CompTIA A_ Certification All-In-One Exam Guide, Seventh Edition - Michael Meyers [357]
Windows is a wildly extensible operating system, and programmers love to dump helper applications to run in the background to optimize their specific application. Install Apple’s iTunes, for example, and you’ll get more than you bargained for in programs installed. To go along with the iTunes player, the installation puts in automatic update-checking tools, iPod helpers, a quick-launch for QuickTime, and more.
The best solution is to have a machine dedicated to video capture. If you have a machine with multiple functions, however, you can turn off some of the automatically loading helper applications before you start the video capture process. You do this by stopping processes and services through the Task Manager.
In Windows Vista, get to the Task Manager by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + ESC or by pressing CTRL + ALT + DELETE and clicking the Start Task Manager option. The Processes tab shows your running processes. You can right-click any unnecessary process and close it by selecting End process or End process tree from the context menu (Figure 20-29). I generally go for the latter option, just in case some other process is running only because of the unnecessary process. That gets them all.
Once you’ve stopped processes, click over to the Services tab. You can quickly see what’s running, by sorting services by status. Just click the Status column heading to sort. Right-click any unnecessary service and select Stop Service from the context menu (Figure 20-30). Couldn’t be easier!
If you find you’ve stopped a necessary service, you can simply right-click it again and select Start Service from the context menu. Or, if the system has become unstable, a simple reboot will reload everything.
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NOTE You can disable services in the Services applet in Administrative Tools, but it’s usually better to stop a service first through Task Manager, just to see if it’s truly unnecessary for system stability or function.
Figure 20-29 Ending a process
Figure 20-30 Stopping a service
Sync Problems
Capturing a video and audio stream simultaneously can be tough, because it takes the computer a lot longer to encode the video than the audio stream. This can lead to significant disconnection between the video and audio streams, so they become desynchronized. It’s surprisingly easy to create a movie that’s very badly lip-synced! The process of synchronizing audio and video is called A/V sync.
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NOTE There’s also a common problem of video and audio going out of sync in the process of burning from a hard drive to a DVD, but that’s a distinctly different problem than a lack of A/V sync in the capture process.
You can fix this problem sometimes by changing software or even versions of software. Alternatively, if you’re having problems with an analog capture, you can record the analog signal into a digital video camcorder and then try to capture from the digital device. A bit clunky, perhaps, but it can work. Finally, you do the last solution in processing, where you manually separate the audio and video streams and then put the whole thing back together synced properly.
Dealing with video capture can be difficult and time consuming, especially in the analog to digital process. A good resource to start learning the detailed ins and outs is with the folks at the Digital FAQ: www.digitalfaq.com.
Poor Capture Quality
Numerous factors can degrade the quality of a video capture, including background programs, marginal hardware for the job, and poor quality source materials. For the background program issue, follow the same procedures as you did above with the dropped frames. If the computer or the capture components can’t do the job, the only fix is to upgrade. The best things to upgrade are the capture hardware and the CPU. It goes almost without saying that you’ll