CAPTURING DIGITAL VIDEO FOR CORPORATE USE & PRESENTATIONS

If you have done a presentation before and had to explain and illustrate a difficult process or concept, you know how difficult it can be sometimes to do so by merely using text, graphics and even sound. The solution is to incorporate digital video.

With video, you can show a complex procedure and save lots of time repeating explanations. Because video in the PC is in digital form, you can play it back as many times as possible without fear of degradation.

Moreover, once you have captured a video clip, you can make as many copies as you want by simply copying the files as you would with any other file format such as an MS Word document.

To get video into your PC, you need to have a video capture board such as Creative's Video Blaster RT300. The function of the video capture board is to digitize the video into the hard disk of your PC. You will need to connect an external video source such as your video camera or recorder to the capture board. You will need in addition the appropriate video-capture software.

There are many good software packages for capturing video. Most video cards come bundled with the necessary video and editing software. The Video Blaster RT300 comes bundled with Adobe Premier.

Such software will capture the external video source and digitize it into Microsoft's AVI format (Audio-Video Interleave).

However, you will need lots of hard disk space depending on the following:

• The frame rate of the clip The size of frame captured

That's all that it takes - an external video source, a capture board and the necessary software. Now here's the bad news. A single frame of uncompressed video can take up to 30 MB of hard disk space.

This is why most video-capture software packages will also allow you to compress the video clip at a reasonable compression rate. However, once a clip is compressed, some quality will necessarily be lost. There are a number of compression methods e.g. CINEPAK, INDEO, etc, and these are options you can choose from during compression.

Don't dream of capturing full screen full motion video with a regular capture board. As a general rule, take note of the following:

• The bigger the frame display of your video clip, the more hard disk space is required.
• A video clip captured at 30 fps takes up twice the space of a 15 fps video clip.
• Color resolution should be considered, as a video clip captured at 256 color will require significantly less hard disk space than the clip captured in high color.

• Keep the frame size to 160 x 120 or 240 x 160 resolution instead of the maximum of 320 x 240.
• Capture at 15 fps. This is enough to fool the human eye into perceiving motion.
• Reduce your resolution to 256 colors.

These are just some tips you might want to consider.

Yes you can. Most video-editing software allow you to edit video frames and add transitional effects like wipes, scrolling, etc. In fact, if you have lots of hard disk space, consider producing your own digital video movies.

If you intend to screen a little video clip in your presentation, it might be a good idea to include some captions or titles in it. Again, this is possible with video-editing software.

Most presentation programs support OLE (Object Linking and Embedding). Other programs are able to read video formats such as AVI.
If you are using a regular presentation program such as Microsoft's Power Point, here's how you embed a video clip:

Power Point under WIN 95 / WIN 3.1
Using Paste special

1. Open a video file (chess.avi) in Media Player
2. Click Edit menu and select Copy Object
3. Exit Media Player and open Power Point (and your file)
4. Click Edit menu and select "Paste Special"
5. From Paste Special dialog box, select the "chess.avi object"
6. Media Player will appear!

7. 

1. Click Insert from the menu of Power Point and select "Object"
2. From your Object dialog box, select your object type from the various applications (e.g. Media Clip, Paintbrush Picture,...) Choose Media Player
3. Your Media Player will appear
4. Choose your Video Clip
5. Click on Update

6.