Recording videos from web cams - Please post your favourite

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Recording videos from web cams - Please post your favourite

Post by ame »

There are a number of ways

How to record videos from the live web cameras.


I invite you all to post instructions of the way which you prefer and think could be useful to other members, too.
These different tools can be found in the internet. Some are freeware and some are sold. I guess that most of us are using some freeware programs when we make videos. I guess that there are some tricks in using most of them which are necessary to know to achieve the goal (a nice video) simply and quickly, with least amount of effort.

I'll describe first the ones that i use and know something about. I wish that the users of other tools (for example Realplayer, ScreenCast-O-Matic...) would post a few lines of their favourite tools. One trick which I'm quite ignorant is how to record video from the JWPlayer, i.e. the web-page player which is used to stream the web cameras. I would be very grateful is someone would describe how to record JWPlayer. :2thumbsup:

The program which i have used for making recordings almost exclusively is the VLC player. i have described how to download and start using it in a topic of its own, here:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=739
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Post by ame »

Debut by NCH Software

this program can be found on the web:
http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html
download the free version in a file of your choice. they'll try to make you get GoogleChrome (or something like that) at the same time, but you can refuse if you wish. then install it.

it can be used for various tasks: recording from a webcam, external devices, your computer screen, or streaming video. i have used it for recording screen events only. first time was when the JWPlayer was introduced in the LK and using VLC wasn't possible for a while. the second time was quite recently for making fake 'close-up' videos of the newly-hatched WTE-chick at the Juras-Erglis nest. i can imagine that people who are making videos from the tawny owl nest might find this program worth their wile trying. by using this the in the night time they could exclude the dark half of the picture from their video.

when you start the program (free version) you will have to click an assurance that you will be using the free version for non-commercial purposes only. click on the 'home-use-only' - bar to start the program.
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then the opening screen will look something like this:
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i lost the sounds at one point and after some time of :puzzled: i found this note on the Debut-help pages (which aren't btw very helpful).
Note:
In order to record audio from another application, Debut must be launched before the other application. e.g., To record audio from a media player application, first launch Debut, then launch the media player application.
in other words: if you plan to make screen records first start the Debut and after it's on then start the VLC or what-ever program you are using for watching the web cam. otherwise there will be no sound on your recordings. to get the sounds you'll have to close the web-cam and that is something we can't do, not for a minute! :laugh:

Note: they claim that you can get a free version, but after every about 10 days the free version stops working. you will then have uninstall the Debut from your computer and then download it from their site and then reinstall it again, if you wish to continue using it. i don't know how many times this is possible. they seem to be very eager to sell it to you.
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Post by ame »

to determine what area on the screen you want to record you click the Select-button on the lower right.
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what you will get is a dimmed screen with a rectangle with green corners and borders of dashed lines.
this is the exact area on the screen which will be recorded.
you can select the size of the area by dragging one of the corners with the mouse, and you can move the rectangle around the screen with the mouse pointing in side the rectangle.
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when you are happy with the selection then confirm it by clicking Select-button (the arrow in the lower part of the picture).

i have selected here a portion of the nest view for recording. the live camera is playing in the VLC-window.
if i now would move the VLC player-window to another position on the screen the Debut screen-recording area will not move anywhere. the result would be then that the centre of the nest would not be in the recorded area anymore. also if some other element on the screen would be moved to the selected area it will be shown in the recording. this includes the mouse pointer, too.

