What encoder do I use?

Simply install the current stable FFDshow codec package here. Visit the FFdshow page here to find out more about it. Note Beta 7 is the version VideoVelocity has been tested with, other versions are not guaranteed to work.

Background info: VideoVelocity integrates with FFdshow and uses it when 'Preferred Encoder' is selected. It will use the currently selected 'FourCC' encoder (which can be set in the encoder properties window), the default is Xvid, a very good and stable encoder. If you want to experiment, go ahead but remember that codecs are a messy world, and can be unstable causing VideoVelocity to crash.

Video looks blocky or low quality

Time-lapse video requires increased quality of compression used by the encoder, this is because with each new video frame there is much more change than with standard video. Also make sure to use a good encoder, the preferred ffdshow encoder will yield good results. In general you want to keep quality settings in the 90-100 range for time-lapse video. You can alter the compression quality within VideoVelocity for the preferred encoder or within the Encoder Properties dialog for other encoders.

What cameras or capture devices does VideoVelocity support?

VideoVelocity works with any standard DirectShot device, this is pretty much all webcams, tv tuner cards and capture cards. SLR and point and shoot camera support is planned for the future, as is IP camera support.

Seems to skip frames while recording!

Usually this happens when the computer is too slow and can’t encode the frames or write them to disk fast enough. Try lowering the resolution (i.e. many modern computers can’t encode 1080p at full motion) or upgrade the computer hardware.

If recording in a car or while in motion, sensors may think the laptop is falling and turn off the hard drive to prevent damage. If this happens often enough VideoVelocity will not be able to write captured frames to disk and this results in the skipped frames. Try turn off hard drive shock protection while recording.

Help! My recorded video won't play!

If for some reason your computer restarts or VideoVelocity crashes it can leave the recorded file unplayable. Do not fear! If the file is large in size, the video data is still there it just needs to be repaired. Here is proven procedure to fix broken avi files:

• Record a short dummy.avi with the same settings using Video Velocity (same resolution, video fps and video encoder).
• Append the broken.avi to the dummy.avi file using the command prompt command "copy /b dummy.avi+broken.avi VLC_playable.avi"
• Use an avi fix utility on the VLC_playable.avi file, Avi Video Joiner has a repair function and should work. If it doesn’t here is more information on this step.
• The file will now fixed and should play in Media Player.

Can I automate, or programmatically control VideoVelocity?

VideoVelocity supports multiple recording sessions controlled via the command line. You can specify the recording device, resolution, capture intervals and many more settings. Each running recording has a session ID which can later be used to control the recording. A SessionID can be specified, if it is not it will be assigned (set to the ProcessID) and can also be harvested from the Window title, the same with the actual output file name, which will be different if the provided file already exists. All recordings currently go to the Videos/Timelapse folder.

Automation is very simple, first locate VideoVelocity.exe, its location varies due to the nature of ClickOnce deployment:

VideoVelocity.exe takes two arguments, either 'StartRecording' or 'StopRecordingAndEndSession'. These are folowed by optional parameters, for example to start a recording session, accepting default parameters we type:

this creates a session with id 234 and names the output 'new video.avi'. To then stop the recording we would use the command:

To get a list of all the parameters accepted type 'VideoVelocity.exe StartRecording'.
Here are some examples,

You can also use Windows Task Scheduler to automate recording on a schedule, simply create a new task within Task Scheduler that points the same VideoVelocity.exe file and use the same parameters as above. Create another task to control to stop recording by passing in the same session id.

Why does VideoVelocity need .Net?

The .Net frameworks is a great foundation we chose to take advantage of and build upon. It is a standard Windows component and is distributed via Windows Update, in the future you can expect all new applications to use it. If required, the .Net Framework will automatically install; or you can download the installer from Microsoft's website.