What i've done with some success is to feed the composite video out of my ATI VIVO card and the line out of the sound card into a Sony DVMC-DA2 A/V -> DV converter. I then use the firewire out of this box into my computer's 1394 port and use VidCap. I start VidCap running first, then maximize the RealPlayer window. After the capture is finished i crop all the unnecessary borders from the image. It's worked quite well.

When i've attempted the same thing with a Matrox G-450 i get a black rectangle.

>>>Now I'm curious, what about the new cameras? Are there copy protection schemes built in (is it Macrovision?) that would prevent you from recording webcasts off the screen? Has anybody with a new DV camera tried that?

the copy protection you are talking about (black screen) is simply an effect of your directX capable video adapter. it's not copy protection at all, but a limitation of the hardware. some video cards are not capable of showing a directX overlay on their composite out connector.

also sometimes if you try to do a screen capture (PRINT SCREEN) or use a camtasia-like utility to record the screen, you'll get a black box where the video was. this is because the video isn't actually there in system memory where windows can get at it. instead the video frames are sent directly to the video card and overlayed on top of the signal by your video adapter before being sent to the monitor. this is why we can have full screen full frame scalable video playing back on our desktop PC's. windows couldn't paint the screen that fast on it's own. if you've ever gotten 'stuck' in software mode because of a finicky directX driver or right at the beginning of a video when you first start it up in Media Player you can see the performance sucks especially when the video is scaled up, but it then should snap into high quality mode after a couple seconds as the directX overlay engages. the visual quality will increase too as the hardware scaling engine takes over for the software.

anyway the effect of that acceleration method is sometimes you can't grab frames. I solve this by turning off DirectX acceleration temporarily in Windows (video troubleshooter slider). there is a setting in Camtasia to automatically do this every time you hit the capture button. this is the best method because you don't have to mess with it yourself. Camtasia's performance is hugely improved by turning off hardware acceleration so it's always good to use that setting.

I have dual monitors on separate video adapters. if I drag the video window to my secondary display, I can capture frames from it too because it's running on such an old video card that doesn't have a real directX overlay function. very convenient!

Tanjy,

If you had success with Camtasia, but have sticker shock, try CamStudio. It is a freeware solution that rivals Camtasia. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles, but the basics are pretty much the same. You can get CamStudio here. When you start your recording, you will need to disable Harware Acceleration in display settings. See the CamStudio FAQ.

HeeHee,

Hey, thanks for the tip. I downloaded it and it worked right away (except for the audio). According to their FAQs it only records audio from the microphone so you have to hook one up and turn up the speaker volume.

But it sure beats Camtasia which I think is a ripoff.

Cheesehole,

What you say makes a lot of sense and I'm inclined to believe you're right.

Then what's this Macrovision, copy protection thing I'm hearing about? Is it really possible to prevent copying with the current generation of equipment? I know they're working hard on the next generation devices.

>>>But it sure beats Camtasia which I think is a ripoff.

is Vegas a rip off because it costs more than Video Factory? I think it's just a matter of what features are beneficial to you.

>>is Vegas a rip off because it costs more than Video Factory? I think it's just a matter of what features are beneficial to you.

No, I don't think Vegas or Video Factory are ripoffs. In fact I think they're a good deal because they do so many great things -- and better than other more expensive programs. But I wouldn't put Camtasia in that category. I mean it's just a screen capture utility.