Spook Central: The Ghostbusters Companion - Established August 1996 By Paul Rudoff
Home   •   Films   •   TV Series   •   Everything Else   •   Help/Search   •   Credits/Contact   •   Shop   •   The Corner Penthouse
« Video Capture Lists - Ghostbusters
Non-Ghostbusters > Video Capture Techniques
VIDEO CAPTURE TECHNIQUES

The information below is designed to help the average home user be able to grab stills, audio, and video from the home video products that they legally own. It is not intended to aid in the piracy of home video releases. The "pirates" already know how to do things way more advanced than what is listed here, and certainly don't need my help in going about their business. I will not provide any support for the information on this page. All e-mails asking for help will be ignored.

Since this is a Ghostbusters website, I have compiled some lists detailing where the content on the various digital releases of the various Ghostbusters productions can be found: GB1, GB2, RGB, EGB, GBAL, GBFE, GB2016, Other. Do note that all three 2019 Blu-ray discs are listed on the GB1 page.

Freeware Software: MakeMKV (free Beta keys here and here - you'll need a new one every 60 days to keep using for free), VirtualDub, K-Lite Mega Codec Pack, DVD43, XnView, UDF2.5 File System Driver, Audacity.
Shareware Software: AnyDVD HD, Nero Showtime, PowerDVD, Total Media Theatre Platinum, Cinematize Pro, Total Recorder Pro, DVDFab.
[note: programs without links are no longer being produced, so you'll have to search for old copies]


In order to capture from an analog source, such as a VCR, you will need to have a video capture card/device installed in your computer, or one of those USB plug-in devices, such as the Gigaware Video Converter, which works in 64-bit Windows. The information below is written for card I used to have: Voyetra Turtle Beach Video Advantage PCI Video Capture Card & Front Panel (TB120-1500-02/TBS-1500-01). The item is no longer being manufactured, and doesn't have 64-bit drivers, so it's all but useless these days. If you're still using an old 32-bit operating system, you may be able to find this capture card used on Amazon. Of course, you can use any capture device you like.

Before I proceed, I will assume that you have the necessary audio/video cables of sufficient length to reach from your source to your computer. At the very least you will need a Composite cable (yellow video plug with red and white audio plugs). If you want slightly higher video quality, you might want to also get a S-Video cable (you'll still need the Composite cable for the audio). For more information on the different cables, check out Lyberty.com's excellent article about the subject.

Although the information listed on this page is written up in reference to capture from videotapes, it can also be used to capture from a PlayStation 2 or any other video source with Composite outputs.

IMAGE & VIDEO
* Hardware: Video Advantage PCI.
* Software: VirtualDub.
The Video Advantage PCI comes with a program called "AD FullCap", which is what I'll be using to capture the video to my hard drive. Even though the program has a Snapshot button (the button with the camera icon to the immediate right of the big "REC" record button), I will not be using it for capture still frames. You do not want to capture still frames "on the fly", and for VHS tape, you'll want to be able to deinterlace the video later. So with that in mind, I'll capture a small piece of video to my hard drive, in AVI format, that contains the frame(s) I want, then I'll open that file up in VirtualDub to pull out the frames.

Since a VCR can only store its video in a 4:3 aspect ratio, for STILL IMAGES & WEB VIDEOS it is best to capture at 640x480 so everything will stay in 4:3. If you intend to burn your captured video onto DVD, then capture at 720x480, which is the DVD's native dimensions. Once you have the video on your hard drive, you'll want to open it up in VirtualDub for further processing. Videos opened in VirtualDub will display two preview windows - input and output (kinda like "before and after"). You can right-click on either to reduce the size of each window, or even disable one of them using F9 (input) or F10 (output). Now you can start processing your videos. In the case of still image extraction, that means deinterlacing the video, cropping any unwanted parts, and then selecting and extracting the frames.

* Deinterlace: CTRL+F (or Video - Filters), Add, Deinterlace, use "Blend fields together (best)".
* Cropping: CTRL+F (or Video - Filters), Cropping, move the edges of the preview images to where you want them to be. The cropping fearture is only available after you add a filter, such as Deinterlace or Null Transform (if you only want to crop with no filters applied).
* Selecting Frames: At the bottom of the main interface, the two half arrows on the right are what you use to select the start and end position of the area you wish to extract. You can extract as few as one frame, or as many as all of them.
* Extracting Frames: File - Export - Image Sequence. Save in either BMP or PNG, depending on how much hard drive space you have. Both are lossless formats, but BMP is uncompressed, so it'll take up more hard drive space. On the other hand, PNG will take longer to extract since the program has to spend extra time compressing the images. Also make sure that you have selected a minimum number of digits equal to the number of digits in the number of frames in the video. If a video contains 186275 frames, you'll want to select 6 digits.

NOTE: In VirtualDub you can either select a portion of frames to extract, or select portions that you DON'T want, delete them, and then extract everything else that remains. If you choose to only extract the frames you select, after you do the extraction, be sure to then move the images somewhere else, or do each extraction to a different directory, because new extracted images WILL overwrite the old ones without warning.

After all of the frames are extracted as individual images on your hard drive, go through them and find the ones you want to keep. Delete the rest, and you're done.

Established August 1996
SpookCentral.tk


Search (Reference Library Only)

Ghostbusters Afterlife Posters For Sale

Ghostbusters Merch at Amazon.com
(Ghostbusters Amazon Store)

Ghostbusters Officially Licensed Amazon Store

Please be aware that as an Amazon Associate, I earn a very tiny commission from purchases made though the Amazon links on this site.

Want to see your product reviewed here? Click for details.

Official Spook Central Merchandise

COMMUNITY LINKS

NEWS
Ghostbusters Wiki
GB News
GB Fans
Ghostbusters Mania
GB Reboot Facebook
Proton Charging News Archive

FORUMS
GB Fans
EctoZone

OFFICIAL
Ghost Corps Facebook
Ghostbusters Facebook
Ghostbusters YouTube
Ghostbusters.com

In Loving Memory of Joel Richard Rudoff (July 28, 1944 - January 20, 2014)

In Loving Memory of Linda Joyce Rudoff (July 12, 1948 - November 29, 2015)

Doreen Mulman (May 22, 1961 - March 14, 2014)



Pirate Ship - Cheap USPS Postage
( MY COMPARISON REVIEW )
( AVOID SHIPPINGEASY/STAMPS.COM )

The Art Of Tristan Jones

James Eatock's eBay Auctions
U.S. eBay (Ghostbusters stuff)
U.K. eBay (Ghostbusters stuff)

  XML Feeds

AWARDS I'VE WON



CMS with Bootstrap