[nSLUG] Video capture (Was: Monday, Jan. 10 Meeting at Uncommon Grounds)

[Mike Spencer]

Ben wrote:

> As I understand it, X draws a green rectangle and hands off the video to
> your video card for accelerated rendering. Read
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_video_extension for details.

Ah. Didn't know any of that.  Outside of my existing scope.  Lots of
reading to do.  Thanks.

> Use mplayer -vf screenshot...

Oh.

  [Hits head on wall repeatedly, repeating the RTFM mantra.]

I've groveled through the (excessively long and tedious) manpage for
mplayer, looking for the wrong key words.  Duh.

Violated my own favored precept that when I don't understand
something, I should brew a pot of coffee,  sit down, put feet up and
read the book cover to cover, however MEGO in effect.  Long ago, I
learned C by doing that with K&R.  Failed to do it with the mplayer
manpage. 

I see from the web page you mentioned (which I've only browsed as yet)
that ones choice of window manager may make a difference.  I use twm,
under which video generally works fine.  Capture^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
screenshot :-) is the first problem I've hit.

My target here isn't capturing dirty pictures from pron.  I got a cam
from my son for Christmas that fits in a microscope barrel. As we have
a binocular scope suitable for looking such things as, say, the foot
parts of ticks or the mites that live on beetles [1], I'm looking
forward to capturing such images, once I get it working.  The
Windoesware from the mfgr includes frame capture ability but
(allegedly) the applicable Linux driver doesn't.  So I was looking
ahead to capturing with mplayer.


Thanks Ben,
- Mike


[1] As, frgzample,
        http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/gallery/img/mite.jpg
    or
        http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/gallery/crawley-things.html

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^