How do I get my built in web cam to video stuff?

There does not seem to be any buttons anywhere on the computer that start the webcam recording. Can someone help please. I have an acer with vista. Thanks

 

You don't use it like a phone-camera.

There should be an acer software suite installed on your laptop that should let you record.

Give me a minute, I'll look around.

 

http://www.aznballa161.com/2009/02/capturing-video-on-acer-notebook-with.html

 

I appreciate your help. Thanks a lot. I'll give it a try.

 

No probs. Tell me how it works out.

 

That set of instructions didn't refer to my Acer ASpire 2920, which has a Bison camera. With that I had to find the \windows\BisonC07 directory and run LiveCa07.exe. This then gives a blank window where you have to select the capture device and allocate a recording time. No wonder they hid this very limited application!

This machine runs Vista, so I hit the usual nonsense of the application asking which directory to record the file into a folder called "MyDocuments" or "MyVideos", and then saying access is denied. Navigating to a different driectory allows it to work.

What is it with Vista that there are so many of these shambolic defaults that don't work? I expected SP1 to sort this sort of thing out, but obviously not.

PS Just tried this again and listened to the recording, but there seems to be no sound. Clicking on the Realtek audio in the app's Device menu gives an error message. The microphone works fine in my other audio applications on the machine.

 

I'll have a look around for some bison-specific fixes after work (got a full day of training in a couple of minutes) - you should try too.

Before you do though, try running the application as admin (right-click and select "Run as Administrator"). Something I've noticed about vista is it doesn't remind you to run something as root if it doesn't work, unless it's an installer.

If that gives you no dice, try getting some new drivers for your camera (I'll look around too).

 

Thanks Dragunov. I tried it as Administrator and got it to record video and audio, but then tried again without Running as Administrator. In doing this, I found that everything depends on the order in which you enable the various devices.
It seems it has to be in this order

1. Devices - Acer Crystal Eye Webcam
2. Devices - Microphone Realtek
3. Capture - Capture Audio
4. Start Capture

5. See self in recording and recoil in horror and despair.

 

Nice to hear you got it to work... That's weird though lol...

@5 - Dude, we've all been there XD