Video capture

Ray Sheppard

I bought a Sony DV Camcorder today (i.Link) with the intention of making a video of some FS2004 Scenery I made using the VIVO output from my X850 Pro AGP card.

I managed to get the Camcorder set up and it activates WMM and records from the desk fine but I can't find a way to receive the FSim video. The camera has A/V in out and DV in out and i.link but as it's the first CC I owned I really don't have a clue what to do.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Ray

H3X4D3C1M4L

You have to turn on TV out so that it looks like a secondary monitor. Then it'll work

Ray Sheppard

H3X4D3C1M4L

Thanks for that - I will give it a go

Ray

I did try that but in the ATI Properties display section the TV option is greyed out

H3X4D3C1M4L

You'll have to make sure the camera is actually plugged in so it can sense a TV device

temeteus82

BTW. If you have FireWire (IEEE 1394) card on onboard FiriWire (IEEE 1394) chip you can get the video from there to your PC.
BTW2. For some odd reason Sony calls FireWire (IEEE 1394) as I.Link :P

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Not game video though, just file transfer... doesn't quite work the same

temeteus82

ok, I thought that he used the cam to record the game and now he needs to move the vid to PC...

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Nah, Firewire is a peerless file transfer system

temeteus82

but it works when you need to move video from camera to PC

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H3X4D3C1M4L

Not what hes doing though

Ray Sheppard

Thanks for your replies.

The reason I want to make a video of the scenery is promotional - make a video and publish the .wmv on the various FS sites (Freeware) the concept of recording or capturing directly from the video card came originally from this article -

[color=#800080]http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/howto/video.htm[/color]

Although I have seen many other folk adopting the same principle I'm having great difficulty in receiving any images via the video card.

I know I can capture video with the camera but I want to capture/record video directly, via the video card of what is seen on my Monitor. Pointing the camera at the PC Monitor is not an option as the quality is very poor on playback.

Ray

H3X4D3C1M4L

So did you try turning the camera on, plugging it into the output ports, then enabling it as a secondary monitor? That, in theory should work. If you can get video from a TV though, try hooking the PC up to the TV getting that to work then recording from the TV

Ray Sheppard

I think I may be getting somewhere now. I tried the advice I found here -
http://www.fs2004.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=71397
using ATI Tray Tools and this is how the properties section looks in the ATI Monitors section.





Unfortunately I still can't get a signal from the GC. My next step is to try the TV idea.

Thanks again.

Ray

H3X4D3C1M4L

The TV idea should work for sure, so long as you can display to TV which you should be able to, you can capture from there

Ray Sheppard

You were right and many thanks.

It was a combination of the ATI Monitor/TV screens settings and of course, setting the camera up correctly to record from VCR mode. The quality is a little below what I was hoping for but I'm now trying a link from my X850 card to a TV Capture Card installed in a second PC (via S-Video connection or Composite - not sure which yet) to see if that will improve quality.

Ray

swimtech

SVideo should give slightly better quality - and the video will likely look better displayed on a real TV rather than a computer monitor...

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

H3X4D3C1M4L

How do you figure? A CRT monitor or even an LCD one is capable of displaying a much higher resolution, more vibrant colour, and a much more crisp and more accurately rendered image, by far. Not to mention CRT PC monitors also can refresh horizontally at rates in excess of 85Hz and the best a TV can do is 60.

Ray Sheppard

I thought I would post a link to the release of my first Video as you kindly helped put me on the right road in the first place. [color=#800080]http://www.vfraddons.co.uk/ukautogen/[/color]

I ended up using the DV Camcorder to input to Sony Vegas 6 capture but you can see the clips that were obtained using FRAPS - they are much sharper! The Camcorder clips, although sharp to start with, do tend to look a little like a silicone finish but using FRAPS knocked the frame rate too much when in use with MS Flight Simulator 2004.

I rendered the Video using CBR (Two-pass), Format - Windows Media Video 9 and Frame Rate (25,000 (PAL) although I did try many different ways I found that to be the best.

Ray

H3X4D3C1M4L

Good work there, glad you finally got it working