Video capture software recommendations

[Joe The PC Doc]

I recently had a customer who asked me if I could help him setup some security cameras at his home, he wanted to capture the video to his PC. I said it should be no problem, he had already bought the cameras from a store, and I said I would order in a TV tuner card for him.

Well, I ordered an ATI TV wonder 550, and went back to his house, and so began a miserable three days of frustration.

Installing the card wasn't too bad, getting a signal through the wireless receiver was touchy (the two cameras transmit to a wireless reciever which has a composite video and audio cable out.. They hooked up easily into the AV cable that comes with the TV Wonder).

A bunch of minor annoyances, and one big annoyance ensued. The cameras are powered either by 9-volt batteries, or thru AC adapters. He wanted to use the batteries, in order to save the trouble of running long and "obvious" extension cords around the house. Well, I was curious to see how long a 9-volt battery would power these cameras.. Turns out, not very long at all (like one night long).

Anyhow, when I sorted that out and told him he would have to plug them in, I got to work on setting up a video capture program. Honestly, I've never done it before, but didn't think it would be a big deal (people are using PCs for video recording all the time now right?)

I must have tried 8 different applications, all of them with mixed results. First of all, I wanted to find a freeware app to use for him, so that narrowed the playing field right away. 75 percents of the applications either didn't work with the TV tuner card at all, or couldn't switch inputs over to the composite input of the card. I finally found one that seemed to work well, WinAVI Video Capture. It allowed me to received the signal, and encoded at a good speed, with good file size (he's looking to set up a nightly record, 8 hours, seven days a week) so I'm looking for high quantity rather then quality.

Thing is, WinAVI defaults back to the wrong input each time it's started (settings won't save), and to top it all off, the task scheduler that's included with it doesn't seem to work at all. If I can't automate it, there's no point in it.

After all this, I started to look for some paid apps.. I found Chris TV. This thing is loaded with features, looks like the perfect program, it even saves it's settings when you exit (no need to switch inputs when it's run each time like WinAVI)...

But. The damn scheduler for this one doesn't work either! When the scheduled time is reached, it does open the program at least, but it doesn't start recording.

I'm really worn out on this, my customer has been very patient about it, but I've been trying to find a solution for days and nothing yet...

Has anyone used a video capture program with good results? What are your recommendations? It would need to have good encoding features (Divx encoding seems to work well with the app I'm using) Any other ideas? I've thought about possibly buying a composite to coax converter in order to try some of the apps that can only find input 1 (coax input) or maybe trying something like AutoIT to write a script I can use as a Windows task in order to "manually automate" the app I'm running now. The only problem is I have no idea how to use AutoIT, and I haven't programmed anything since Commodore 64 BASIC.

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated, I really would like to get this resolved.

Thanks!

 

[14049752]

I know this probably isn't what you're looking for, but Zoneminder is the best free solution for home security cameras. The problem is that you have to have a linux machine for the task, and usually a dedicated machine is best.....but it's a REAL security camera system with time stamping, web access, save to cd/mpeg features, alarm control, X10 control, motion sensing, etc.

As far as a windows solution, I've tried a few and they were all pretty crappy. They'll waste a ton of resources on the system they're running on, too.

 

[mh348]

Why are you using a TV Tuner Card for the Camera's. You need to use a DVR card. Look on ebay for a 8ch DVR Card. You can also use a single Power Supply, Just check the Camera's for how much power it uses, if it's 0.5mAh, then just multipy that with the amount of camera's you have to get the correct size psu.

Usually the DVR card will come with it's own software, try getting a Intotech Card (Rebranded as Kocom), it's quite a good card. The Software comes with a Server Version for the one where the camera's are connected and a Remote Viewer Version for you to install on another PC or notebook so your client can view it from home.

 

[Joe The PC Doc]

Why are you using a TV Tuner Card for the Camera's. You need to use a DVR card. Look on ebay for a 8ch DVR Card. You can also use a single Power Supply, Just check the Camera's for how much power it uses, if it's 0.5mAh, then just multipy that with the amount of camera's you have to get the correct size psu.

Usually the DVR card will come with it's own software, try getting a Intotech Card (Rebranded as Kocom), it's quite a good card. The Software comes with a Server Version for the one where the camera's are connected and a Remote Viewer Version for you to install on another PC or notebook so your client can view it from home.

Well, most of the DVR cards I've seen only have those BNC inputs on them, and his camera uses plain old composite RCA video. I chose a card i thought I would have the least hassle with. I wish I had made a different choice now.