The process of transferring video to your computer is often called capturing. Capturing digital video is pretty easy, but you should take some specific steps to ensure that everything goes smoothly.
Your computer needs the right components to capture video — which means (among other things) that you need to have a FireWire or other capture card installed.
Turning off unnecessary programs
If you are like most people, you probably have several different programs running on your computer right now. Video capture requires a lot of available memory and processor power, and every running program on your computer uses some of those resources. E-mail, Web browser, and MP3 jukebox? Close 'em. Cute desktop schemes and screen savers? Disable those, too. You should even temporarily disable your antivirus software during video capture.
If you're using Windows, take a look at the system tray. (That's the area in the lower-right corner of your screen, next to the clock.) Every little icon that you see down there is a running program. Right-click each icon, and close or disable as many of them as possible. Eventually (well, okay, ideally) your system tray and taskbar should look something like what's shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: The Windows Taskbar ideally looks like this when you're ready to capture video.
If you're using a Macintosh, look at the Mac OS X Dock to make sure that your programs are closed. (An active program has a little arrow under it, as shown in Figure 2.) To exit a program, click its icon in the Dock and press Command+Q. The only icon that you can't close is the Finder, of course.
Figure 2: Use the Mac OS X Dock to make sure that all open programs are closed.
Defragmenting your hard drive
When your computer's operating system puts files on your hard drive, those files may wind up spread all over the place. This means that even if you have 60GB of free space, that 60GB may be broken up into little chunks here and there. This can cause trouble during video capture, especially with Windows machines — and most especially with version of Windows before Windows XP (such as Windows Me).
You should defragment your hard drive monthly, or right before video capture if the drive hasn't been defragmented recently. Defragmentation organizes the files on your hard drive so that the empty space is in larger, more usable chunks. Some computer experts will probably tell you that defragmentation isn't as important with modern operating systems like OS X and Windows XP, but that advice does not apply when you're working with video.
To defragment a hard drive in Windows, choose Start --> All Programs --> Accessories --> System Tools --> Disk Defragmenter. Choose the hard drive that you want to defragment, and click the Defragment button (in Windows XP) or the OK button (in Windows Me and earlier versions).
The Macintosh OS doesn't come with a built-in defragmenter, but you can use an aftermarket defragmentation utility such as Norton Disk Doctor.
Making room for video files
Video files need a lot of space. Digital video typically uses 3.6MB of space per second, which (if you do the math) means that you need 1GB of space to hold about 5 minutes of video. You also need working space on the hard drive — so figure out approximately how much video you want to capture and multiply that number by 4. For example, to capture about 15 minutes of video, you'll need at least 3GB of drive space to store it. Multiply that by 4 (as a general rule) to figure out that you should have at least 12GB of free space on your hard drive to get the job done.
The first thing that you need to do is to figure out how much free space is available on your hard drive. In Windows, open My Computer (Choose Start --> My Computer). Right-click the icon that represents your hard drive, and choose Properties from the menu that appears. The Properties dialog box appears, which is similar to the one shown in Figure 3. It tells you (among other things) how much free space is available. Click the OK button to close the dialog box.
Figure 3: This hard drive has plenty of free space to capture some video.
On a Macintosh, click the icon for your hard drive once; then press Command+I. An Info dialog box appears, showing you how much free space is available. Click the Close button or press Command+Q to close the Info dialog box.
What if you need more space? Your options may be limited, but consider the following items:
Take out the garbage. Empty the Recycle Bin (in Windows) or Trash (on a Mac).
Delete unneeded Internet files. The cache for your Web browser could be taking up a lot of hard-drive space. The Windows Disk Cleanup utility (pictured in Figure 3) can help you get rid of these and other unnecessary files. On a Mac, you can empty the cache or control how much drive space is devoted to cache by using the Preferences window for your Web browser.
Add a hard drive to your computer. Adding a second hard drive to your computer can be a little complicated, but it's certainly one good way to gain more storage space.
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