Video Capture from PC screen

iandh2010

Newbie Location: South East England Joined: Jun 30, 2013 04:37 Messages: 37 Offline

Solved by

Dec 26, 2013 11:20

Hi Guys,
I have Power Director 11 and quite often want to grab a video from my PC screen. I use software called Stellarium which is a planetarium program that displays the night sky in a photo-realistic way. I program Stellarium scripts to display tours of the night sky to show at my astronomy club. The problem is it only displays this on a PC screen.

To get it into PD11 I have to use some PC screen capture software to save the display in a format that I can then import into PD11 to edit it together with music and some other clips. This is not terribly easy and often does not produce brilliant results.

I was wondering whether there is a way to directly capture the PC screen into PD11?

Thanks
Ian Regards
Ian

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Dec 26, 2013 13:07

Quote: Hi Guys,
I have Power Director 11 and quite often want to grab a video from my PC screen. I use software called Stellarium which is a planetarium program that displays the night sky in a photo-realistic way. I program Stellarium scripts to display tours of the night sky to show at my astronomy club. The problem is it only displays this on a PC screen.

To get it into PD11 I have to use some PC screen capture software to save the display in a format that I can then import into PD11 to edit it together with music and some other clips. This is not terribly easy and often does not produce brilliant results.

I was wondering whether there is a way to directly capture the PC screen into PD11?

Thanks
Ian

No, not directly into Powerdirector, Powerdirector does not have a Screen Capture ability.

There is lots of Screen Capture programs on the Internet.

Some are good and some are terrible.
Some are even Free.
Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.

borgus1

Senior Contributor Joined: Feb 27, 2013 00:33 Messages: 1318 Offline

Dec 26, 2013 13:17

Quote: I have Power Director 11 and quite often want to grab a video from my PC screen.

In addition to Carl's sage words, for stills you can press the PRINT SCREEN key, the paste then result into a graphic program for cropping and enhancing as you see fit. The world's most popular FREEware graphics editor is http://irfanview.com

A very simple and well-behaved screen grab utility (stills OR video) is available at
http://ohsoft.net/product_ocam.php
OCam FREEware.

UNcheck any optional search engines or home-page changers as you install. Try various codecs to see which best serves your needs.

This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at Dec 26. 2013 14:39

ynotfish

Senior Contributor Location: N.S.W. Australia Joined: May 08, 2009 02:06 Messages: 9977 Offline

Dec 26, 2013 13:32

Hi Ian -

There's a mountain of screen capture software - free & not - it's a case of finding one that meets your needs.

It easy to capture screen activity, then import the video file into PD. I've never attempted direct capture to PD, but others may be able to advise you on that.

For your purposes, you'd need something that captures fine detail crisply. Some software does that better than others - the best thing to do is to test different ones with Stellarium & see what suits.

If you want to spend some $$$ - http://screen-capture-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Free - http://download.cnet.com/windows/video-capture-software/?licenseType=Free

Reviews (freebies) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIHUN_2taAU

My "go to" capture software is Camtasia Studio, but it costs $$$. Here's a screen capture of Stellarium showing a few different display options... http://youtu.be/EPMv3TwtUGQ

Cheers - Tony
Visit PDtoots. PowerDirector Tutorials, tips, free resources & more. Subscribe!
Full linked Tutorial Catalog PDtoots happily supports fellow PowerDirector users!