Recording Technology

[Jason]

So here's a little section I'm going to put together to talk about, and show a bit, a few of the different options for video and audio recording.

First... one of my most used bits of software.

Debut Video Capture Software

Download Here

So Debut... what's the deal?

Debut is one of the first pieces of recording software I used for both desktop and console capture. It's not a fancy bit of software in any terms of the word, and it doesn't allow for any editing but it's pretty solid.

There are two versions of the software, Premium and Free and they both do 99% of the same thing. Premium will allow you to record to multiple video formats ( avi, wmv, asf, mpg, 3gp, mp4, mov, flv, dv, and mkv) while the Free version only allows for avi and wmv.

That in an of itself may not be very impressive for the Free version. What's impressive though is that when you chose to use the avi container for your video you can access dozens of different encoders to pack your video into the nifty little avi box. Any avi encoder that exists on your PC is accessible (though not all will work with Debut like the FRAPS coded) is available.

Also, with your choice of avi encoders, you've got a similar situation with your audio encoders as well. Anything from basic lossless wav style audio or compressed on the fly to MP3 is available to you.

Oh yeah, when your Premium trial runs out you can simply downgrade to the free version by going through the Add/Remove programs method in your control panel and selecting the "Downgrade" option. Simple.

Now, let's break this down a bit.

The Good

Free is always a nice price to spend for working software, and Debut is good working free software. The variety of different encoders (for avi format) is nice to have so you can experiment with different options for your own system. I like using the FM Screen Capture codec for my stuff. It's Fraps like... but not Fraps.

Anyway, a slew of options for recording specific windows, an entire desktop (even multiple monitors at once!) and specific rectangles is a handy feature to have.

You can add captions and watermarks while recording and apply some color and video effects as well. You can set a schedule for automatic recording (if you're using this for surveillance stuff... yeah it'll do that too) and even have it automatically stop and start a new recording based on a user defined time limit.

The ability to capture from just about anything is great... capture cards like a Dazzle or EasyCap or Hauppauge or ATI Wonder TV... usb webcams... network cameras... desktops... you name it.

As for audio capture, you can (finally!) record from multiple sources including "Speakers"... that means no more having to mess around with Stereo Mix to capture commentary and program audio at the same time.

Selectable default file name options can be handy if you're doing a string of a specific game ... meaning you can set Debut to default your recordings as "Let's Play Super Mario Bros - %autonumber%" and bam... you're done.

Customizeable hotkeys to start and stop recording as well as zooming in or out, taking snapshots and a "Follow Mouse Cursor" button are great for doing tutorials.

Not only all of that, but it comes built in with options to record in formats compatible with iPod, PSP, iPhone, Xbox360 and Playstation 3, though I've never tried these and they may be Premium only options. There's even a "Game Capture" option that will, in a way, slow everything else down on your PC so the game will play and capture at the best rate Debut thinks it can do.

The Bad

With so much good to say about it, there's not a lot of bad... but there is bad.

The first thing is more of an annoyance than anything anymore. Recently they've added a pop-up "You much click to continue" box for the Free version that, basically, says your promise not to use the Free version for any commercial applications. Not a big deal, but it is there.

Second, the frame capture rate for certain desktop applications seems to be really low. Trying to record some footage from, of all things, DOSBox, resulted in an FPS of around 18-20 when the program is set to record at 30 FPS. I may not have the most beefy computer in the world but it's more then able to handle that stuff.

Next, and this issue may be related to my specific system, the program can take a very long time to switch between desktop and capture card mode... also when going into the options to tell Debut to grab from my capture card's s-video line it can hang for, at most, a minute. I don't recall having this happen with other softwares.

Finally, some of the containers (If you're using Premium... either the trial or the full thing) just don't seem to work well. I use other softwares to record to WMV from time to time with little or no issue... but Debut's WMV (even though it's the same encoder) just come out looking bad. So beware with that. Also remember the more you want to compress of the fly... the lower your performance will be.

The Last Word

So you were thinking that was going to be "The Ugly" did you? Well in some instances this could be "ugly" for the software, but not here.

Debut was the first working bit of program that I found that could actually record LP's for me all those many years ago. It worked with all my emulators really well and it gave me a good end product. That's more than I can say for a lot of other things I tried.

The lack of additional containers, while may be a problem for some, was never a problem for me. The box matters less to me than how the data is packed into it. I'll expand on that a bit more later.

These days I don't use Debut as much... other softwares are doing the job I want done better... but there are times when it just doesn't want to work and Debut is my first fall back.

