One-Click WebCam Recording!

**gold007eye** · 05-26-2006, 08:51 AM

Prefect. I tried out your new version, but when 1st opened it still doesn't appear in the taskbar. (I don't know if this helps, but I am loading it at work so I don't have a webcam hooked up to it.) I don't know if the 3 errors that popup before the software loads is what makes it not appear on the taskbar when it does finally open? It is definitely weird. Open, Minimize, Alt+Tab, then minimize and it is fine.. hmm..I wonder what is causing the problem?

Thanks for the clarification of the "0" setting. I thought it might keep all files, but wasn't sure.

**mauri** · 05-26-2006, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Prefect

try intel Indeo5 as a video codec or none and see if you still get the error message.

did the preview of the webcam image work? because then it has to be a problem with the codec while recording.

do the videos work if you play them with the windows mediaplayer? then it has to be something with RR...

regards! chris

Now work well for me with the Indeo5 codec and see ok the saved .avi file.

I have update my screen/skin for this new version and buttons added.

Mauri

**Prefect** · 05-27-2006, 05:20 AM

@gold007eye: Strange... Now on my home-pc Capture! shows up in the taskbar right after start. I'll check on my CarPC too.

I realy don't know what causes this behaviour. Its just a normal form that gets displayed via this.Show();. I had problem with this from the start. I had to set it topmost and back to make it not display behind other windows on start. If someone knows .Net and has a clue why this form is acting strange, please help :-)

@All: New version is up! The only change: Fixed a Bug when you set "PreviewActive=0" and "StopOnSuspend=1" (which are the settings I recommend). After resume there was an error displayed.

I found out that Capture! loads much faster if you disable the preview on load. Now you can activate it afterwards with the preview button in the main menu.

Also the recording starts much faster if you use a very simple codec like Indeo5! Play around with these settings...

Regards! Chris

**d_sellers1** · 05-28-2006, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by Prefect

Jup! I want that too :-) The problem is, that you cannot set a different playback-speed at the time of recording. You have to speed-up the movie afterwards at your home-pc with virtualdub.

You can set recording to 1fps in the config.ini. But your camera has to support it!

I think you know this video I made: Capture_Zeitraffer_x25_25fps_wm9.avi (right-click and save to disk...)

I'm curious how long this trip took that you recorded. 3 mintures and 19 seconds of video equals a 20 megabyte file. The trip is definetly longer than 3 minutes. By looking at the filename I would assume that it is running at x25 real-time so...

3.33min x 25 = 83.25 minutes
20megs/83.25minutes=0.240 megs/min
0.240 megs/min x 60minutes = 14.4megs/hr file size.

Code:

             demo filesize
------------------------------------------- * 60 minutes
length of demo video x real-time multiplier

If I assumed properly and my math is correct then I would say that an hour of video (per the settings that you used) would be 14.4 megabytes. I'm just trying to get an idea of how much hard drive space is required per hour of video.

Derek

EDIT: DISREGARD THIS POST. I FAILED TO REALIZE THE 25x WAS DONE WITH VIRTUALDUB. Too bad this wouldn't work on the fly.

**d_sellers1** · 05-29-2006, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by PsynceFiction

I have a problem here:

I click "Start" to capture some video footage and I don't get any errors or whatsoever.

But when I wanna see a replay with Windows Media Player I see it only captured like 22secs and WMP won't play it.

I've got the same problem going on. Everything works fine when I used Indeo (which I do not want to). When I try to used the DivX or Xvid codecs, I get nothing but used filespace. WMP starts but shows nothing and then stops. Also tried to play in PowerDVD which seems to play some stuff that I have problems with in WMP (like musicvideos that has MPEG1 audio...).

I know my DivX settings are good. Both codecs are set to single pass (Multipass -1st pass or Nth pass can create similiar affect but they will atleast play a black screen with the audio). I use DivX to encode DVDs to .AVI using #1 DVD Ripper. DixV, btw, is the Create bundle; not just the play bundle.

Suggestions? I'm afraid to put this program on my CarPC just yet until I can get this figured out. While I can use the Indeo codec, I would perfer to use DivX or Xvid. Oh yeah. Uncompressed worked to but a 5 second video took up damn near 12 megs! That's not gonna work! lol

Derek

**godfather24** · 05-29-2006, 01:54 AM

I don't know anything about the DirectX Capture as I have not taken th time to sit down and read the SDK and maybe I just have crazy ideas, but is there any way to possibly insert a hour:minute timestamp onto the video using the system time? Like I said, I don't know anything about DirectX, and as I think about it, there probably isn't, unless somehow use an overlaying label or something?

**d_sellers1** · 05-29-2006, 02:29 AM

Originally Posted by godfather24

I don't know anything about the DirectX Capture as I have not taken th time to sit down and read the SDK and maybe I just have crazy ideas, but is there any way to possibly insert a hour:minute timestamp onto the video using the system time? Like I said, I don't know anything about DirectX, and as I think about it, there probably isn't, unless somehow use an overlaying label or something?

Perfect talks about this in post #152:

"I really want that too! But i think the DirectX Capture Class i use is not able to superimpose something :-( . I think i have to switch to DirectShotNet (http://directshownet.sourceforge.net)"

Derek

**Prefect** · 05-29-2006, 06:29 AM

@Derek: The highspeed video was composed of about 4 or 5 500MB videos. You can see the whiteout between two files sometimes in the video. (I used a 500mb capture limit)

Then I droped most of the frames in virtualdub, so the filesize gets smaller.

With good quality, 320x240x30fps you should come out with about 500mb per hour.

DivX/XviD: I have no clue whats that all about... I use DivX 5.2 on my CarPC without any problems. However on my notebook I used DivX 6.1 and only got 8 Minutes out of 30mins of recording. Always only the first 8 minutes... strange..

I found out that Indeo5 is the best codec for these webcam recordings. Very fast, small and the quality is not much worse than divx.

Could you try to use Capture! with divx on your CarPC? Maybee some other dvd authoring codec or another codecpack causes these problems.

Please also try with the CaptureTest.zip app I posted some pages ago.

Then try different settings: No audio, 320x240x25 or 15fps, turn of videopreview, play around with the colorspace settings of your webcam driver (24bit, 16bit or what else you can set it to...)

Regards! Chris

**d_sellers1** · 05-29-2006, 02:19 PM

@Perfect: Will give the CarPC a try and see what happens over there.

FYI: I captured 8 hours and 35 minutes of video last night. Using Indeo video 5.10 codec using its Quick Compress option @ 320x240 15fps with no audio and my filesize was 665 megs! Picture quality was fuzzy but I think that is just a matter of my camera: a cheap EzCam III. This is my home cam; probably not the one that would go in the car.

Derek

PS. Stay away from recording audio. Filesizes equal about 1.2 megs per second regardless of codec, sample rate, mono/stereo, etc.! About a minute of audio/videa was around 89 megabytes...

**Prefect** · 05-29-2006, 02:26 PM

@Derekt: Like I sayd, Indeo5 is a very basic codec, but compared to the already "bad" picture of the webcam it doesn't matter. With Indeo5 you get very small video files compared to divx (ok ok, you can choose the bitrate in divx...)

Audio recording with mp3 64kbit/s should not make big hit on filesize, does it?