Easy Video Capture - A Solution, Not A Question

Not sure if this goes here or in the gaming discussion but this seemed to fit the best.

Anyways, I've seen a lot of questions about video capture problems and I figured I'd write a tutorial for cheap and easy video capture.


1. Hardware

You have a couple of options here, spend hundreds on unnecessarily complex and expensive video capture cards, then proceed to pay even more to have them installed... or you could buy an EasyCap. This is a neat little piece of hardware I found in my quest for affordable video capture hardware. It costs around $25 and is very easy to use and set up. It also gets good quality video without taking up loads of space. It has one USB end, which goes into your computer, and one end that has video, audio and s-video in outlets. All you have to do to set it up is plug it in (USB 2.0) and let it install the drivers. Now plug in the system of your choice (meaning a 360 and Halo 3) Done.

2. Software

Assuming you took my advise and got an EasyCap USB, you will also receive a disk with ULead Video Studio SE DVD. This is simple, and doesn't let you do much with the videos, but it covers the basics and even allows you to play the games on your computer screen (meaning you don't have to buy a splitter as well). To record, pick the EasyCap as the input device (in the capture tab), obviously, it must be plugged into your computer and gamesystem first. Now, you can play on the screen from here until you're ready to record, then press the record video button, there will be a slight hiccup (lag) and the screen will go black for a second and then you start recording. When you're done, click the Stop Recording button and it will put the video where you can view it in the other screens. I would advise that you pause or quit your game before watching the movie though.

3. Sharring

Sharring your videos is also easy, save it (preferably as an AVI, WMV or other common format) and then upload it to YouTube. After a good long wait (irritating but neccesary) your video will be on YouTube.

The quality is still reasonably good on EasyCap (don't know about other stuff though), even after uploading it. As an example I recorded a race in Need For Speed Underground 2 (my 360 died so I can't do Halo 3 yet ). Here it is:

[youtube]XZ-ux0DNlbc[/youtube]

What do you think?

Tim

 

I know, I'm bad at pretty much all racing games. Reasonably good at shooters and stategy games but blah at sports and racing.

Anyways, what did you think of the actual post? Oh, and just to check, I'm not breaking any rules right? I would assume not since Dragoncoals posted and didn't point anything out.

Tim

 

Great to hear! Glad this is helping someone!

Interestingly enough, if your TV has a S-Video Out, you could buy a cable (not too expencive, I think) and plug it into both and you could still play on the TV and just record with the computer.

 

You'll have to tell me how that works out, I don't have one yet so I can't try it

Great! That is just what I posted this for

You can get them in a lot of places, although easiest to find them online, here is the google product search results.

Hope that helps everyone!

Tim

 

It's open source so I may look into it, thanks for the heads up!

 

Do you own one? You can save with much better quality than I did, but not on youtube, you can't put very high quality videos on youtube. I also saved that video as an avi, a low quality avi. When I get back from school I'll see about uploading a higher quality video, 'course it will be a download, not youtube.

Tim

 

Not the best, no, but if you expect the best for $25 you got some issues Unless we're talking bubble gum, I would assume you could get pretty good bubble gum for $25... But it is pretty good, especialy considering that the video I posted was PS2 and doesn't exactly have next gen graphics.

Okay, I have had no free time today. School and homework was overwhelming...

Sorry but I think the other vid may be on hold till tomorrow.

Tim