MDW:
Well, I tried a couple of things and found some more oddities:
1: Tried to record a video of an entire sweep. [takes 120 seconds to complete 1 full sweep] iWitness would only record about 60 seconds of the sweep, no matter what I did. I have about 200Gb free on the hard drive and verified that I did not inadvertently change anything in the video preferences. I also experienced the same issue you had, the video played back @ approx. 2x the recorded speed. Also, I tried recording @ two different resolutions 320x240 and 640x480, and there was no visible difference in the quality of the playback. Neither playback came close to the picture quality displayed in the live feed window.
2: I was unable to change the codec permanently. I could change in the video codec, but it would NOT save when I clicked on Close. If I reopened the Preferences>Video Settings, the codec was back to "Cinepak Codec by Radius". I'm not sure that this is by design, but it should be resolved so we can use some of the newer and faster codecs. ie DivX/MP4
3: The system I am running is a fairly fast system. AMD64 3400+ w/ Nvidia 6100 onboard video, 512M ram and 250Gb HD.
This system normally idles @ 0% under Task Manager, and a PF usage of under 200M. When I start AHP, and open 1 Camera window, my PF usage jumps to 470M, and averages 35% CPU Usage. If I'm recording it runs well over 65% CPU Usage.
As a comparison, I can record fullframe 720x480 live video @ 30fps, on an old AMD Athlon 2600+ w/ 512M, and CPU Usage runs @ <30% and PF Usage is under 300Mb.
Looks like there's considerable work yet to be done regarding the full functionality and optimization of the software.