STOIK Capturer Editor's Review

With STOIK Capturer you can create movies from any video source. It supports AVI and WMV formats. The WMV format can be used by anyone because it only has one slider which you can use to adjust the quality of your captured movie. AVI file compression, however, is another story. The program offers a list of installed codecs which can be used for compressing the output AVI file. STOIK Capturer also gives the user access to each codec's configuration window so he or she will be able to accurately adjust the quality and size of the movie.

I don't like to use the "Capture through temporary file" option because usually I don't have enough disk space. When this option is selected, the program will create a temporary uncompressed file and will compress it only after capturing is finished. You could select this check box if dropped frames appear in your movie.

Splitting any movie into predefined sizes is also possible. Let's imagine that you want to put your captured movie on one or more CDs. You should select 700MB in the "Multifile split size" box so the program will create files that have maximum 700MB in size and will fit on a normal CD. You can select any capturing device connected to your computer: webcam, TV tuner, camera, and others. Adjusting the capture device is done by pressing the "Tune..." button.

Pluses: You can configure and use any compression codec installed on your computer.

Drawbacks / flaws: After capturing for a long time (a big file), when you click the "Finish" button the program stops responding. You have to be patient because sometimes it may take a while.

In conclusion: STOIK Capturer is a very nice and simple capturing utility. The fact that it's free gives it a big plus.


version reviewed: 1.0