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    Recording video from a sony vaio laptop

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by lostatneverseen, Mar 16, 2010.

  1. lostatneverseen

    lostatneverseen Notebook Guru

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    So i have a Sony Vaio FW5 Laptop and i am wanting to record my ps3 gameplay footage from my HD Full monitor onto my lapto pand upload them to youtube, i was wondering what stuff i need for my laptop to be able to do this

    What sort of prices and capture cards


    I am so confused.Many thnks
     
    lostatneverseen, Mar 16, 2010
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  2. CarterTG

    CarterTG Notebook Guru

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    As someone who spent the last two decades paying through the nose for camcorders and computers, the simplest way to do this is just plant a tripod-mounted camcorder in front of the HDTV, frame it properly, lock the exposure and record.

    Today's DV and HDV camcorders have a firewire port. Camcorders are SPECIALIZED to capture high-motion footage. When you're done capturing proof of your mad skillz, transfer that digitized data via firewire port into the notebook. The rest is easy from there.

    I know you were originally hoping for some sort of direct connection into the notebook, but that's why I'm offering my initial suggestion first.

    Not having paid attention to what connectors a PS3 has, I'll presume it should have at least a S-Video and HDMI port. If it had a VGA port, that wouldn't matter for THIS instance since I wouldn't pin my hopes on some sort of VGA-to-ExpressCard capture device to be cheap/reliable/useable.

    HDMI port on the PS3? Again, nothing practical you can do with it since the HDMI port on the VAIO is OUTPUT only. Any HDMI-to-ExpressCard capture devices? None that I'm aware of.

    This leaves the S-Video port to work with. S-Video carries standard definition... so at best you're looking at 480 lines of resolution. Among the larger established capture-card companies Hauppauge and AverMedia, both offer Video-to-USB capture products. AverMedia additionally offers an ExpressCard34 TV Tuner that also captures video (composite and S-Video) using a supplied dongle. The on-board hardware encoding on these gadgets (along with limitations on your CPU speed, harddrive speed, etc) will lay down compressed footage that will probably not be any better than the footage recorded by a dedicated camera pointed at a HDTV. USB capture devices run $60-$100. AverMedia's Express Mini TV-tuner/Capture card has been spotted at $60.

    Nearly everyone has a camcorder nowadays, so use it if you have it. You won't be spending money on some one-trick video-capture gadget that'll give you results that's worse-or-no-better-than the camcorder/tripod method.

    If you or a buddy has a high-def camcorder, then you'll be even more head of the curve. These usually record footage in a high-def MPEG2 or H.264 compression. By the time the footage makes its way onto YouTube, it'll still be far better than starting downhill from 720x480 standard definition.
     
    CarterTG, Mar 16, 2010
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