If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
I want a way to record what I do on my Windows PC desktop and be able
to send the movie with sound to a friend. This so I can show how to operate an application. He has no internet so I am sending a DVD. What is available free? -- -- No signature --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
OldGuy wrote:
I want a way to record what I do on my Windows PC desktop and be able to send the movie with sound to a friend. This so I can show how to operate an application. He has no internet so I am sending a DVD. What is available free? OldGuy, I used "Captivate" software a while back. It created a video of your Windows desktop allowing you to narrate installation instructions via a microphone. I used it to create tutorials of common tasks that users could do themselves. Unfortunately it looks like it was swallowed up by Adobe. It's now available by subscription for US$29.99/mo I'll ask around the office and see what we use now (I am no longer responsible for making the tutorials) I would think there would be a freeware equivalent somewhere out there. JT |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
OldGuy wrote on 11/9/2015 7:42 PM:
I want a way to record what I do on my Windows PC desktop and be able to send the movie with sound to a friend. This so I can show how to operate an application. He has no internet so I am sending a DVD. What is available free? I've done documentation but I've done it by screen captures. Then put the screen captures in work and document each picture. You can draw arrows to point to different items. My screen capture allows capturing a rectangle of the screen so I can focus on a smaller part of the program rather than showing a whole complex screen. It's an option. |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
OldGuy wrote:
I want a way to record what I do on my Windows PC desktop and be able to send the movie with sound to a friend. This so I can show how to operate an application. He has no internet so I am sending a DVD. What is available free? There is a list here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...sting_software And the nice thing about Wikipedia, is it has a malware/adware section in the descriptions of some of the software. So if you spot a free program, you can check Wikipedia for evidence of tampering or wrappers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamStudio The last time I used CamStudio, it had a 4GB limitation. That means selecting an efficient encoder/compressor for the capture. Once it runs past 4GB of output, the file is corrupted. When capturing the screen, each encoder/compressor has different quality and computing load tradeoffs. So while I like the "movie" formats that compress by a factor of 100, I don't like the color fringing on sharp edges in the video. It can take a lot of experiments, to get good results. Most programs use really poor choices for the codec (in my opinion, as a quality-seeking perfectionist). I have used FFMPEG for this too. You can spend hours and hours dreaming up commands for it. With CamStudio for comparison, you just draw a capture rectangle around where you want to work, or just click one window to be captured. ffmpeg -offset_x 0 -offset_y 480 -video_size 720x480 -framerate 60 -f gdigrab -i desktop -f dshow -sample_rate 44100 -i audio="SoundMAX HD Audio" -vcodec mjpeg -acodec pcm_s16le out.avi I've done screen capture at 90FPS (async). I've captured the whole screen at 1440x900. But it takes a lot of CPU, or a high-speed storage device, to cope with it. And then you want enough performance left, so you can use the computer for the screencasting topic. Camstudio is a bit deceiving. The default claims to support capture at 200FPS. What the tool does, is it duplicates frames if it detects that it is going to lose a frame. When tested on this computer, it is actually capturing at around 7FPS, and using a video editor, if you look at the frames one at a time, it repeats the same frame like 30 times in a row. And that's how it makes the claim it is capturing at 200 FPS. You generally know if the tool you used is a stinker, as the mouse cursor will be jerky during playback. One of the reasons for experimenting with high speed capture (90FPS async), is to check for sampling jitter. And the jitter in these software methods, is higher than expected. For example, if you expect the captured frames to repeat for 3 frames in a row, if you examine the movie, the frame repeat can vary from 1 frame to 5 frames. Instead of staying in the 2,3,4 range of repeated frames. So the jitter is high. And that's important if you were thinking of down-sampling somehow. It would be nice if the methods captured with VSYNC (synchronous to screen retrace), but I'm not aware of software methods that do that. It might take a hardware screen capture card to do that. And those are available ($100 to $500 or so for consumer versions). Also note, for the latest OSes, Microsoft put a limiter in the GDI capture path. Windows 7 can capture at high speed. Later OSes cap the rate at 30FPS (when the screen refresh is 60 frames per second progressive). So if you see some strange behaviors while capturing, that's a possible factor. This is one of the reasons I bought a copy of Win7 for the Test Machine, so if I ever needed to run capture the way *I* wanted to run it, I'd have an OS suited to the job. Paul |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 00:45:30 -0500, Paul wrote:
OldGuy wrote: I want a way to record what I do on my Windows PC desktop and be able to send the movie with sound to a friend. This so I can show how to operate an application. He has no internet so I am sending a DVD. What is available free? There is a list here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...sting_software Strange. The list doesn't include Open Broadcaster. And the nice thing about Wikipedia, is it has a malware/adware section in the descriptions of some of the software. So if you spot a free program, you can check Wikipedia for evidence of tampering or wrappers. [snip] Paul ...Jim Thompson -- | James E.Thompson | mens | | Analog Innovations | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | San Tan Valley, AZ 85142 Skype: skypeanalog | | | Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food. |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
VLC?
