09-15-2009, 01:07 PM
I've seen people ask numerous times how to record video using an EasyCAP and have a full screen preview at the same time. Here's how I do it, starting from the very beginning, installing the EasyCAP.
Don't plug the device in just yet, you need to install the drivers FIRST. So, pop the CD in, and when the Autorun menu comes up, choose "Install Driver" which I've highlited below.
[attachment=229]
Follow the onscreen instructions to install the drivers. You may get a prompt saying that the drivers have not been certified by Microsoft, be sure to continue the installation anyway. Once the drivers are finished installing, you'll get a message telling to you plug the device in and wait for it to be enumerated by Windows. Press OK to close that, then plug the EasyCAP into a USB port. Windows will detect it, and ask you to install drivers. Tell Windows not to search online, then to install the device automatically on the next screen. Windows will search for the driver, then prompt you again that it's not certified, allow it to install anyway as before. You will do this for the Syntek STK1160, then the USB Audio Device will install on it's own immediately after. Once everything is finished, unplug the EasyCAP for a moment, then plug it back in. It's not ready to be used with your software of choice, of with Ulead Video Studio SE that's included on the CD.
Here I'll branch off to section A (the included Ulead Software), and section B (using VirtualDUB following a guide written by a member of rc-cam.info (lukisek) and translated to English by tty044 here on FPV-Community.com, big thanks to them both!
So if you would prefer not to install the Ulead software, ship ahead to section B now...
A) Using the included Ulead Video Studio SE to record video... Put the EasyCAP CD in your drive, and select "Install Video Studio"
[attachment=230]
Follow the onscreen instructions to install the software as usual. When you are prompted for the serial number, you can find it on the sleeve the CD came in.
[attachment=239]
On the next screen, select which video standard your FPV system uses, NTSC or PAL/SECAM. I'm in the US, and use NTSC cameras, so I chose NTSC.
You will need to restart the PC now. When it's restarted, you'll see an icon on your desktop for "Ulead VideoStudio SE DVD". Use it to start the software. You'll get a screen that asks if you want to start the video editor, or the movie wizard. Start the editor, and don't check 16:9 mode.
[attachment=231]
Click the Capture tab at the top, then Capture Video, I've highlited them both below.
[attachment=232]
Make sure Syntek STK1160 is selected as the source, then click Options, and Video and Audio Capture Property Settings.
[attachment=233]
On the Source tab, select Video Composite for the Input Source, and NTSC or PAL for the TV System depending on your needs. Select USB Audio Interface for the Audio Interface. Check the box that says "Preview audio with USB Device if you want to hear the sound through your PC speakers while you capture. Uncheck it if you prefer not to hear it during the capture.
You can click the Color tab and tweak the sliders for Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Saturation if you need to, but try not to go overboard with these. They can easily make a video worse! They can very well be of use though of you take the time to experiment and tweak them to get them just right for your setup. When done with those options, click OK to close.
So no you are redy to start capturing, assuming your video and audio cables are plugged up and everything is powered on. You should see the video on the preview screen now. Click Capture Video to start capturing.
[attachment=234]
Once the preview comes back up, you'll notice the Elapsed Time counter is now running. I use this as a timer to know how long I've been in the air for a flight, it comes in handy! If you want a full screen preview, just double click the preview screen, and it'll expand. Double click again to go back. I switch between the small screen and full screen during a flight with no problems, to check the timer. When you are finished capturing, just leave the full screen preview, and click Stop Capture.
[attachment=235]
By default, the captured files are stored in "C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\My Documents\Ulead VideoStudio SE\10.0" (may be different for Vista, I'm using XP to write this review) You can find them easily by opening My Documents then navigating down to them from there. If you haven't changed the compression settings to something else, they are saved as regular AVI files that should open in just about any video editor. The included Ulead editor will also edite them, and is worth trying out if you don't have another editor of choice yet. The captured files are already added to Uleads library, which makes it that much easier if you want to edite them there. If you want to edit in Ulead, just click the Edit tab and go from there.
