How to Capture Video

Using Vegas Video 6.0 on Windows

David K. Woods, Ph.D.
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
University of Wisconsin, Madison

This web page documents one method for capturing video for use with Transana. It's only one way of doing it, and there are many other ways that will work. The purpose of this page is to serve as an overview of the process and to allow people to gain an understanding of what needs to be done to capture video and prepare it for analysis with Transana. Although the process is described using Vegas Video 6.0, that should not be considered an endorsement of that particular tool. There are many similar programs that will get the job done equally effectively.

Step 1: Capture the Video on the Computer

This page assumes that you use a digital video camera. It is easier to get video into the computer from a digital video camera than from an analog video camera, and digital cameras are very affordable. If you use an analog camera, please see the "Analog Video" section of Preparing Video for Transana.

1. Make sure you have adequate free space on your hard drive. Capturing digital video takes about 13 Gigabytes of disk space per hour captured. It's a good idea to have more space than you need free, though.

2. Connect your digital video camera to your computer. You probably need a FireWire (IEEE 1394) card in your computer, though some new cameras claim to be able to connect to a USB-2 port. (I've heard that video quality is not quite as good if you use USB rather than FireWire to connect.) Attach a cable from your FireWire port to the appropriate jack on your video camera. (My camera has a docking station, but most I've seen allow you to plug the cable directly into the camera.)

3. Put the camera into "Playback" mode and position the tape in the camcorder to the beginning of the segment you want to capture, usually the beginning of the tape.

4. Start Vegas Video 6.0. As soon as the program is loaded, select "File" > "Capture Video" to indicate that you want to transfer video from the digital camcorder to the computer.

5. Press the "Capture Video" button. If your copy of Vegas is set up to control the camera as well, this should automatically trigger the camera to start playing the tape. If your copy of Vegas is not set to control the camera, you will need to press "Play" on the camera at the same time.

Video capture occurs in real time. If you have an hour long tape, go do something else for a while. (I do not try to use my computer for other tasks while capturing video because the processor demand is so high for this task, although this may be little more than superstitious behavior on my part.)

6. When the video tape in the camera is done playing, make sure that the video capture session on the computer stops, and press "Stop" on the camcorder if necessary. Vegas Video then displays the "Capture Complete" dialog box.

The first thing you should do on this screen is to rename your clip. (I don't find "(Unknown) - Clip 006" to be a very helpful name.) Then press the "Done" button and close the capture window.

Vegas Video then saves your video file in *.avi format in uncompressed Digital Video (DV) form. This form of digital video is very high quality, but takes up about 13GB of space per hour. It's also unsuitable for analysis with Transana because it is simply too unwieldy. People have reported Transana having difficulty playing clips and jumping to locations in video when using video this dense, particularly when working on laptops.

Step 2: Convert the Video to a Transana-Friendly Format

Once the Video Capture is complete, you have a large video file on your hard drive, which is represented by an entry in Vegas Video's "Project Media" window in the lower left-hand quadrant of the screen. To get this video file prepared for analysis in Transana, you must convert the video into a Transana-friendly format.

1. Drag the video from the Project Media window to the main Video Editing area of Vegas Video.

I often take this opportunity to clean up my video a bit. If there is extraneous video at the beginning or the end of the video file, I will do video editing so that my final video file contains exactly what I want, nothing more and nothing less. If I have poor audio quality, Vegas allows me to enhance the audio track's intensity. Finally, if the video is part of a large project, I will often create an introduction graphic that provides important details about the video, such as date of taping, subject, location, and other relevant information. Whether you want to take the time to do this is up to you; Transana doesn't care.

2. Convert the video to a new format. I primarily use one of two formats, MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. MPEG-1 is lower quality video than MPEG-2, but it also requires considerably less disk space and is almost universally supported. MPEG-2 is higher quality, uses larger files, and sometimes will not play properly on computers that don't have the appropriate MPEG-2 "codec" installed. MPEG-1 video takes roughly 650 - 700 MB of disk space per hour, while MPEG-2 video takes roughly 2 GB of disk space per hour, though this will vary depending on the encoding settings you use.

Thus, which format to use is an analytic decision. If I need high-quality video to be able to see facial expressions or body language, or if the video is of a large group of people, I will use MPEG-2 because I often need the higher quality. Otherwise, I will probably use MPEG-1. Of course, I always save my tapes and my DV-quality *.avi files, so I can always recreate my video file in another format if I need to.

To convert to your desired format In Vegas Video, select "File" > "Render As".

After giving the video a File Name, select the appropriate format using the "Save as type" dropdown, selecting either "MainConcept MPEG-1 (*.mpg)" or "MainConcept MPEG-2 (*.mpg)".

Vegas Video's default template for MPEG-2 video, advanced video, and audio settings works well for me. I have altered the MPEG-1 template's video settings to change the image size to 360 x 240, but use the default audio settings. If you decide to change these settings, avoid "variable bit-rate" audio as Transana does not support this at this time. Also, you should test your first file with Transana before rendering a large number of files using non-standard settings.

3. Press the "Save" button, and go find something else to do for a while. My computer renders MPEG-2 video at about 20% faster than real-time, and renders 320 x 240 MPEG-1 video somewhat faster than that, but your performance may vary. Usually, Vegas Video's estimates of how long rendering will take are pretty good after about 2 minutes.

The resulting video should work in Transana. Good luck, and happy analysis!