**UPDATE**
Ok, after much poking and prodding of my computer I have established that I do NOT have a "stereo mix" option at all. My drivers are all updated, so now I'm kind of stuck. I desperately just want to record the audio and video on the same file, so I have less overall mixing to do, but I'm really not sure how to go about doing this without the "stereo mix" option. I found this link
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/39532/ho ... ord-audio/ which has a little blurb about using the vista drivers for the sound card, but I don't feel I know enough about drivers to attempt this comfortably, and this particular link doesn't go into detail about how to accomplish that. Also, I'm not sure if using drivers from vista on windows 7 is a good idea. It just seems like so much could go wrong?
I also saw that Loopy linked to this
https://github.com/rdp/screen-capture-r ... ndows-free but I'm not really sure if this would then replace Loopy's software for both video and audio? Also, won't a screen capture program be more CPU intensive? Finally, will the quality of the video degrade if I use this vs. Loopy's software since it's a screen capture program?
**Update**
Ok, so after mucking around unsuccessfully with things I decided to download the program I linked to above. That particular program is pretty confusing and I was not able to get it to capture audio from my computer using it alone. I also wasn't sure how that software worked in conjunction (if at all) with Loopy's so I decided to look for alternatives.
At that point, I discovered what looked like a very user friendly program that would record audio from your computer even without the "stereo mix" option.
http://www.nowsmart.com/stereo-mix-windows-7.html I decided to try it out though it looked like I would have to sync up the audio/video during editing since I was using a separate program to create an MP3. I opened both programs to test everything out when I noticed I was getting a new option for Loopy's software under audio settings for a "virtual-audio-capturer." I selected that setting, and now everything is working like magic. Video and audio are recording beautifully on the same file (HAPPY DANCE
) unfortunately, I'm not actually sure which program is responsible for this, as I did not open Loopy's software after I installed the first one. I've decided to leave well enough alone and leave both of them on there since I don't even have to open the extra programs for the audio to record through Loopy's software. I'm sure I sound like a total n00b, but I figured I would put the info out there just in case someone finds it helpful.
So, no additional help required at this point in time.