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---Geoffrey A Wood <maenad -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET> wrote:
>Does anyone know of a commercially available program that can do
>what I need?
There are a number of alternatives. All are horrendous in one way or
another. Here's a few ideas.
Lotus ScreenCam - www.lotus.com
---------------
-Produces the smoothest results (most others are jerky at achievable
frame rates).-You can add captions as well as sound.
-Uses its own format (not AVI) which requires the ScreenCam player to
play but you can distribute the player for free.
-Can make an executable which doesn't require a separate player.
-Can be streamed over the Internet using StreamCam which costs extra.
-Can be saved as AVI but file sizes are HUGE. A 4 minute full screen
800x600 recording without sound was 50Mb as a SCM file and 2.5Gb as a
10 frames-per-second AVI!
-Comes in 95/98 and NT versions (for recording. movies can be played
on anything).
-Is not compatible with all video cards. In fact, it doesn't seem to
be compatible with many. Results vary from small visual glitches on
scroll bars and colour problems to no picture at all.
-SCM files, unlike AVI, can't be editted, excepts to record in
segments and stitch together, which is very buggy.
-The whole program can be very buggy on some systems, crashing a lot.
Alternatives all record to AVI format and are usually much jerkier,
unless very small screen areas and few colours are used. As you have
discovered, they also don't allways work!
AVI files are very large but MS CamCorder does a fantastic job of
producing tiny executables out of an existing AVI (good reason to hang
onto it). I've reduced AVIs to 3% of the original size. Others have
reported 10% or 40%.
Some alternatives are (latest version numbers I think):
MS CamCorder 97HyperCam 1.3.4 - www.hyperionics.com/
SnagIt - www.techsmith.com/
Software Video Camera (comes with RoboHELP help authoring tool) -
www.blue-sky.com/
CameraMan 3.0 - www.mwg.com/home/main_frame.htm
Best thing is to download the evaluation copies of everything and try
them out on test recordings.
Mark
==
_________________________________________________________
Mark Magennis | Information Developer
FM Systems Ltd. |
Leopardstown Office Park | Tel: +353 (0)1 295 2549
Foxrock, Dublin 18 | Fax: +353 (0)1 295 2554
Ireland | markmagennis -at- yahoo -dot- com
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