Video lessons: how'd you record that?

[wvxvw]

What software do you advise for recording video lessons? Meaning screenplay + voice explanation, rather than recording a real lesson.

[Cota]

Adobe Captivate might be a good choice. I've personally never used it, but I've seen a few people use it..

[kkbbcute]

Captivate recoards in this strange laggy manner, I suggest a form of true screen recording software instead.

[cjx3711]

No, adobe captivate is a very good screen recording software if you know how to use it. I've used it before and it is good for a step by step process. But if you are doing something like how to use after effects that needs a constant update on the preview screen, Captivate may not be the best option.

[kkbbcute]

But if you are doing something like how to use after effects that needs a constant update on the preview screen, Captivate may not be the best option.

That was exactly what I was referring to while talking about the choppy video being a disadvantage.

[Cota]

The people at my office that have used it never seem to have that problem with it. Let me be clear, I've never used it, and I am not an advocate for captivate. I'm always open to better solutions.

[CyanBlue]

Wink is a good one as well... (I personally had no problem using the Captivate though...)
http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

[wvxvw]

Cool, thanks for replies :) I've ended up using something very simple (and I don't need something to featured for that). CamStudio... it's free and appears to be perfect for what I needed :) (The video you capture with it is choppy, but that's because it captures only significant changes, so, in my case that was even better as the final output was a smaller file).

[CyanBlue]

CamStudio... That also is a cool free app... ;)

[Flash Gordon]

wink is free as well.

[kkbbcute]

CamStudio... That also is a cool free app... ;)

CamStudio and Wink, what's the main diff? I don't really see a huge difference.

[Cota]

I've used CamStudio and it gave me issues recording a flash banner for a presentation. Video was horrrible. But that was the only time I used it.

[wvxvw]

Huh... maybe... All I needed it to do was to record some regular winfroms sort of app + sync it with microphone. No video / animation in the frame etc... And, it wasn't kind of real presentation, just the stuff I needed to send over to another person explaining how things work, so, even if the video was of a worse quality, I wouldn't mind :)

[kkbbcute]

Question still remains, what's the diff between all the video capture software? E.g. wink and camstudio.

[wvxvw]

I believe that the major difference is in the way they encode / optimize the video. Because if you'd record it as uncompressed AVI at the native monitor's FPS you'd get a huge file. Imagine that 1 second of such AVI would be as big as this: 50 (FPS) * 1024 * 768 (pixels) * 4 (bytes per pixel) = 157.286,4 Kb (~150 Mb). And this not including audio and file headers / frame tags. So, the difference would be in that which program may keep smaller size and the way it optimizes it (because usually during the screencast 90% of the screen 90% of the time is a still picture, you can achieve a very good compression rate).

[kkbbcute]

If you ask me, uncompressed AVIs equals to immense file size. Immense file sizes equals bad, and gives me exra work to do optimizing and compressing it. Isn't there an option that you can set the recording settings and let them auto compress it on site real time?

[cjx3711]

Faststone Capture is really good for capturing videos as far as I have tested. But you must pay.

The compression is in WMV and the quality is reasonable for such a small file size. You can download the trial.