TECHNICAL GUIDE - THE ART OF SCREEN CAPPING ACCORDING TO VID_88

So you're feeling a bit pervish watching the streaming cameras for this years Big Brother and want to share what you're watching with the rest of the online-perve community, but don't know how! Well we're here to tell you how to do it using a great piece of software - SnagIt!

Be warned there is a bit of downloading to be done before you can start to watch the streams - but it's not a hard process and once you know how by following this tutorial it will be second nature.

This tutorial will use Australian Big Brother 4 and Real Player as an example, but the principles are all the same regardless of what software is used to view the live streams.

1. YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION

Firsty, you're going to need to have a broadband connection to the internet and be able to play the hi streams. Something along the lines of 512 kbps downstream will work just fine, so will 256 kbps but it doesn't leave much space for anything else to happen while the stream is running.. like uploading to this here website.

So if you don't have one - stop here - 56k stream caps are no good because the boobies and penises turn out too pixelated and we can't see anything. :P Sorry - invest in a hi-speed connection and move on to step two.

2. DOWNLOADING THE PLAYER TO VIEW THE LIVE STREAMS

Okay, so you're all set up with your sexy broadband connection. Now if you already don't have Real Player you're going to need it. Download it from real.com - make sure you click on the link to the right that says "Free Player" and get that.

3. DOWNLOADING SNAGIT TO CAPTURE THE LIVE STREAM

Now we've got Real Player 10 and can play the streams well. Next, we need the software that is going to enable you to capture the streams. Techsmith's SnagIt program is what we use, and can capture video with or without audio, and great looking still images (screen captures). Download this and install.

4. DOWNLOADING CODECS TO CREATE MOVIE CLIPS

If you're going to be capping videos and not just still images - head over to DivX.com and download the DivX codecs. DivX is an open source implementation of the popular low-bitrate MPEG-4 standard. It means basically that you need to have this software installed in your computer if you want to watch or encode DivX movies. This version is the latest version of this codec and gives you the best picture quality. This is the ad-supported Pro version of DivX 5. It includes the Advanced Encoding. To remove the advertising, you need to purchase this fantastic product. To record video you're also going to need the Camtasia application. Download and install.

5. READY TO CREATE SCREEN CAPTURES

You've got all the software you need now - yay! Thank god that's over. I'm gathering you've installed everything. If you haven't we'll just wait until you're done....... okay thanks all installed. Now i reccomend putting a quick launch SnagIt button on your Quick Launch toolbar, just for when you need it like in the image below.

It's just easier that way. So fire-up SnagIt and now we have to set up a few things. Refer to the next few screen caps on how to do it all.

Select this option, "A window to file"

We're starting off with capturing images - then we'll move onto the video side of things. Make sure the "image" button is selected, and then click the three dots button next to Output like in this diagram. The following box will appear.

Make sure you select "JPEG", and then click the options button under where you can select what image type you would want.Change the quality to '100' and press okay, like in the following handy diagram.

Now you're back to the window where you can select what picture type you want - and some other things on the right hand side of the dialoge box - the selected part in this picture:

They control the name of the file, so because my nickname is vid_88 and i'd want all my caps to have this name: [vid_88]-####, the #'s representing a number, i choose the Automatic file number and then to four digits. Select the output folder and we're set! Remember put your nickname in square brackets so you get credit for the files you upload !

Now if you want to, you can put a watermark on your caps. This just says that you took it blah-de-blah. You can do this in Snagit nice and easily, just have a play around with the Watermark control panel by clicking the filters drop-down list, and then selecting Watermark. The options will come up where you can do what you want, like this image:

Okay, now you're all set to capture images. Just press the capture button at the top of the screen, or use the global-hot-key Ctrl+Shift+P. Move around your mouse until you get the stream, which will pause when it's selected. Click again and the frame will be captured, and an editor window will come up if you wanna add anything to the image. Generally - you don't so just click 'Finish File' and the file will be saved to the capture directory we set up before.

6. THE VIDEO SIDE OF THINGS

Now onto the video side of things, which everyone loves more. I'm guessing you've already set up Camtasia and DIVX, as you're going to need them to capture and convert video. So you've got your stream fired up, and something interesting has started to happen - and you need to cap! Like SnagIt, i've placed the Camtasia icon on the taskbar too, so i can get into the program ASAP. Before you can cap you've got to set up everything, so follow these diagrams. Also - don't complain if you get a black screen when you've capped something - it's because you need to turn Hardware Acceleration off in Real Player. Do to this, open real player, click Tools > Preferences > Hardware > and take the second dial down to "Most Reliable".

In the Camtasia window go to Options>Preferences. Change the frame rate to 30.0fps - you're going to have to untick the Auto Configure tickbox. Then click the Video Setup button, and change the codec to Divx 5.1.1. You shouldn't need to configure anything more here, so press okay to the codec box. Then in the Audio Options box make sure the interleave audio checkbox is ticked, and then select "Use Default Recording Device" for Audio Capture Device. Then click Audio Setup, and put in what is in the image below.

Click the "File" tab, and change the options like i've done below.

Click the "Program" tab, and do the same as i have - tickbox wise.

Setting the Automatic File Name box will add a number to the end of a file, so it's easier when you're capturing multiple files and don't want to accidently overwrite anything. I sue "[vid_88]-divx-", so people know it's a divx file. The number will be placed after that string, so i can change it later on. Select your output file and everything is fine, so click Okay.

Change the input to "Window" as shown in that picture, so we can select JUST the video stream, not the whole Real Player window.

Change the output to file, for obvious reasons. Now you're all ready to cap some streamage!

Load up the stream, 'hi' of course, (but i'll show you a screen cap in low, because apparently there are too many users on the high stream..) and have Camtasia open aswell. Click the red circle in camtasia, and then click on the PICTURE that you're seeing. NOT so the coloured box appears around the black parts or around the whole Real Player window, but the actual picture you're going to cap. The red square may appear around it, or it may not. Either way, your mouse pointer will become a hand - and then just press the left mouse button and the box will flash around the stream. Press stop on Camtasia to stop the cap, or press pause to do just that. The file will be compressed and encoded, and then put into the specified directory that we set up before.

If you want to set up a watermark you can, just to go "Effects > Annotation" and tick "Add watermark" and then go to "Effects > Settings" and set up the watermark - it's exactly the same as the SnagIt one.

Now you've got your capping done, upload it to Reality Skin and you've made the world a better place.

vid_88 - v1.0b (23/05/2004)