i made a recording as an example of this. here i had started to view another video with VLC and its window overlapped the live camera window. then i clicked Start on the Debut. i also moved the mouse on the live camera area. all activity in the selected rectangle was recorded, also the sounds: you can hear an eagle taking off the nest on the video which was played. (the sound was a bit off-set as it often is in these recording.)
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Post by ame »

most of the operations of the Debut can be in several places. for example recording options you will find either on the drop-down menu on the top (A) or under the Tools-icon (B).
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of the video-options it's probably useful to select "Load last selection" (1) if you are recording the same thing repeatedly.
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of the Audio-options select "speakers". i haven't even tried the others, and i guess that if you select "microphone" all yours sigh's and :banghead: 's will be recorded, too.
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Post by ame »

for the "Output"-options there is more to select. first select a suitable destinatio folder for the recorded videos and the snapshots you might take. then think of a practical file name for your recordings. i have chosen here the J-E for Juras-Erglis which i'm repeatedly recording and added "year-mm-dd-a" in front of the %autonumber% which was suggested by Debut. Debut will show examples of how your file names will look like. here you can also reset the autonumber back to 1 after you have recorded n-thousand videos.
the letter a before the autonumber is practical endmarker when i later rename the files with more accurate time "hh-min".
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here is one selection which is probably useful to make in the "Record"-options. originally Debut offers abundantly 10 hours for maximum time of recording. i have selected 1 hour instead. that should be enough for my purposes. i also think that it's best to select "Stop" in the end instead of "Create new file" when the maximum is reached.
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in the "Snapshots"-options your can select destination folder and tune the name format for your snapshots. i seldom use this because in my case the web-camera's time-stamp is not shown in the pictures. the picture could be renamed later using the time of creation of the picture file.
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Post by ame »

Operation

in the picture below i have marked the button necessary for recording videos and other functions. start/pause/stop are self-evident. they can also be operated with hot-keys:
function key F5 for start, F6 for pause, F7 or ctrl-F10 for stop and F12 (ctrl-F12) for snapshot. i prefer the buttons because i'm too slow in finding the function keys.

on the horizontal bar you should see the sound level jumping at the same pace as you hear the sound level changing in your ears. the scale on the bar is a deciBel scale. the 'loudest' readings should not go much over 0 on this scale, i.e. the colours should not go much to the red side on the right. on the other hand the highest levels should be near 0 because otherwise the sound will be too hard to hear.

if you see nothing but a black line on the sound level bar, then the sound will be missing from your recording. if you want the sound back you will have close the live camera and the Debut, and then restart the Debut first and then the camera.
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the frame rate has considerable influence on the video file size. it can be selected in the "Video options". doubling frame rate will about double the file size and the required file space is therefore doubled. also the uploading time to Y-tube will also increase in the same proportion. i can't remember anymore what the default was. the Juras-Erglis camera gives High-Density stream with about 25 or so frames per second, but i have found that 15 fps (frames per second) is quite enough for my recordings.
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these are the basic functions you will need for making recordings with the Debut. remarks and questions are welcome. i'll try to find answers if possible.

have fun! :thumbs:
(and remember not to cover the recorded area with anything inappropriate. :rolleyes: )
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Post by ame »

examples

there was one example in my first mail about how a recording can go wrong. the most important thing is to make sure that the area which you selected really covers what you want to record. avoiding this is easily achieved by working carefully.

the following examples will illustrate the effect of limiting the recorded area versus full-view in a Y-tube video as the end product. the most striking effect you will see if you start both videos at the same time.
full-view video of the feeding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and a 'close-up':
.
the phantom-square in the upper left corner of the 'close-up' video is a result of me taking snapshots during the recording. VLC shows the picture in the upper left corner of the window. the lower right corner of those snapshots flashes in the video. thus this was exactly the kind of interference which i have warned about in making Debut recordings: something extra coming into the selected recording area. :D

the Tube squeezes all videos to a standard format which has a definite size on the screen, either embedded here on on the forum pages or slightly bigger the Tube-page. the Juras-Erglis picture size is 1280 wide x 720 high, which makes picture area 921600 square-pixels. the area which i selected for the 'close-up' recording is 416x330 pixels which makes 137280 square-pixels. this means that the full-view bigger picture is shrunk much more in the Tube-process than the smaller area picture, in the ratio of the area sizes which is almost 1:7 (smaller picture is about 15 % of the bigger). thus the smaller picture video will look like a fake-close-up video when viewed in the Tube. the eagle chick will look about 7 times bigger in the close-up than in the full-view. that is a big difference when talking about such a small bird. :thumbs:

