Hello folks,

I was interested in any links or information pertaining to video capture.  I
should add that my interest in this is a bit narrow, however.  Specifically,
I am looking into options for capturing the action from within a computer
game and using this to make a movie to be played back on the computer
(independent of having the game installed).

The options that I'm aware of and have looked into a bit are described
below.

Using a program such as Camtasia or HyperCam to capture the onscreen
activity while playing the game.  The advantge is that this only requires
one computer.  The disadvantage is that your cpu will be trying both to keep
up with the demands of the game's program needs and the needs of the video
capture program at the sametime.  If you are trying to capture in a
compressed format this can bog things down.  If you try to capture in
uncompressed format, you end up with a huge file in a big hurry.

Using a video out connection on a video card and a VCR.  The advantage is
that you can record a lot of game time this way.  I haven't taken it the
next step, which would be to use a video capture card to import the
recording back onto a hard drive.  I assume you could do so selectively with
some editing software.  I'm assuming that the disadvantage would be that
recording to a VHS tape will lead to a relatively low resolution movie when
one goes to import it back onto the hard drive.  (I haven't tried so I don't
know.)  Since I'm wanting the final product to be a .avi type file that
would look good on a computer screen, I'm not sure if this a good option or
not.

A similiar approach would be to use two computers and hook the TV-out of one
computer directly up to the video capture card of another.  This would
by-pass the need to record to VHS and I assume that it would result in a
better resolution capture.  The disadvantage would be that we are back to
dealing with very large files, though presumably compressing on the fly
would work better with this arrangement than with a program like HyperCam or
Camtasia, since we are now using two computers.

The above options I know will work, and any suggestions or information about
software and hardware related to the above would be appreciated.

I've also wondered about a couple of other options that may not be feasible.
First, is there such a thing as a video capture card that would accept the
output directly off another computer's video card's monitor output?  I've
only seen video capture cards designed to be hooked up to somesort of TV
output.  For my purposes, it would be nice to avoid needing to go through
this conversion.

Somewhat related, what about being able to use the DV output that some video
cards have for hooking up to flat panel monitor?  Would this be at all
compatible with the firewire connections used with DV camcorders?  In other
words, could one hook up the DV output of a video card (which should go to a
flat panel monitor) to a firewire port on another computer and capture it to
the hard drive in some fashion?

Thanks in advance.

John

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