How-To Geek

I have spent a few hours today to experiment with video capture, edit and publishing. I like to invite your comments on the results, which I think are stunningly good. I have to thank ScottW who is ,so to speak, the "father" of this experiment, because he found the 2 nifty programs I am using and also pointed me to Vimeo.

Here is what I did:

1. I "played" 2 .pps files on my screen and captured those with the WMCapture Program. I chose those .pps files because I thought that they were particularily challenging for a video capture progam. The "Mirror" file I got from Sinclair's skydrive.

2. Then I fist cropped the files with the Machete program because the files had my desktop views in the beginning and the end and I really only wanted he .pps part.

3. Since I made 2 seperate capture files, I had to put them together into 1 file. For this I also used the Machete program. I chose this pogram because unlike WMM, Machete does not alter your files - it just "pastes" them together. That guarentees that there is no loss of quality which can be significant with WMM.

4. Then I uploaded the pasted file to Vimeo. And here is the result: http://www.vimeo.com/3288748
Note: The captured files sometimes run a little faster than the originals because I kept clicking on them to advance them a little faster.

5. For comparison you can download the original .pps files from here.

I have also done a compilation of the 2 captured output files with WMM. Below you can see the data differences in the Machete and WMM outputs.

NOTE: The "Machete input" is the data from only 1 input file, but the parameters (other than size) of the other file are the same.

I think the results that those 2 little programs provide are impressive and it did not even suffer in the Vimeo transformation. Yes, one has to spend a modest sum for the licenses, but as always, quality does not come for nothing.
If I had to change one thing, I would probably increase the kbps for the audio capture.

YA, I am always playing with my trackball - bad habit. What do you think about the result (in terms of quality) and the specs of the capture file?

techgranny, for learning PP, I highly recommend the following book: Power Point 2007 by Steve Johnson, Perspection Inc., ISBN 0-7897-3643-8 for $34.99. For the book, they also supply a bunch of data for practice cases on their website. The book is very well structured and easy to follow, but if you really do all of it, you can make it all the way to Microsoft Certified Application Specialist - one reason they supply all that data for in depth practice.

Thanks for the input ScottW. I thought the mirror images and the ice would be a challenge for the capture. But as you suggested, I will make a test with car chases and explosions (or something similar) - have to find an appropriate clip. What do you think about the audio. Should I increase the bitrate? Since I neither see nor hear very well any more, it is always hard to judge for me - and the wife refuses to be the test person - LOL.

Thanks Aleeve for the input. The audio was not too great on the input to start with.

Understand, thanks. Here are my choices.