Note: the same 'close-up' effect can be achieved also with for example Screen-Cast-OMatic or any other screen recording program by limiting the area being recorded.

other comparisons of the videos. i'll write the numbers of the full-view on the left and for the 'close-up' on the right.
length: . . . . . 3 min 18s . . . . . . 3 min 17 s
file size: . . . . 55 428 kB . . . . . . 523 248 kB
the file size of the 'close-up' picture is about 10 times bigger than the normal full-view video, but the uploading times are still with reasonable limits for the 'close-up' videos. reducing the frame rate further would produce smaller video files, but i believe that it would soon result in visibly poorer picture quality.
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Post by ame »

now i recorded an example from the Owl camera to illustrate how one can exclude unwanted section of the camera picture. in the case of the Owl camera the unwanted part of the picture is the dark outside in the night time. selecting only the inner view of the owl's nest box one can get video like the video on the right-hand side. click both videos running at the same time and the effect of recording area selection will be obvious.
full-view video with VLC-recorder on the left and nest-box view on the right:
.

at the time of recording there was still some light outside the nest box so the outer view is not yet completely black.
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Post by ame »

reserved
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Post by ame »

sibo4630 has another solution for making 'close-up' videos.
sibo4630 wrote:My videos are making by aTube Catcher with the"Screen Record"

Earlier I made it with VLC, but now i found this program, the browser of this program is smaler than the VLC, so I can open 2 browser-windows. ...
later sibo4630 gave more details of his/her method:
sibo4630 wrote:Hi ame and Liz01,
I'm going to direct stream , which is slightly smaller than the entire page and on the right I open the aTube Catcher program. I set the location, go to Screen-record and than on cutting, frame the video to be recorded and click on Start. That's all.


I have a normal monitor, you can see, it's possible!

greetings from Deutschland
Sibo4630
thank you sibo4630! :wave:

aTube Catcher can be found here:
http://www.atube.me/video/
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Post by pschon »

Recording camera stream and YouTube with OBS Studio

Here's how to use Open Broadcaster Software to record the stream or capture video from a web player. It's completely free and open-source (so it's not going to nag you about donating money, or try to sell you a Pro version or anything, you'll get all the features completely free!), and available for Windows, OS X and Linux.

1. Install OBS Studio

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Head to https://obsproject.com/ and download the OBS Studio (pick the right version for your operating system, of course ;))

Make sure to get the Studio, not the old "Classic" version (download link from the right side, not the left side!). These instructions only work for Studio and the old version is being depreciated already.

Install the program as any other, agree with the license (at least this one is pretty nice so no need to worry about all the legal text ;)) and launch the program. Time to set things up...

2. Settings

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First thing to do is click on the "Settings"-button.

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First set up your output options. We're mainly interested in the "Recording" section here, you can leave the "Streaming" part alone. The most important one here is the "Recording Path", which is where your video files will be saved. I'm just saving them to my desktop here. You might want to change the "Recording Quality", this will have a huge influence on how large video files you end with. (Advanced options will let you tweak this stuff in more detail, but you'll be just fine by choosing one of the quality presets).

I'm setting the output format to MP4 here, that should work well enough both for keeping the videos around and uploading them to YouTube.

Notice the "encoder" options here. What you have available will depend on your computer & which operating system you use. I'm using NVENC since I have a nVidia graphics card and allows me to use it to do the heavy work, but the basic idea is to switch any hardware encoder if available, and otherwise just try which one works best for you...

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Next is the Sound settings, nothing too important here, but if you want slightly smaller file sizes, switch the "Channels" setting to "Mono".

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Finally, on the "Video"-tab, you can set the output resolution. Go for 1920x1080 for full details from the camera stream (on both canvas & output resolutions), if you wish to capture from YouTube window in your browser, or want smaller file size, you can set the output to 1280x720 instead.

3. Capturing the camera stream

Now that everything is set up, you'll want to add something to record...

