This is a brief guide to producing better movies using Captivator from VideoLogic. It covers software and hardware installation, and explains how to use Captivator to make a short movie. Some hints on how to optimize your movies are given at the end of the example.

To create a movie on your PC using VideoLogic's Captivator, use the following steps:

1)	Install Video for Windows with Microsoft's Video for Windows Setup program.

2)	Run Captivator's Setup program.

3)	Install the Captivator card in your PC.

4)	Connect your video source. A camcorder is a good choice for your first video, since you can see what is happening. Connect the 'video out' on the Camcorder to the back of the Captivator card using the RCA (or S-Video) cable supplied with the camcorder.

5)	Start the VidCap application by double clicking on the VidCap icon that has been installed in the Video for Windows program group on the Windows Program Manager desktop.

6)	Choose 'Set Capture File' from the File menu, and enter a file name. This is where the captured movie will be stored. If you are prompted to enter a file size try 5MB, which will allow a video movie of about 10 seconds.

7)	Choose 'Video Format' from the Options menu. Good initial settings are:
	Width		160
	Height		120
	Format		VideoLogic YUV

8)	You can switch between different video input types using 'Video Source' from the Options menu, but since Captivator automatically identifies the input source you should not need to modify this setting.

9)	Choose 'Preview Video' from the Options menu. This enables you to see on your PC screen an abbreviated version of the image currently in the camcorder's view-finder, although depending upon your PC there may be some flicker.

10)	Choose 'Video' from the Capture menu. Good initial settings are:
	frames per second		15
	Enable capture time limit	x
	Seconds				10
	Capture Method			Directly to Disk

11)	Click 'OK' to capture your movie.

12)	To play your movie, choose 'Edit Captured Video' from the File menu. This will start the Video for Window's VidEdit application with your captured movie.

13)	Choose 'Play Preview' from the File menu to view your movie. At this stage the movie may drop frames during playback. Later you will be able to use the Video for Windows compression features, described in the documentation, to provide a flicker-free final result.


How To Improve Your Movies
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Best Quality Source
	The movies you capture can only be as good as the video source you use. Therefore, select the highest quality source possible as your starting point. In order of preference for quality, these are:
	S-VHS or Sony Hi8
	VideoDisc
	VHS (& Compact VHS), or Sony 8

Best Quality Input
	Captivator supports both S-Video and Composite.  S-Video provides a higher quality image, and should be used if available.

Use Captivator's YUV Format
	The quality of the recorded video sequence is influenced by the performance of your PC. You should therefore select the image size, color depth and rate of frame capture of the video sequence appropriate to  your particular PC. The PC's processor speed, VGA card, hard disk and RAM memory ultimately define the maximum performance you will achieve. If you attempt to exceed the performance capabilities of your PC, frames will be dropped and lost from the recording.
	Captivator's YUV format will provide the optimum combination of image size, color depth and frame rate, and is the best option for all video clips except where 24-bit true-color is required.
	
Selecting the Frame Rate
 	The correct selection of frame rate has a significant impact on the replayed video. Many people find that 15 frames per second (fps) produces smooth enough motion whilst saving on disk space and PC processing requirements. Keep in mind your target playback PC; a higher frame rate may require a more powerful machine. 30 fps is the maximum frame rate for playback of movies from an NTSC video source (25 fps for PAL).

Finding the optimum settings for your PC
	As a general guide try recording at Quarter Video size (160 x 120), at 15 frames per second in YUV format. Now increase the frame rate or image size beyond these parameters until you just start to loose frames, and then reduce the parameters slightly until you are able to capture without loss of frames.

Compressing Movies
	Once a movie has been captured and stored on your hard disk you can use the post-capture processing features of Video for Windows to compress the file. This can save a significant amount of disk space, especially useful if the final movie is for wider distribution.
	The Microsoft 'Video 1' compression method, which is supplied with Video for Windows, is suitable for most applications. However, compressing a movie is time consuming; a 10 second sequence may take 5 minutes to compress.

Tuning Your PC's Hard Disk
	Generally, you will capture a movie directly to your hard disk. To maximize the performance of your hard disk it is a good idea to de-fragment it before recording. De-fragmenting allocates contiguous sectors to your capture file, minimizing the amount of head movement required when writing to this file and thus increasing the rate at which you can write to the disk.

Optimizing Windows' Settings
	Avoid running any background tasks when capturing a movie, since you will get better performance if all the processing power of your PC is devoted to video capture and playback. Screen savers and wall-paper can have a significant effect on the performance of your PC.