A couple of things worth mentioning here... The recorded files will be interlaced, which will leave horizontal lines when there's lots of motion in the video. Most editors have the option to deinterlace when you encode the final video, Ulead does this by default. The files using the default compression settings will be high quality, but very large. One minute will be approximately 1GB. That's fine if you've got the room for it, higher quality uncompressed video will result in better finished products once you edit and encode the video to some other format. It's all less work for your PC to do rather than ecode the video in real time, which might just save you from dropping frames on a slower PC. If you do want to experiment with other settings for compression, you've got plenty of options. You can change to format from AVI to something else using the dropdown list on the capture page:
[attachment=236]
You can also change settings on the Capture tab when you open the options.
The only other settings I've personally tried besides the default was DVD format, and setting up a pretty high quality MPEG2 profile, which worked well enough, everything ran smooth with no dropped frames, though the quality was slightly worse. Not bad at all, just not quite as good as uncompressed AVI, which is to be expected.
So that brings us to the other method of capturing, using VirtualDUB. Rather than rewrite the whole guide that lukisek and tty044 have already taken time to do, I'll point you to theirs now.
B) Using VurtualDUB to capture video with the EasyCAP.
This guide is available in Polish here as well as an English translation thanks to tty044 here. I've followed the guide, and the only issue I had was an error when I try to record using the DV compression. I chose uncompressed YUY2 instead and it works fine. I also had the stuttering problem when audio playback was enabled as mentioned in the guide, so if you want to hear the sound while capturing this may be an issue. I personally prefer Ulead's software for this reason when I'm using the laptop as my only display. If I were just using it to record it woudn't be an issue at all, the recorded files have sound in them.
Having gone through both methods of recording, I can say that they work equally well. Using no compression for either one produced a seemingly identical file, both in size and quality. I guess it really comes down to a matter of personal preferrance as to which software you use with the EasyCAP. Some will like the easu of Video Studio, while some will prefer the many different options to play with in VirtualDUB. As I said, if you want to get sound while you capture, go with Video Studio.
Don't plug the device in just yet, you need to install the drivers FIRST. So, pop the CD in, and when the Autorun menu comes up, choose "Install Driver" which I've highlited below.
[attachment=229]
Follow the onscreen instructions to install the drivers. You may get a prompt saying that the drivers have not been certified by Microsoft, be sure to continue the installation anyway. Once the drivers are finished installing, you'll get a message telling to you plug the device in and wait for it to be enumerated by Windows. Press OK to close that, then plug the EasyCAP into a USB port. Windows will detect it, and ask you to install drivers. Tell Windows not to search online, then to install the device automatically on the next screen. Windows will search for the driver, then prompt you again that it's not certified, allow it to install anyway as before. You will do this for the Syntek STK1160, then the USB Audio Device will install on it's own immediately after. Once everything is finished, unplug the EasyCAP for a moment, then plug it back in. It's not ready to be used with your software of choice, of with Ulead Video Studio SE that's included on the CD.
Here I'll branch off to section A (the included Ulead Software), and section B (using VirtualDUB following a guide written by a member of rc-cam.info (lukisek) and translated to English by tty044 here on FPV-Community.com, big thanks to them both!
So if you would prefer not to install the Ulead software, ship ahead to section B now...
A) Using the included Ulead Video Studio SE to record video... Put the EasyCAP CD in your drive, and select "Install Video Studio"
[attachment=230]
Follow the onscreen instructions to install the software as usual. When you are prompted for the serial number, you can find it on the sleeve the CD came in.
[attachment=239]
On the next screen, select which video standard your FPV system uses, NTSC or PAL/SECAM. I'm in the US, and use NTSC cameras, so I chose NTSC.
You will need to restart the PC now. When it's restarted, you'll see an icon on your desktop for "Ulead VideoStudio SE DVD". Use it to start the software. You'll get a screen that asks if you want to start the video editor, or the movie wizard. Start the editor, and don't check 16:9 mode.