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In the "Sources"-section, click the "+" button to add new source, and from the popup list select "Media Source".

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You can give your new source a name so it's easier to remember what it does... Click OK to proceed.

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In the next window, untick the "local file"-box and you should now see a field where you can add the stream location. The RTSP stream seems to work well here. ([url]rtsp://193.40.133.138/live/merikotkas[/url]). Click "OK" to save this when you are ready.

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That's all! It might take a few seconds for OBS to open the RTSP stream from camera. Once it's done and you can see the video in the preview, you are ready to click "Start Recording".

Notice the "Mixer" panel as well, if you mute mic & Desktop Audio, other things you might do on your computer while recording shouldn't end on the video...

4. Adding window capture for YouTube player in your browser & zooming/cropping sources

Maybe you prefer capturing from the YouTube player or something else instead? No problem, that's easy to set up as well.

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In the "Sources"-section click the "+" button, and this time choose the "Window Capture".

(If you want, you can add it to it's own scene like I did here. Just click the "+"-button in Scenes section to add new one first...)

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Select the correct window from the "Window" popup. You'll also want to untick the "Capture Cursor"-checkbox. Then click "OK".

(Hint: if you move the eagle stream to it's own browser window, you can leave it open in the background to capture it, while surfing the web and reading the eagle forum freely without it affecting the recording...)

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Next you'll want to crop the captured window so that only the video you want is visible. Right-click on the window source you created (or click the cogwheel icon), and select Transform->Edit Transform.

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Tweak the numbers in the "Crop" settings to hide everything outside of the video. You'll probably end with slightly different numbers than I have but it'll likely be something similar to this. You can just close this window when it looks like you have things the way you want.

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The last thing you'll probably want to do is to make sure your cropped video source uses all available space on the video you are making. Easy, right-click on the source again, and select Transform->Fit to screen.

That should be it, hit the "Start Recording"-button to record your video!

5. Multiple scenes and sources

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You can also set multiple scenes, each with their own sources. Just right-click the "+" button in "Scenes"-section to create new ones. For example I've set up different scenes for capturing the RTSP stream and the YouTube player, and one additional one with more closely cropped & zoomed video. You could easily set up zoomed scenes for different areas of the nest or whatever might be useful. When recording, you can then just select a different scene on the fly.

You can also have many sources in one scene. The ones on top of the list will display above others, and you can move and resize each source separately. Add new text source to add text in your video, or image source to add a logo somewhere. Or maybe multiple video sources so you can record one video with all the different bird cameras? Or a closeup view in one of the corners?

The "Studio Mode"-button on right side switches you to split screen mode, where you can edit one scene while recording another one, and then just select next scene you want and hit a button to switch which scene is being recorded. Maybe a bit overkill for recording our eagles but useful to know anyway... :D
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Post by ame »

thank you pschon! you have done a great job here! :loveshower: :thumbs:
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Post by Liz01 »

here are the older versions OBS. v0.657b

https://sourceforge.net/projects/obsproject/files/

is is not good for me. I had to install many additional programs. also the settings are different from what can be read here in the thread

new version

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Post by ame »

i tried it too, and wasn't quite happy with it. :slap: first of all it didn't start properly (there was no picture), then there was no sound, and finally the picture quality stayed poor compared to what i got with VLC. on OBS the picture was blurred and stop&go... i don't know what the problem(s) was/were. :puzzled:

i think i'll stick with VLC after all. i hope that some people will find the OBS useful (can use it). :unsure:
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Post by pschon »

Liz01 wrote:here are the older versions OBS. v0.657b

https://sourceforge.net/projects/obsproject/files/

is is not good for me. I had to install many additional programs. also the settings are different from what can be read here in the thread

new version
Those links are for the source code, not the program itself which is why they are not ready to use as is. You can download the actual program from the web page I linked. Also make sure to get the Studio, not the old "Classic" version which is being phased out and isn't as easy to set up & use anyway.

