Configure VidCap32

1. Open VidCap32 by selecting Start | Programs | Osprey 101 | VidCap32.
   
   You will see the VidCap32 interface:
   
   
   
2. Select File | Set Capture File
   • Choose a name for your file (it should end with .avi).
   • Browse to D:\Temp as the location to save the file.
   • Note: Even if you plan to store your completed file on a Zip or CD, don't try to capture there. It won't be fast enough, and you'll lose most of the capture data..
     
     
3. (Optional, but recommended) If you have a sense of how large your file will be, you can pre-allocate space for it by selecting File | Allocate File Space. The largest possible size for an .avi file is 2 GB, so the maximum you should set is 1900 MB. Pre-allocating space is not necessary, but it can improve the quality of your capture by reducing the amount of work your hard drive has to do to find space for video data as its being captured.
   
   
4. Select Options | Preview to have VidCap32 display your video as it is being captured.
   
   
5. Select Options| Video Source to view the settings for video capture. First, set the Signal option to NTSC-M. Then, select the Input source to be S-video.The capture window will change from blue to displaying the video image when the correct option is selected.
   
   
   
   You can adjust the color hue, saturation, and brightness of the video with the slide bars in the Video Settings section.
   
   
6. Click the Format tab, select Video Size to be 1/2 (this will result in a 320 x 240 frame size), Color Format to be 24-bit RGB color. Click OK to save these settings. If your video clip is longer than 10 minutes or so, you should use a video size of 160 x 120 so you can fit the entire clip into one file.
   
   
   
   Click OK to close the dialogue box.
   
   
7. Select Capture | Video from the menu. Set the frame rate to be 30 fps. Or, if you have a long clip and want to use the larger video size, you could select 15 fps here.
   
   If you want to capture audio along with your video, check the Capture Audio box and click the Audio button to review the audio settings. These settings default to "telephone quality" capture, (11khz, 8-bit, mono) and you may want to experiment with changing to "Radio," "CD," or creating a custom setting via the Attributes menu. If your audio track is primarily voice, 22khz, 16bit is OK. Music should be captured at a high quality - 44khz, 16bit if possible. The higher the quality of audio you capture, the larger the file will be.
   
   

   Click Compress to review the compression settings. By default, Vidcap32 uses Microsoft Video 1 compression. This codec creates files that work well with programs such as QuickTime Pro, Premiere, andl RealProducer encoding software. While "Uncompressed" will give you the best quality output, unless your video is extremely short (2 minutes or less), it isn't recommended due to how much file space it requires.
   
   Keep the Capture Video dialog box open as you will use it to start the file capture process shortly.