the sequences for training purposes, so I'll keep looking.<
Sorry it took me so long to get back to you–I've been away for a few weeks
undergoing deadline hell <g>…
I see that other folks had other solutions that might fit your needs better
than HiJaak (VfW 1.1 sounds like it'd work better for your needs than my
suggestion, BTW).
Also, in the "simple-stupid" department, have you considered simply videotaping
the sequence off the screen and using that? It's not as slick or exotic as a
software solution, but it may just do you the job…
Tim
Adobe Primiere 4.0 can grab your screen action direct to .avi files on a PC.
You can edit these a million different ways and convert to MAC .mov format as
well. This product it a giant leap forward from version 1.1 and in the deluxe
CD version what you'll see is stunning results.
Dave:
>Adobe Primiere 4.0 can grab your screen action direct to .avi files on a PC.<
Thanks for the tip! But will it work with, say, my Intel Smart Video Recorder
Pro–or with other under $2,000 video capture cards?
Tim
Sure should work would be my answer, so long as your board is MCI driven would
I think. On my computer I have three video boards installed: Video Blaster SE –
for video overlays Media Visions Pro Movie Spectrum – video capture and Roctec
RocGen Pro – that ports video through a Tseng ET4000 – Genlock
(Felt like a wizzard when I figured out how to cram all they boards together
into my machine! and they all work fine with all my software. Only one small
quirk seems to be with Video Director 2.0 can't seem to acquire Picons
properly, but can work around this with Video for Windows 1.1 single frame
captures.)
When I want to do animations and\or morphs it helps to pull out the Tseng
ET4000 and swap to an Orchid Fahrenheit Vesa Local Buss SVGA board and that I
use with an external video encoder. In fact, the encoder is also connected to
the Tseng board. So depending on what the effect is I am trying to pull off
there is more than one avenue to either output or input – and after I evaluate
the results it's a matter of sellecting the best means available.
But anyway, my answer would be that the software is not a problem in this
matter. Hardware does it's thing, software makes it shine. You often get what
you pay for, ie. things work together but each has it's limits that the other
can not overcome. The most expensive video boards are meaningless if you have a
sloppy monitor, etc. Always motivated to upgrade – so long as you are moving
forward right?