The Misadventures of Dan
Peer into the mind of Dan as he tries to build an MP3 Player for his PDA and searches for the next thing in his life be it an electrical engineering job or graduate school.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
.:11:16:35 PM:.
Adventures in Video Capture land
So recent changes have allowed me to delve into the land of video capturing (LEGAL video capturing might I add). When I was checking out services and equipment to do such a thing there were two general options:
- Get it done by someone else. This is the least effort but probably the most expensive option. You don't need to worry about hardware compatibility or if you have enough space/memory to capture video, etc. etc. However it is expensive and if you need to redo the video it will cost you more, etc.
- Do it yourself. Depending on how much you know about your setup and what you want to do, this could be the cheaper option and yet it could also require more effort.
In the end, because of hardware constraints, I decided to go and buy an AVerMedia DVD EZMaker USB 2.0. It's rather sleek, extremely portable/light and works with any USB 2.0 port. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to test it with a USB 1.1 port yet. Generally all you do is you plug it into your USB port, plug the Video (there's even a S-Video plug) and audio plugs (they're your regular cables you use to hook up your VCR) and start up the capture program. I was surprised at the video quality-although the package does say 720x480 I didn't think it would be that good. The programs included are not video editing powerhouses so I've been having trouble trying to compress a three minute clip for the web.
