Techinical Question!

[hitogoroshi]

Is there any way to take a video clip of whatever you are currently viewing on your computer screen?
It's something I'd really like to know...thanks in advance.

[AbstractOrigin]

Re: Techinical Question!

Try pausing the movie at a certain part and pressing the "Print Screen" key. That will take a screenshot of your screen. I'm not sure if this works.

There's players out there that can take the caps for you, but they cost money.

[Rodak]

Re: Techinical Question!

You could get a video card with composite outputs.

Then you could tape it on a VCR and recapture from that.

And (in windows) it's Control + Print Screen to take a still of what is currently on screen.

You can then paste this image in mspaint. It won't paste into all art programs.

I hope that helps.

Peace.

[hitogoroshi]

Re: Techinical Question!

Sweet!
Umm...where would I get that?

[Patryn]

Re: Techinical Question!

Do a search for a program called "Videodub". That should be able to do it.

BE AWARE THOUGH: Videodub does not include any but the most basic codecs, so expect your video files to be MASSIVE. I'm talking like 4 MB for a few seconds. You can try to hunt down encoding codecs (which are TOTALLY different from decoding codecs), but those are tougher to find.

[Rodak]

Re: Techinical Question!

Don't forget about the Windows Media Encoder freeware!

That will compress and change codecs nicely.

I am still learning how to use it, but it has helped greatly in my playing around with this stuff.

Good Luck with it.

Peace.

[thetruecoolness]

Re: Techinical Question!

Also there are tons of codec packs around, KLite, AceMega, though you have to be very careful with these as entering in the wrong settings and installing too many can cause problems. I know of no freeware screen captue programs but there are programs which have free trials which will record your screen or part of your screen. Fraps is free but it only works with DirectX/OpenGL programs. Just realize that capturing your screen into a video will completely tax your system so expect a lot of dropped frames or really reduced quality, unless you have the newest dual-core processor and a lot of ram and a fast harddrive in a Raid setup, or something to that effect.

Here is one that works with VNC (Remote Desktop) http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/.
One that doesn't but isn't free http://www.hyperionics.com/
A slightly cheaper one http://www.deskshare.com/MSR_pricing.aspx
One more for the road http://www.heroshare.com/products/ScreenRecorder.php
google screen recorder for more.

And actually printscreen doesn't work on all videos, well it doesn't on my computer, since sometimes it tries to capture the overlay layer which is just black. And for the video capture that also won't be great quality even if you connect your video card directly to a tvcard as for some reason svideo won't work (image scrolls or maybe my svideo out is messed up) and composite is not really that great of quality to begin with. Of course even with that you need a hardware encoder card to keep the load off the CPU (which you can get here for $60 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814222201).
It's the best one I've used so far (meaning good audio and video consistenly and hardware encoding with fairly intuative software), though hauppage is also a good company to get cards from, just don't get beyond TV software to use with it since that produces a delay in the video signal.