Simple AV capture program for a Windows laptop?

June 10, 2009 4:06 AM

I need a Windows program that will capture audio from my laptop's mic and video from my laptop's built-in camera, then dump the combined results to disk in some convenient video format.

This sort of quick-and-dirty video capture is such an obvious thing to do that I feel sure decent software must exist (how else would the YouTube-loving peoples of the world capture for posterity the gyrations of their cats upon monitors and keyboards, after all?), but Google turns up nothing but terrible-looking junk. Bonus points for free and/or open source. I'm also not averse to paying for trial-ware that I can check out before I commit to anything.

Also, as I'm just hoping to record some lectures for my own review later on, the output doesn't have be production-quality -- it just has to let me see and hear what went on.

posted by killdevil to computers & internet (3 comments total)

Windows Movie Maker (which I believe is standard on XP and Vista) should allow this. Simply select "Capture from video device" (or File > Capture Video).
posted by oclipa at 4:39 AM on June 10

What do you consider "convenient"? VirtualDub (free, open source) has always worked great for me for grabbing raw video to AVI. Windows Media Encoder 9 (free) will capture video to WMV. For transcoding from AVI to nearly anything else there's AviDemux.

And if you want to record your screen, that can be done with CamStudio (free). Works great.
posted by ostranenie at 5:21 AM on June 10

I dont know if this works for you or not but you could use youtube's upload feature which does just this and stores it on your (possibly private) channel online. There are several tools which will allow you and the selected few people you choose to download using things like http://keepvid.com/ or savevid.com.

This allows you to reach your goal without installing any software on your computer.
posted by london302 at 6:45 AM on June 10