The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Capture Video Through SZ's Integrated MotionEye Camera?

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by PipStuart, Jun 10, 2006.

  1. PipStuart

    PipStuart Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    3
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I'm wondering if there's any good (hopefully free) software out there to let me use my SZ's MotionEye camera to record small video files. My SZ came with DVgate Plus, Adobe Premiere Elements 2.0, and Click to DVD but none of these seem to recognize the integrated camera as a valid video input device. All the included video software expects an external DV HandyCam to be connected through the FireWire (a.k.a. IEEE1394 or i.Link) port. This seems like a gross oversight.

    After much googling, it appears many Sony Picturebooks and Vaios have shipped with some software called "Smart Capture" or "Network Smart Capture" which performed such a MotionEye video recording task. Maybe this software has taken a hiatus to be revamped in preparation for all the features of Sony's http://ImageStation.Com as I can't find anywhere to download it. There is a red-herring program called "Smart Capture Pro" (by Commandorsoft Inc.) available for download on a handful of shareware sites but this software only captures images from your desktop rather than your webcam. Does anyone know if Sony's original Network Smart Capture software is still available anywhere?

    If not, is there any reasonable alternative?

    Obviously the factory-installed Sony camera utility software renders video coming from the MotionEye to my SZ's display just fine, Skype can transmit video obtained from it, etc.. Isn't there some simple utility to just record video from the MotionEye and audio from the microphone directly to my hard drive? After many hours of installations and research, I haven't been able to locate anything that works. =( Please help if you can.

    Thanks a lot.

    Sincerely,
    -Pip

    p.s. Since writing the above, I've located Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker software and it is able to record video through my MotionEye but it is only able to export in Windows Media Video (.wmv) format. This is quite a bit less than ideal. Isn't there some program that just records MPEG4, .avi, DivX, etc. from webcams or do I need to transcode .wmv to get video into a good format (while suffering double lossiness)?
     
    PipStuart, Jun 10, 2006
    #1
  2. PipStuart

    PipStuart Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    3
    Messages:
    15
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    PipStuart, Jun 13, 2006
    #2
  3. catherine

    catherine Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    24
    Messages:
    200
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    edit: nevermind
     
    catherine, Jun 13, 2006
    #3