Has anybody used that for desktop movie capture? It is very stable for other things. I never saw anything in VLC to indicate it could capture the desktop. Where do I look? What is the terminology? --- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: --- |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
Jim Thompson wrote:
On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 00:45:30 -0500, Paul wrote: OldGuy wrote: I want a way to record what I do on my Windows PC desktop and be able to send the movie with sound to a friend. This so I can show how to operate an application. He has no internet so I am sending a DVD. What is available free? There is a list here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar...sting_software Strange. The list doesn't include Open Broadcaster. That's why it's open to editing. So people can add items if they want. Now, the function of Open Broadcaster looks a bit different. It would not be the same function as CamStudio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_broadcaster Paul |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Windows Desktop Recorder
OldGuy wrote:
VLC? Has anybody used that for desktop movie capture? It is very stable for other things. I never saw anything in VLC to indicate it could capture the desktop. Where do I look? What is the terminology? The interface is like flying a 747. Don't forget to flip the "fasten seatbelts" switch... The recipe is only 11 steps or so. http://www.wikihow.com/Screen-Capture-to-File-Using-VLC If VLC were using FFMPEG or AVLIB, it's possible it is using gdigrab for this. One thing to remember about screen capture stuff. 1) Disable hardware acceleration on Flash Video 2) Disable hardware acceleration on anything else you may be attempting to capture. There are at least three rendering planes. Only FRAPS knows how to capture all three, and in the latest OSes, Microsoft has buggered the OS, so the FRAPS designers cannot make a compatible implementation. So of the rendering planes, something is un-fixable in later OSes. Sorta like the frame limiter issue. So if you absolutely must capture everything, you'd probably want to stick with Windows 7, then start experimenting. (Or, use a screen capture card, with HDMI or VGA input.) When I tested FRAPS, or tried to, it was inserting a DLL into every program files folder. Which of course, makes your AV go crazy. My AV was so happy with the FRAPS installer, the machine froze up :-) Using that DLL is how they hook the information flow for capture. Other methods are less intrusive, but also less complete. Which is why you may need to adjust some programs, so they render into a plane the capture tool can reach. If you need to capture 3D screen play, the NVidia video driver now has ShadowPlay(?) for recording 3D plane video for later. So that would be an example of a partial replacement for FRAPS, if you're a 3D gamer. But that mechanism isn't intended for the regular desktop rendering planes. It's just intended for the harder-to-do one, the 3D plane. Since part of the implementation is in the GPU, you'd expect the result to be buttery smooth (video encoding on capture, is done with a video encoder block in a modern GPU). When doing screen capture in Win7, you can get slightly better results by disabling Aero, so there is no transparency on the window frames. Of course, then the results don't look "authentic". Aero adds a little overhead to the capture path or something. Paul |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|