CamStudio vs Camtasia Studio

rjm1717 wrote on 2/27/2010, 4:57 AM
What to use ... CamStudio vs Camtasia Studio for making a video of what is on your desktop? What is best to use if you own Vegas Pro? Camtasia costs $300 but offers a lot. My initial thought is that CamStudio does the job making AVI files which can then be edited in Vegas. CamStudio is free. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts?

Comments

BudWzr wrote on 2/27/2010, 7:27 AM
While waiting for a real answer, I use Hypercam. It's not free but real cheap and it uses libavcodec and you can make any avi you want.

And on a side note, I use Hypersnap for screenshots, and it's VERY robust. The Hyperionics company has been around since the early days, very seasoned software.
richard-amirault wrote on 2/27/2010, 8:51 AM
I'm not sure what owning Vegas Pro has to do with which screen capture software is "best".

Hmmm ... a free program vs a program that costs $300???? I'll go out on a limb here and say that it's a pretty good chance that the $300 program would be better, but I don't own it so I can't tell for sure. Now, would CamStudio be good enough? That's up to you.

I haven't had a reason to do a video screen capture, but I own CamStudio. I think I tried it once for a capture. It seemed to work but it was a while ago.

I also have Snagit (not free, but $50 is a heck of lot cheaper than $300) and that is a program that captures still images and video off your screen. And it worked better than CamStudio in my one test.

You can download a free trial of Snagit and try for yourself.
http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
rjm1717 wrote on 2/27/2010, 10:42 AM
The way I understand it is that CamStudio is stripped down and does not have all the bells and whistles offered by Camtasia ... therefore the price difference. It only allows you to create AVI and SWF files. My thought was that maybe I would use CamStudio to create AVIs and then edit if necessary in Vegas. I was just checking to see if anyone had any advice. Maybe I just need to try both.Thanks for your answer.
rjm1717 wrote on 2/27/2010, 10:43 AM
Thank you. I will take a look at Hypercam as well. Have a good weekend.
BudWzr wrote on 2/27/2010, 11:18 AM
I just learned that Hypercam has been reworked by Solveig into a Version 3 that has a friendlier interface. I have several products from Solveig and they are a reputable firm as well. They have a "Video Splitter" app that's fantastic too. Good luck.
rjm1717 wrote on 2/27/2010, 12:06 PM
Cool. Thanks
JohnnyRoy wrote on 2/27/2010, 12:09 PM
The Techsmith codec that comes with Camtasia is extremely efficient and high quality for screen capture. This is part of what you are paying for. Camtasia also has a full blown editor that has a lot of useful functionality like automatic zooming and cursor tracking that would take you hours of editing to duplicate in Vegas. Finally, Camtasia has really good rendering to internet formats like h.264. So Camtasia is a whole lot more than just recording your screen and IMHO is well worth the price.

~jr
LReavis wrote on 2/27/2010, 2:40 PM
I've been using Camtasia for years and am fully satisfied . . . made quite a few training videos for the software that we produce. At one time or another, I've used all its features.

One warning: After I installed ffdshow, Camtasia's ability to create flash videos failed. I'm not sure if that's still true with the newer versions of ffdshow . . .
MarkWWW wrote on 2/28/2010, 5:28 AM
You might as well try CamStudio first since it costs nothing. You may well find, as I have, that it does everything you need.

Make sure that you use V.2.0, the last version of the "real" free CamStudio. Don't be fooled into trying to use V.2.1 which was an attempt by a new owner (Macromedia) to make money from it by (a) removing important features and (b) stopping it being free. Also make sure to get the CamStudio lossless codec which is a separate download.

You can download everything you need from http://camstudio.org

Mark
rjm1717 wrote on 2/28/2010, 6:56 AM
Thanks Mark. I thought that trying the free version to make AVI files made sense. I can use Vegas to splice, add music etc. Thanks again.