Capturing video through secondary pc

Neuromancer · 03-17-2007, 09:06 AM

Hey all,
maybe this will seem a bit strange but I'm going to ask anyway hehe.

At the moment I'm playing WoW on a Dell xps m1710. It has a video-out port. I'm playing at the native resolution of 1920x1200 and using Fraps to record at half-size.
But doing so makes the text seem too blurry becoming unreadable. I know that there's going to be some quality loss compared to full-size but sometimes I'm watching a movie with about the same resolution as I would record and the text is clear (well, clear enough to make out chat text etc).

Anyway, I've gone to the point that I'm using my desktop PC on a 1152x864 resolution to record full-size getting a very readable text etc.

As you can imagine, switching systems just to record footage is tedious and I've been browsing the web to look for a solution. Eventually I came up with the possibility of streaming the image from my laptop through my video-out, into the video-in of my second computer and record that.
That's where the problem lies, I just can't get the image to transfer to the secondary computer.

This laptop supports video-out through s-video, I have the cables plugged in and connected to the video-in of my computer. It's an Asus 9800xt card which supports both video-in and out. Confirmed by connecting a PlayStation 2 with the composite cable and getting an image.

I've looked for guides, help, anything to help me get my video onto the secondary pc but to no avail. So I'm turning to you guys if anyone could help me out

Sorry for the long read and thanks for your time to read it

PS: I know the card isn't exactly optimal for recording through s-video but once I can get it going I might invest in a better solution, specifically for recording.
PS 2: Would it be a much more easier option to get an external hard drive for the laptop and record full-size on that thus relieving the stress of my normal hard-drive or would the result end up in low FPS?

Btcc22 · 03-17-2007, 04:17 PM

All I can say about your output picture not showing up is to go to your display controls > 'Advanced' then checking the output is switched on.

Also, the reason why you can't record at full screen with that resolution is because FRAPS won't allow anything other than a dual core PC to record above 1152x768 in full screen resolution. It's a silly restriction, and perhaps they'll see the error of their ways and remove it.

Lastly, recording at high resolution like that (to external drives as they tend to be much slower, not least because of the method of data transfer) could result in lower FPS. I record full screen at 1280x1024 without an FPS cap set in FRAPS and there's a very noticeable difference in FPS between recording on a single internal drive and when I record on my RAID 0 drives (data is split onto both drives for higher read/write).

Hope that helps.

Neuromancer · 03-18-2007, 02:12 PM

Hey, thanks for answering.

I know Fraps auto records at half-size when capturing at higher resolution but this system has a dual core CPU and is capable of doing so but it puts it on heavier strain than half-size. Since it's a laptop I'm working on, I can't quickly fit another HD internally ;(.
Anyway, I've tried going through various settings to get my output to show but it doesn't work, must be doing something wrong so I'm going to keep looking about. Going to look around and see if a friend has a speciallized card I can use instead of using the built-in video capture card from my graphics card. Haven't heard a lot of good about it so maybe I can blame that instead of my incompentence of getting a picture

Anyway, thanks, until I can figure out what's wrong, I'll just stick to switching computers for recording hehe.

03-17-2007, 09:06 AM	#1
Neuromancer Initiate Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 2	Capturing video through secondary pc Hey all, maybe this will seem a bit strange but I'm going to ask anyway hehe. At the moment I'm playing WoW on a Dell xps m1710. It has a video-out port. I'm playing at the native resolution of 1920x1200 and using Fraps to record at half-size. But doing so makes the text seem too blurry becoming unreadable. I know that there's going to be some quality loss compared to full-size but sometimes I'm watching a movie with about the same resolution as I would record and the text is clear (well, clear enough to make out chat text etc). Anyway, I've gone to the point that I'm using my desktop PC on a 1152x864 resolution to record full-size getting a very readable text etc. As you can imagine, switching systems just to record footage is tedious and I've been browsing the web to look for a solution. Eventually I came up with the possibility of streaming the image from my laptop through my video-out, into the video-in of my second computer and record that. That's where the problem lies, I just can't get the image to transfer to the secondary computer. This laptop supports video-out through s-video, I have the cables plugged in and connected to the video-in of my computer. It's an Asus 9800xt card which supports both video-in and out. Confirmed by connecting a PlayStation 2 with the composite cable and getting an image. I've looked for guides, help, anything to help me get my video onto the secondary pc but to no avail. So I'm turning to you guys if anyone could help me out Sorry for the long read and thanks for your time to read it PS: I know the card isn't exactly optimal for recording through s-video but once I can get it going I might invest in a better solution, specifically for recording. PS 2: Would it be a much more easier option to get an external hard drive for the laptop and record full-size on that thus relieving the stress of my normal hard-drive or would the result end up in low FPS? Last edited by Neuromancer : 03-17-2007 at 09:09 AM.

03-17-2007, 04:17 PM	#2
Btcc22 Hall of Fame member Join Date: Jan 2006 Posts: 175	All I can say about your output picture not showing up is to go to your display controls > 'Advanced' then checking the output is switched on. Also, the reason why you can't record at full screen with that resolution is because FRAPS won't allow anything other than a dual core PC to record above 1152x768 in full screen resolution. It's a silly restriction, and perhaps they'll see the error of their ways and remove it. Lastly, recording at high resolution like that (to external drives as they tend to be much slower, not least because of the method of data transfer) could result in lower FPS. I record full screen at 1280x1024 without an FPS cap set in FRAPS and there's a very noticeable difference in FPS between recording on a single internal drive and when I record on my RAID 0 drives (data is split onto both drives for higher read/write). Hope that helps. __________________ //Chaosvex

03-18-2007, 02:12 PM	#3
Neuromancer Initiate Join Date: Nov 2005 Posts: 2	Hey, thanks for answering. I know Fraps auto records at half-size when capturing at higher resolution but this system has a dual core CPU and is capable of doing so but it puts it on heavier strain than half-size. Since it's a laptop I'm working on, I can't quickly fit another HD internally ;(. Anyway, I've tried going through various settings to get my output to show but it doesn't work, must be doing something wrong so I'm going to keep looking about. Going to look around and see if a friend has a speciallized card I can use instead of using the built-in video capture card from my graphics card. Haven't heard a lot of good about it so maybe I can blame that instead of my incompentence of getting a picture Anyway, thanks, until I can figure out what's wrong, I'll just stick to switching computers for recording hehe.