Video capture question

[smips65]

I know this is going to sound incredibly newbie, but I am in no way whatsoever a techie.

I have a "webcam" on my laptop, which supposedly captures audio.

Would there be anyway to record a song for the current competition utilizing a webcam?

I don't own a video cam, or a microphone, basically I just have laptop with its compliment of built in features.


I have an electric guitar / amp so I would be able to up the sound for audio capture, I think...


Just wondering.
Don't really need another guitar, so wasn't concerned with that angle, but being able to upload vids would be a nice option at some point in time.


Thanks.
Jeff

[d_dog]

Hey Jeff,

I think most certainly yes you can use your webcam to record videos and audio. I'm guessing that this webcam is built-in to your laptop? The easiest configuration would be to use your amp and let the mic pick up the sound from that. Might take a bit of trial and error and moving the amp around to get the volume just right so you can still hear your voice and guitar (if you're singing that is)
Let me know what kind (Brand and model) of computer you have, what operating system you're using (Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7) and maybe I can be more specific on how you can get this done.
The only missing piece is what software you have, or free versions are available, to do the recording. Have you ever recoded anything with the webcam?

Feel free to send me a private message, and maybe I can help you over the phone too.

[buddy]

Jeff,

You should be able to use the cam on your laptop to record both video and the audio. You may need to use movie maker to edit it but that is pretty simple to use.

Bud

[smips65]

Thanks for the ultra fast responses, wow


the laptop is a HP G60

The only software that seems to "activate" the cam is "Cyberlink YouCam"
D-Dog, it doesn't have any sort of "save as" feature that I've been able to access. It wants me to link to stuff like AOL AIM or things of that nature.

Operating System is Vista Home Premium

I should try Windows Media Player to record maybe....

I'm just chewing my cud, so to speak, I might consider a computer camera here in the future. I read the threads regarding recording and uploading, but everyone seems to have some sort of additional equipment, and software for blending video and audio.

To be perfectly honest, I'd rather spend money on the Target Program, than spend it on computer stuff I'd only use occasionally.

[jayswett]

smips65 wrote:

Don't really need another guitar, so wasn't concerned with that angle, but being able to upload vids would be a nice option at some point in time.


Jeff

Yes, I would definitely agree that it would be a great option for you to be able to do that, so it's worth putting in the time to figure it out. I learned alot from the comments posted relating to my videos. I agree with our friends above that if you have a webcam on your computer, making a video should be fairly easy and straightforward. At some point, you might want to learn how to edit it, but that would just be icing on the cake. You could just post your un-edited video to the TG youtube channel.

[MarkM]

Jeff,

Yes you can absolutely record with your webcam. I don't have an HP but I'm sure its not that different on other brands. In your programs list. Hit the lower left windows circle to bring that up. You should be able to see a "webcam manager" program. If you click that you should be able to see the interface come up. Look for the record button and then click that. Now you're off to the races. Once you are done then it will ask you to save the file. In my case it will save it to the specific date. When I want to pull that file up I would then go to the calendar within that program to find it. I recorded this way for a while last year before deciding to use the camcorder and it seemed to work fine. You have got some great help here and I'm sure more will follow. The only thing I would watch out for is that sometimes the audio on the webcam may not accurately pick up the playing as well as you would like.




MarkM

[d_dog]

After poking around a little bit about the webcam on the HP G60, I found this support forum thread at HP's website. I hope you don't have the humming issue that others are experiencing, but I thought I'd post this anyway, just in case.
http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Hardware/H ... m-p/153842

I honestly don't know which programs you might already have that might be able to take advantage of the webcam. But I also came across this useful thread on using the webcam on the G60:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... 39&lang=en

If you don't already have it, it looks like you can get a program called YouCam, you can get it here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu ... =c01415015

I hope this helps.