[attachment=231]
Click the Capture tab at the top, then Capture Video, I've highlited them both below.
[attachment=232]
Make sure Syntek STK1160 is selected as the source, then click Options, and Video and Audio Capture Property Settings.
[attachment=233]
On the Source tab, select Video Composite for the Input Source, and NTSC or PAL for the TV System depending on your needs. Select USB Audio Interface for the Audio Interface. Check the box that says "Preview audio with USB Device if you want to hear the sound through your PC speakers while you capture. Uncheck it if you prefer not to hear it during the capture.
You can click the Color tab and tweak the sliders for Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Saturation if you need to, but try not to go overboard with these. They can easily make a video worse! They can very well be of use though of you take the time to experiment and tweak them to get them just right for your setup. When done with those options, click OK to close.
So no you are redy to start capturing, assuming your video and audio cables are plugged up and everything is powered on. You should see the video on the preview screen now. Click Capture Video to start capturing.
[attachment=234]
Once the preview comes back up, you'll notice the Elapsed Time counter is now running. I use this as a timer to know how long I've been in the air for a flight, it comes in handy! If you want a full screen preview, just double click the preview screen, and it'll expand. Double click again to go back. I switch between the small screen and full screen during a flight with no problems, to check the timer. When you are finished capturing, just leave the full screen preview, and click Stop Capture.
[attachment=235]
By default, the captured files are stored in "C:\Documents and Settings\*username*\My Documents\Ulead VideoStudio SE\10.0" (may be different for Vista, I'm using XP to write this review) You can find them easily by opening My Documents then navigating down to them from there. If you haven't changed the compression settings to something else, they are saved as regular AVI files that should open in just about any video editor. The included Ulead editor will also edite them, and is worth trying out if you don't have another editor of choice yet. The captured files are already added to Uleads library, which makes it that much easier if you want to edite them there. If you want to edit in Ulead, just click the Edit tab and go from there.
A couple of things worth mentioning here... The recorded files will be interlaced, which will leave horizontal lines when there's lots of motion in the video. Most editors have the option to deinterlace when you encode the final video, Ulead does this by default. The files using the default compression settings will be high quality, but very large. One minute will be approximately 1GB. That's fine if you've got the room for it, higher quality uncompressed video will result in better finished products once you edit and encode the video to some other format. It's all less work for your PC to do rather than ecode the video in real time, which might just save you from dropping frames on a slower PC. If you do want to experiment with other settings for compression, you've got plenty of options. You can change to format from AVI to something else using the dropdown list on the capture page:
[attachment=236]
You can also change settings on the Capture tab when you open the options.
The only other settings I've personally tried besides the default was DVD format, and setting up a pretty high quality MPEG2 profile, which worked well enough, everything ran smooth with no dropped frames, though the quality was slightly worse. Not bad at all, just not quite as good as uncompressed AVI, which is to be expected.
So that brings us to the other method of capturing, using VirtualDUB. Rather than rewrite the whole guide that lukisek and tty044 have already taken time to do, I'll point you to theirs now.
B) Using VurtualDUB to capture video with the EasyCAP.
This guide is available in Polish here as well as an English translation thanks to tty044 here. I've followed the guide, and the only issue I had was an error when I try to record using the DV compression. I chose uncompressed YUY2 instead and it works fine. I also had the stuttering problem when audio playback was enabled as mentioned in the guide, so if you want to hear the sound while capturing this may be an issue. I personally prefer Ulead's software for this reason when I'm using the laptop as my only display. If I were just using it to record it woudn't be an issue at all, the recorded files have sound in them.
Having gone through both methods of recording, I can say that they work equally well. Using no compression for either one produced a seemingly identical file, both in size and quality. I guess it really comes down to a matter of personal preferrance as to which software you use with the EasyCAP. Some will like the easu of Video Studio, while some will prefer the many different options to play with in VirtualDUB. As I said, if you want to get sound while you capture, go with Video Studio.