There's nothing wrong with the program itself or the product it shoots out for you at the end... though there are some structural things that are a tad annoying (the pop-up and lagging when selecting an input method), but they're annoyances and not enough to turn me off from the software.

All in all, it's not as useful as it once was to me personally... but it's software I will always recommend to someone looking to capture video from their desktop. Capture cards I've got another suggestion... but we'll get to that later.

Overall: B+

[Jason]

Video Pad Video Editing Software

Download Here

VideoPad is NCH Software's answer to Windows Movie Maker and all those other "entry level" editing programs. I say "entry level" because it does support a lot of very basic features, but has some nice slightly more advanced skill set features as well.

I've chosen to list it here because it actually has a pretty nice capture option for recording from an external device... and it's a program I've used many times in the past to record from a console.

Multitrack video and audio processing, picture in picture, 3d video editing, transitions, overlays and chroma key. All pretty nice stuff to have... if you know how to use it.

Dozens of options for output formats and presets... plus custom options... mean you can save your video however you'd like it.


The Good

Much like Debut (and 99% of all other NCH software), VideoPad comes with either a Free or Premium package. There's next to no difference between the two other than, like Debut, your options of containers to save your video into. It uses the same codec library as Debut so there's no need for separate downloads of codecs and all that when saving your video.

Multitrack video and audio editing is a very nice feature to have if you're trying to make a compilation type video. Say you and a buddy 8 states away are trying to make a talk show type video for reviews or a parody of some entertainment news type show. You record your video, they record theirs. Whoever edits the video puts both files on separate tracks and trims out what isn't needed from each so there's a seamless cut from You to Cowboy Joe Jangles, your dear friend.

Same thing with audio too. It's very easy to edit multiple clips together in this software. Say you and Cowboy Joe Jangles, your dear friend, and yourself are doing some post commentary over Skype on a terrible video you recorded but you, darn it all, can't record the call audio for some reason or another. C.J.J., y.d.f, sends you his recorded audio for you to edit along side your own recorded audio.

Well, drop that video and the two audio clips into VideoPad... synch em up... adjust volume for all the clips till it's just right and save it to any one of a ton of output formats or upload it directly to YouTube, Facebook or Flickr from the software itself.

Tons of effects and transitions and options to fancy up your video if you're needed em are built in to the software... plus it has the ability to work with popular plugins for other software like VirtualDub.

And we can't not talk about the capture option in here. It's pretty darn good. Defaulting to save into an mp4 container with either an mpeg4 codec (my favorite) or an h264 (good but slower), with great sound and a nice high (but not too high) bit rate means your video capture will be quick and clean and have very little chance of desynch (based on your system performance of course). The program can then just pop that video you recorded into VideoPad and you can add effects, captions or even record narration (post commentary) right over top of it, adjust your levels and upload right from the software. How neat is that?

The Bad

Well the interface isn't super great. It takes a little getting used to and the "zoom in" can be a bit weird often going from not close enough to waaaaay too close. It's not a deal breaker but can make precision editing a bit annoying.

The default time options for putting in static images are a little too short. I haven't seen a place to change the default (3 seconds) to something longer, though you can change it before you add the clip to the time line... just when you know most of your projects are 20+ minutes, it can be a tad annoying.

The editing in the program for things like cropping is a bit weird and I'm not terribly fond of it. Though if I spent more time with it I could figure it out and make it work for me.

The Chroma Key is a neat feature, as is the picture in picture, for free software and it works fairly well. This would be something you face cam kids should be all up into. Again, I don't play with it much so it's a bit unfamiliar to me. I do know when I tried it in the past I had some color issues but that may be fixed in the newer versions.

The Last Word

Well... do you like Windows Live Movie Maker but wish it could do just a little bit more when it comes to editing? Sony Vegas and Pinnacle a bit too complicated? Don't have 8 Brazillion dollars for Adobe stuff? This is a great alternative. The program is fast, it's cheap (or free!) and can almost fit on a couple of floppy disks.

It's not "power software" by any means, but it'll get the job done. And, I might add, get it done well.

Sure there's a lot of features that I, as a Let's Player, never use but in the past when working on music video projects or other little things that require more precision editing then I can get with Movie Maker it's always been a great bit of software.

And the capture works wonderfully. Though sometimes you'll need to find something to run it through to deinterlace the video depending on what you're recording.

All in all if you're looking for some new editing software to try... this is great. Didn't like recording console stuff with Debut? Try this. Sick of other programs taking a million years to compile a video? This can do it for ya.

Overall: A-