Hello,
Kathy's son here. They're are a few ways i know off. Depends what webcam you have, and also ill do some looking around and see if they're is any software the compres' the video to divx or mpeg. Should be. I'll reply back to this post if they're is. As far as i know you should just place your webcam looking at your dogs, get something called amcap (Here is the link
http://download.cnet.com/AMCap/3000-13633_4-10504734.html) now follow these instructions to set it up ;-):
1. Once you've got it open it, you should see your self depending on when your webcam is placed.
2. Click capture along the top of the AmCap window then setup.
3. Click browse under the 'capture to UN allocated files'. Click say 'my documents' click the folder you want to save the files in once thieve been recorded.
4. Click 'capture both audio and video' near the bottom of the setup page.
5. Along the top click the tab named 'compression' under 'windows media 9 blah blah blah' :-) click video in the drop down window select 'medium (VBR 75)' and for the audio click 'Medium (VBR 50)'. (This is just essentially making it more compressed so it doesn't take up as much space of course the higher the VBR (VBR = Variable Bitrate) the more space is allocated.
6. click 'Still capture' Tab along the top. Now set where you will put the still captures you can just click 'my documents' again.
7. Click 'OK' at the bottom of the setup Your done setting it up.
8. If your using my documents as your capture folder it will say 'My Documents is a read-only folder do you still want to continue' click yes.
9. Restart Amcap.
10. Click 'capture' then 'start capture' Or alternatively click 'CTRL+C'. It's gonna ask you if you wanna start the capture in the folder you told it to, click 'OK' it will start capturing. Then when you come home simply click 'capture' then 'stop capturing'.
11. now you can go to my documents and see what your dogs were up to.
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Jamie, Hope this helps. ;-).
P.s if you were looking not to do this from a webcam it would cost around £70-£100 to do it wirelessly or even wired.