Video Capture Options
Summarized by ECAT
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

File size: If you are looking to capture an entire videotape and make it a digital file, then you will want to look for the capture software that will encode your video and output the smallest file size possible - without sacrificing too much quality. Windows Media Encoder and Real Producer offer good solutions for capturing video and outputting a fairly small file size, however, these products do not offer editing features. What you encode is what you get. The upgrade version of Real Producer (Real Producer Plus) does offer editing of Real Media files.

Editing: If you want to take a clip, or series of clips from a videotape, and want the clips to be finely edited to start and stop at a precise time interval, you will need a video editing software package. Capture hardware devices usually also come with some video editing software, which will allow you to edit a video file. However, more professional packages, such as Adobe Premiere or Vegas Video, allow you to do a lot more advanced things, such as add transitions between clips, use multiple audio and video tracks, and make your video have the look and feel of a professionally produced movie. There is a learning curve associated with all video capture and editing software, and the more complex your desires, the more time it may take to get a digital video file that suits your needs.

File types: In general, there are three types of media files: Windows Media, Real, and QuickTime. There is a standard video file type called .avi that will usually play in any media player. AVI, or audio video interleave, is a Microsoft specified format for saving audio and/or video clips, referred to by Windows as "Video for Windows." Windows Media Encoder will save files as .wmv files. Real Producer will save files as .rm (Real Media) files. QuickTime video is recognized by the .mov file extension. PowerPoint 2000 will most easily play all Windows Media Format files (.asf, .wma, or .wmv file name extensions). Products such as Media Cleaner can change the format of a file and can also apply a number of different compressions to alter the type and size of your file.

Playing Video over the Internet: More and more, video over the Internet is being used as method of watching video. One method of putting video on the Internet is to simply put the file in your web directory and have users download the file to their hard drive. Keep in mind that video files are often very large, and you need to consider both space issues on your web server, and download time to the user. Another method to deliver video over the Internet is to stream your video, meaning that the file will reside on your server and be played on the user's computer as a continuous, buffered stream. If you want to use your encoded video file over the Internet, either to be watched live, or as an on-demand archive, you will not only need video capture software, but will also need a means of serving, or streaming the video to those who visit your website.

Hardware requirements: There is the option of installing a video capture card in your computer, or using a USB connected device to your computer. If you are not familiar, or comfortable with the idea of opening up your computer and installing a video capture card, you should consider a USB video capture device. There are also cards and/ports called IEEE 1394 FireWire interface, which are typically associated with digital video cameras and allow for video to be downloaded directly, and quickly, to your computer's hard drive. These can be purchased separately, just as a video capture card, and more often are included in newer, media friendly, computers and laptops.

Media Players: Related to file type, it is important to remember that you must have a media player installed on your computer in order to play a digital video file. The three major types of media players are Windows Media Player, Real Player, and QuickTime player. Another important thing to consider is that while some media players may play a video file not of its specialized type, in general that may cause problems.

Using Video In PowerPoint: Being a Microsoft product, PowerPoint will play nearly all Windows Media Format files, however it will not play Real Media files, and sometimes has difficulty with QuickTime files. It will usually play .avi files without a problem, so if you are encoding a video file you can usually feel safe that standard will work. Since .avi files are usually quite large (depending on the compression used), you may wish to use a Windows Media Format instead. Another option is to encode your media in whatever format you want and simply play the file using the player of choice outside of PowerPoint. Not all video needs to be played within PowerPoint.

Glossary of Terms

AVI - Audio Video Interleave. Microsoft format for digital audio, video, and other multimedia data.

ASF - Advanced Streaming Format (formerly Active Streaming Format). A Microsoft file and data stream format for multimedia data including audio, video, still images, and other data types. Also referred to as Windows Media format.

Capture Card - Board that connects to the input of a computer and enables a video signal from a video source (camcorder or VCR) to be converted to a digital signal in a form that can be read and processed by a computer. It then performs the opposite process, playing back to a recorder.

Codec - short for compressor decompressor. Usually a software or hardware component that compresses and/or decompresses audio or video data.

Compression - Reducing the size of a file on disk or in memory. Compression can be lossless (i.e. compressed without any loss of information) or lossy, in which some data is discarded, on the assumption that the loss will not be noticeable when the data is decompressed.

Firewire - The IEEE-1394 High Performance Serial Bus. This standard supports data rates of 100/200/400 Megabits/second. It is used with high quality digital video such as the DV digital video standard and cameras.

IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. An organization of engineers responsible for a number of electrical and electronics industry standards. IEEE is an international professional society headquartered in the United States. IEEE is responsible for the Firewire (IEEE-1394) High Performance Serial Bus standard used with high quality digital video cameras such as DV cameras.

MPEG - Motion Pictures Experts Group. A body within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) that established the MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 digital audio and video compression standards. MPEG is also used to refer to video and audio clips compressed using the MPEG standards and the MPEG standards themselves.

Non-Linear Editing - Editing video on computer hard disk. Disks are non-linear format - they store the data in a random order and allow virtual instant access to any part of it. Non-linear editing may be carried out with a home computer, such as a Mac or PC. The video from the camcorder passes through a digitizer and is stored on the computer's hard disk (a lot of hard disk space is required --gigabytes, rather than megabytes). Appropriate software allows you to review shots, create an edit decision list, add titles and special effects, and then preview the edited movie, before copying it to tape.

QuickTime - QuickTime is Apple's equivalent of Video for Windows for the Macintosh. Apple also makes QuickTime for Windows. QuickTime is also used to refer to the QuickTime Movie file format, a widely used format for digital audio, video, and other multimedia.

Streaming Video - Streaming video is video that is played over a network. It differs from video that is played from a file on a local storage medium such as a hard disk or video that is downloaded over a network to local storage media such as a hard disk and then played back from the storage media. Typically, streaming media is transferred in packets over the network. A short amount of the video, perhaps one second, is buffered locally in a streaming video player to average out fluctuations in the channel. The streaming video player plays the video from the buffer that is often a block of local memory (RAM).

USB - Universal Serial Bus. This is a standard for connecting peripherals to computers including low-bandwidth digital still and video cameras.

Video capture - The process of converting an analog video signal into digital data that can be stored on a hard disk.

WMV - Windows Media 4 video file format (Windows Media Video).