Capturing Digital Video in Pinnacle Studio for Windows

Note: Although the steps in this article are specific to Pinnacle Studio, the capture process in most other programs is similar. You should be able to follow along, regardless of the software that you are using.

When you have your capture settings just the way you want them, you're ready to capture. To do so, simply follow these steps:

1. Connect your camcorder to your FireWire port.

2. In Pinnacle Studio, click the Capture tab near the top of the window or choose View --> Capture.

3. Configure your capture options.

4. Use the camera controls to shuttle the camcorder tape to the spot where you want to start capturing video.

Shuttle is another fancy term that video pros like to use when they talk about moving a videotape. When you rewind or fast-forward a tape, you are shuttling it. See: You're already a video pro and you didn't even know it!

5. Click the Start Capture button.

The Capture Video dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Enter a name and capture limit here.

6. Enter a name for the capture; this name will be used as the filename for the captured video later. You can also enter a time limit for the capture.

By default, the time that is shown reflects the amount of free space on your hard drive. Figure 1 shows that the hard drive has enough room to store 607 minutes and 21 seconds of video using the current quality settings. It's usually safe to just leave this number alone unless you want Pinnacle to automatically stop capturing after a certain amount of time. For example, if you know that you want to capture only the first 5 minutes, you can enter 5 in the minutes field and 0 in the seconds field. Then you can go and get a cup of coffee or do something else without having to hurry back to manually stop capturing at some point. Pinnacle automatically stops capturing after 5 minutes have elapsed.

7. Click the Start Capture button.

Studio automatically starts playing your camcorder and capturing video.

8. When you want to stop capturing, click the Stop Capture button or press Esc.

As Studio captures your video, keep an eye on the Preview window, even if you have disabled on-screen preview in the capture settings. The Frames Dropped field should remain at 0. Dropped frames are a serious quality problem, but they can often be resolved.