Capturing Video with Virtual Dub (Basic approach)
With this approach, you manually start/stop the capture as if you were hitting the Record button on a camcorder. You should follow these steps at least one time to setup the capture device and verify that your setup works as expected. With the Lagarith codec the AVI file will be about 4GB for a 10 min recording. That is long enough for almost any attended occultation recording. Keep in mind the VirtualDub crashes on many Windows 10 computers – probably something related to the display driver on some systems.
Note: Windows 10 causes problems with the original VirtualDub release. We now recommended VirtualDub2 instead of the original VirtualDub.
The capture steps are simple: connect the hardware, start VirtualDub, and tell VirtualDub to start/stop the capture.
- Connect the Hardware
- Connect the SVID2USB2 to your computer’s USB port
- Connect the video camera output to the yellow RCA jack of the SVID2USB2
- Start VirtualDub
- Assuming you have VirtualDub shortcut on the desktop… double-click on the VirtualDub shortcut.
- Now we put VirtualDub in Capture Mode. From the main menu, select “File”, then “Capture AVI”
- Now select the SVID2USB2 device. From the menu, select “Device”, then “USB 2821 Device”. VirtualDub will “remember” this setting so you probably won’t need to do this after the first time. After this connection is made, the “live” video should appear in VirtualDub’s capture window on the Stream.
- Set the video compression. From the menu, select “Video”, then “Compression”, then select “Lagarith Lossless codec”. VirtualDub will remember this setting so you this should be a one-time setting.
- Set the capture file.
- Start/Stop the capture
- Start the capture. The easiest method is the touch keyboard… hit F6 on the touch keypad. Or you can select “Capture”, then “Capture video” from the menu.
- Stop the capture. The easiest method is the touch keyboard… hit ESC. Or you can select “Capture”, “Stop capture” from the menu.
Capturing Video with VDocc
I have modified the “helper program” VDTimer to create an app called VDocc. VDocc “drives” VirtualDub for you and makes recording much easier on devices with small screens. VDocc also has a timer mode where you can setup the computer to record a short segment of video at a specific time : you specify a recording duration and central time for the recording interval (e.g. record for 10 minutes centered at 04:04:04 UT). You can download VDocc via this zip file. Unzip the .EXE file from this zip file to a directory on your computer (e.g. Stream 7) and create a shortcut to it. This app is helpful for any computer, not just the small screen of a Stream 7. If you install it on Windows 10, you may need to “unblock” the EXE file before you can run the app. The first time you run VDocc, go to the settings to specify a capture directory and the location of VirtualDub.exe. VDocc also has an option to put the computer in hibernation after finishing a TIMER recording. This is a good idea if the computer is running on battery power and may run out of battery before you can return to the computer to shut it down properly. This option is enabled by default but you can turn it off.
Page History:
2021 Nov 24: SteveP – added link to VirtualDub2.
2016 Jul 31 : SteveP – initial version