Capturing Screen Activity

Cunhambebe wrote on 7/7/2004, 2:25 PM
I was planning to get some shots from some of my screensavers to insert in a movie. Some people suggested Camtasia, but that doens't work at all since there's a great loss of quality capturing screen activity as AVI (doesn't even work for a P4 3.2 - video has lots of banding). Does anybody know if there's an application that can capture screen activity and save the sequence as .TGA? That would be much better, I guess. Thanks in advance!
:)

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 7/7/2004, 2:39 PM
camtasia is great if you set it up right, but then it eats the hell out of your processor. I believe Hypercam can save sequential TGA.
Chanimal wrote on 7/7/2004, 4:33 PM
Camtasia works great--but like Spot said, you have to set it up properly to get the correct resolution. See www.videobackstage.com (click on Samples) and look for the GE product demo--it was done with Camtasia (along with some special effects).

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TheHappyFriar wrote on 7/7/2004, 4:48 PM
If you have a TV out card you can output to a VCR & record it, then re-capture it. I've done that with power point pres & it looks very good.
Blues_Jam wrote on 7/7/2004, 8:33 PM
I have just tried CamStudio (eHelp Corporation) and it seems to work just fine. It will record full-screen or a selectable area of the screen to a .avi file. Best of all it's absolutely FREE (a small banner want's you to upgrade to RoboDemo but does not interfere).

If you have any problems with the resulting .avi then you might try using different codecs.

Blues
farss wrote on 7/7/2004, 8:55 PM
What you do have to remember is that PC screens are much higher res than DV so soething will have to give. I've found running the PC video card at the lowest acceptable res helps a lot.
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/7/2004, 9:28 PM
Thanks to all who took time to respond. In fact I've tested Camtasia with both P4 3.2 and Athlon 3.0. Both failed to get even a little of what would be an acceptable sequence. I agree that Camtasia is a good applc to record screen activity for tutorials or something like that, but definitely not for recording a screensaver. Also, Camtasia isn't tuned with the new Intell techonology and that's why it comsumes lots of power from the processor. Some people from Intel around here tested Camtasia and they got to this conclusion. We have configured everything in our tests. No deal, sorry.
I'll check out the address and the other applc...Thanks for telling me, Spot..
;)
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/8/2004, 8:43 AM
No deal :(
Hypercam does not save as .TGA
Any ideas?
Thanks.
vicmilt wrote on 7/8/2004, 6:13 PM
You could screen your stuff on a good LCD monitor, and just videotape the screen.(Darkened room, of course)

Depending on your use, the result is amazingly good, cheap and easy to do.
Let me know what you think...
v.
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/8/2004, 7:46 PM
Cunhambebe,
Did you try the newest Camtasia? just released a week or so ago. With the Ensharpen codec, it's pretty light, but still a RAM pig. There are a couple other ways to do this too, but getting it for a screensaver is gonna be tough.
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/8/2004, 9:26 PM
Cheap? Well a good 3 CCD cam is not that cheap.....Anyway, thanks fot the valuable help.;)
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/8/2004, 9:28 PM
Haven't tried the new Camtasia version yet. But I may agree....what a RAM pig :) LOL;
You wrote:
"There are a couple other ways to do this too, but getting it for a screensaver is gonna be tough."

- So please tell me more about that. I wanna "hear" it!

Thanks Spot!
Spot|DSE wrote on 7/8/2004, 9:33 PM
Try the Canopus Twin Pac100, or for that matter, any scan converter. The Twin Pac will take a signal straight from your SVGA out and convert it to DV, feeding a DV Cam, or feeding your Firewire input on the same computer you are outputting from. Looks washed out full screen, but if you zoom, it's pretty clean.
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/9/2004, 7:41 AM
Hey Spot, are ya kidding? Do you know how much that costs? lol Only and only to capture a screensaver? No way, boy. Thanks anyway for the valuable help!
;)
Jsnkc wrote on 7/9/2004, 7:44 AM
You can usually rent scan converters pretty cheap.
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/9/2004, 8:44 PM
Thanks for the hint! ;)
farss wrote on 7/9/2004, 8:46 PM
You can also maybe rent a camera with Clearscan to video the screen although unless you've got say an LCD screen the results maybe not so good. Scan converter is probably the best way to go.
Cunhambebe wrote on 7/12/2004, 8:14 PM
Yeah; very expensive, though ;)
Thanks for the hint!