I'm not sure about Ame's problem with quality, though, as long as you use the RTSP stream and set the resolutions right (and recording quality, of course) it should give you exactly he same quality as VLC does. Capturing from YouTube through web page will of course only give as big resolution as your YouTube player is...
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Post by ame »

the quality problem was perhaps due to my internet connection. i have sometimes poor stream when others get perfectly good stream. i was comparing to the VLC-stream which i was watching at the same time time, side by side with the OBS. running two cameras at the same time may deteriorate the signal even further... but many people watch two or more cameras at the same time without difficulties.
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Post by Liz01 »

a good Program for YouTube- Streaming and Snapshot ist Potplayer. it is freeware

https://potplayer.daum.net/

it is similar to VLC. This is actually better than VLC, because I can stream with it :headroll:
it streams TS files. AVC can convert the files. it works! I made a video and converted. :laugh:

Program window - Livestream from Youtube
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snapshot Tool
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snapshot
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I did not know, that this program can do everything! As always, I have little time. precise instruction I do on weekends.

Info and Settings
http://www.softpedia.com/reviews/window ... 1465.shtml
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Post by Liz01 »

click in the right corner below on the ADD button. EDIT: The gear wheel at the bottom opens the Control Panel

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and Add selected URL - copy the youtube link into and click OK
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now you can klick on the link in the right window. The stream starts.

I hope it helps for the Moment

click with the right mouse button on the Program Windows you can open the Menue for Shnapshot and streaming.

potplayer works great!


http://formac.informer.com/potplayer

first video EDIT: looks good!


Ame, please deletet my post and make one Instruction :bow:
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Post by ame »

Liz01 wrote:Ame, please deletet my post and make one Instruction :bow:
and do myself the work that you have already done? no way. :mrgreen:

the controls of the PotPlayer are as practical as those of the VLC. the functions can be found by clicking the Potplayer-text in the top-left corner of the PP window. then a long drop-down menu opens. most of the choices there will open new drop-down menus and so on. some of the command have shortcut-keys. probably the idea is that people will learn the hotkeys and use them but for beginners it is not so easy.

i made a few pictures to show how i found the controls which i need most, the video recording and snapshot controls.

first how to take snapshots. click on the choices in the order shown with the arrows. on the 4th step i have chosen "Start Consecutive Image Capturing" because that choice will leave the image capturer window open on the screen. this window is shown in the second picture.
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on the top are the storage options. you can select the folder where you want to find your snapshots. you can also select what prefix to give in the names of the pictures. this will help you to know where the pictures in the folder are from (in my case i chose for shortness "J-E" for Juras-Erglis). system date and time is also very practical in the file name. that will help us in finding pictures from a certain day and time.
two important things are marked with red and an exclamation mark!. the picture format should be jpg because it will produce smaller and economical pictures, and the aspect ratio must be kept. otherwise the pictures may be squeezed or stretched either in lenght or height.
the number in the green frame says how many pictures will be taken with one click. the practical number is probably 1. setting a larger number will take many pictures in a row either with constant time intervals or frame by frame. this may be useful when one wants to take pictures for gifs. i would use this for recorded videos, not for live recording. there it would create masses of unwanted nearly identical pictures and it would be a lot of work deleting them.

clicking the Start-button will take a snapshot.
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Post by ame »

then how to record the live stream.
click the lines in the order shown with the numbered arrows. as the 4th step i click the Record Stream... because that will allow editing the recording options before starting recording. these are shown in the second picture.
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on the top there are again the storage options for the videos, the folder and the name prefix.
here i have started recording so the Activity window shows the filename of the video which is being recorded. after the prefix Juras-Erglish there is the date and time when the recording was started. the format of the date and time is the same as in the filenames of pictures when this is selected as shown in the post above. this is practical for our purposes. in the lower right corner the red arrow shows the Start/Stop button. clicking the button will start and stop the recording. simple! :D

after i had opened the Image Capturer and Stream recorder windows i dragged the beside the Potplayer window. this way i have the snapshot and recording buttons available all the time.
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