desktop capturing software?

[shadowslash]

Hey there guys, I need your opinions with which software can I use best when I'm making a video tutorial? I'm currently using the program I made awhile before. The reason I'm looking for a new one because the one I made only supports video AVI fornat which apparently eats up a very large amount of my resources while recording and saving the video. And it also doesn't support audio input from microphones. If you're going to tell me to just modify the source code well, I'm sorry to tell that the source code of my program was long gone when I reformatted my computer. So as sad as it may seem, I can't add features, edit, or even re-make that desktop capturing software that I made. So if you have any tips as to what I can use for making video tutorials with high quality (as the viewers need to see the scripts that I'm typing) then please do let me know.

Here are the following key features I kinda want for that software to have:
- Support for different output formats such as AVI, WMV, MOV and the popular video formats (because converting is such a drag).
- Mouse click detection such as left-click, right-click and middle-click. (A good example would be that it displays like a gray circle around the cursor when I click the left-mouse button.)
- Sound input support (from accessories like microphones).
- High quality output videos (for readability).
- Notation support. (Support for adding of notations to videos such as notes and alerts.)

I hope somebody has an answer. I only need that software for a Windows platform. No need for Mac platform as I don't own one yet.

P.S. If you also have tips as to what's the best screen resolution for a video tutorial would be, please do tell.

On other news, please check out my very first tutorial. I don't know if it'll be worth your time but I made it because a lot of people that I know have been asking me lately how to create a data handling program in Revolution so I made this one. Here's the YouTube link to my video tutorial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V37urghk0U0

If the link returns an error like "The video you have requested is not available." or something like "This video is not yet processed." then it means it hasn't been processed by YouTube yet. I just uploaded it a couple of minutes ago.

[shadowslash]

Major Edit:

As it turns out YouTube doesn't want long videos (like mine which is 27:00 minutes) so as an alternative, here's the download link to the package containing the video and the very stack I used in the video.

http://www.mediafire.com/?jjjmxywdwm0

[Mark]

Dear shadowslash,

You might want to check out Snapper Screen Recorder. It performs great on Mac OS X, slightly less on Windows.

If you have a Mac, it should be easy to use iMovie to make changes to the movies. Also check out the SMIL format to add sprites and masks.

Best,

Mark

P.S. With Snapper, this thread is on-topic again ;-)

[shadowslash]

Dear shadowslash,

You might want to check out Snapper Screen Recorder. It performs great on Mac OS X, slightly less on Windows.

If you have a Mac, it should be easy to use iMovie to make changes to the movies. Also check out the SMIL format to add sprites and masks.

Best,

Mark

But alas, I haven't got any Mac yet. But if I ever get a Mac, I'll definitely check that application out!

[Garrett]

You can try CamStudio. It's open source, but alas, it produces AVI, but it also produces SWF!

http://camstudio.org/

[Garrett]

Ok, back, after downloading the file.

1. Winrar reported a problem with the authenticity of the rar file, but was still able to open it.

2. Within less than a minute into the video I had to stop watching because the music was not quit suited to tutorial video at all. It's more like music you'd find from some kid posting a vid about how he pwn'd a bunch of noobs on a game server. It's far too distracting for this type of video... At least in my opinion that is. Maybe others find this music appropriate for such a tutorial.

So honestly, I can't say whether your tutorial is good or bad because I did not watch it all the way through due to the music. Yes, I know, I could have muted it, but the user shouldn't have to do that.

[Mark]

I completely agree with Garrett.

Btw when you present tutorials, you might want to create a website and make clear on that website why you are an authority in the field you make tutorials about, e.g. by providing a number of impressive (demo) projects.

Best,

Mark

[shadowslash]

Hey guys, thanks for the fishes and YES that background music was taken from some kid who pawns his enemies at a game server (ehem!). The reason I didn't include an audio for that tutorial was because my mic was busted and I can't find any soundtrack aside from the one that was playing when I was busy pawning my enemies.

To mark:
I was just testing out if I can do it so I haven't prepared much (actually not at all). I simply opened up Revolution and started recording! Then after that I opened up Vegas 8.0 then I added the soundtrack then I exported it to WMV format. That's all! Oh and about the site, I'm still working on it. I'm still designing the pages for the site and as much as possible, I don't intend to publish this video right then and there! I'm kinda waiting for my tutorials to gain quantity a bit more.

To all:
If any of you guys know which software Revolution uses when they're publishing Webinars (the WMV videos) because the quality is really quite good and the size is quite small. If nobody knows what software Revolution uses for that, at least can anybody tell me the right settings, bitrates, etc. that I, quite frankly, don't know anything about.

[Garrett]

Shhhhh don't tell anyone..... but I've got a video of me pwn'g some noob on a game server too

[shadowslash]

Shhhhh don't tell anyone..... but I've got a video of me pwn'g some noob on a game server too

Lollllllllllll Honestly, I didn't even think that you guys were playing online games. (No offense meant of course.) I mean what I had in mind was that you guys are all like wearing suits and neck ties and going to business affairs and whatnot.

[Andycal]

Only just seen this topic but I've been doing screen captures for ages using various bits of software and the two best ones I've found are Camtasia Studio and Instant Demo.

Camtasia is the slick, professional but expensive option. It creates SWF files, but they're not small but it can also output loads of other formats so you'll have no problem finding one to suit. It also has some amazing features so you can do some pretty spiffy stuff. We use this if we have a customer to impress but because there's a time overhead we use another tool for most of our work : Instant Demo.

Instant Demo is my personal favourite and it's probably the underdog in all these systems. They don't advertise it much, it's got a shocking website and support seems to come from some guy in Devon, but by Christ it's a tool and a half!

Somehow it manages to capture everything you do on the screen and squirt it out to Flash at about 100K per minute. This is amazingly small considering the quality, and that's the best bit - the quality is phenomenal.

It used to only do swf output, but it will now do AVI which you can then just convert to one of the other formats. The best thing is though is that you can do interactive demos with hot-spots linking to other sections of the demo. It's got a steep learning curve, but I think that's just because you don't expect it to be able to do half the stuff it can.

The interface is old (it's like a VB6 application written by a techie!), but it's so simple to operate. I'm still using version 4 but it's on version 7 now, I'll probably upgrade soon to get some of the new features.

It's the same price as Camtasia, but in my opinion, for just 'getting things done', it's the better tool.