Sound recording

[Joe]

I like the software so far (free version) but I cant hear any sound in the videos I capture with my webcam / mic. If I'm not doing anything wrong and this program only captures video, then perhaps including sound in one of the future versions would be nice.

Also I wish the Recorded Events (ones which break a set rule and are saved to disk) were saved in a different folder than all the non-interesting frames, or at least labelled differently in the folder to make it easier to review them with a seperate media player.

I thought not having a sensitivity control for the motion detect would be a problem, but being able to select a specific area (of any shape) in the frame to monitor is a great feature.

I'm still trying to figure out a way to view (monitor live) the usb webcam attached to computer A on a stand alone home network from computer B on that same home network which is NOT connected to the internet. It would be nice if your program offered a simple way to do that.

Good job all in all, thanks.

PS. I didn't see your program on CNET.com when I looked which is where I usually find new programs to try out. I just happened to read about it in an online article. Their reviews are usually pretty fair and reliable and I think they would have good things to say about your program.

[ryan]

Hi Joe, glad the app is working for you so far and thanks for the feedback!

You are correct, Vitamin D Video doesn't save audio streams, you're not doing anything wrong.

Saving clips to a different folder has been a very common request and definitely towards the top of our list of features to implement. You can export clips but if you want to export all of the clips that would be a bit of a hassle. The paid versions support ftp upload of clips as a response, a current workaround would be to run an ftp server on your local machine and have it direct them to your desired folder.

Remote viewing is a common request. With IP cameras you can natively allow access from a remote location, with USB cameras this is difficult as they don't have internal web servers and can only be accessed from a single application at a time. You could use something like VNC or Windows Remote Desktop to directly interact with your computer remotely, but there is a bit of a technical hurdle for setup with both of those solutions.

We've actually been mentioned on cnet a few times, but I'll be sure and let them know people would like to see us talked about more often.

[Joe]

Thanks for the quick reply.

You were right, Windows Remote Desktop was the way to go. Once I finally figured out all the networking settings it worked great. Now I just leave the computer / webcam in the workshop running all the time with Vitamin D and then I can check in periodically from any other computer in the house on the local network to check the shop / driveway view. Being able to see the live view or review the saved files from anywhere with Vitamin D is great.

If I ever get around to adding any more webcams I will be sure to upgrade to the paid version. I finally saw your product in the download section of CNET.com, I guess I didn't look far enough through the suggestions when I searched for free webcam monitoring software. I will try to post a good review for you since I didn't see any on there yet.

Thanks again for the help and the great product.

Joe