Ever since I started messing around with CamStudio about 18 months ago I’ve been trying to find a video codec that delivered results as good as the TechSmith Screen Capture Codec which comes with the $300 Camtasia Studio …
The CamStudio Lossless Codec isn’t bad but people have reported to me that it does seem to generate blocks on finished videos and some of the videos aren’t as small as they could be – even when using MP3 as the audio codec …
Well, I think I’ve found the answer … The MSU Screen Capture Lossless Codec …
The results I’m getting are incredible, especially when you compress a “raw” video using the MSU SCLC and MP3 audio … I’m getting as low as 10:1 compression with minimal distortions – which I think is very impressive …
Not only do they have a lossless codec for screen capture, but they also go a video codec for “footage” videos as well as VirtualDub filters and other goodies for the geeks … [grin]
The only “downside” is that you have to get a licence to use the SCLC in commercial products – I’ve emailed them for more information and pricing – but hey, so long as it isn’t $300 you’ll be good to go …
And certainly for “freebie” tutorial videos and other non-profit tasks, the SCLC is definitely the way to go – I highly recommend taking a look at it …
UPDATE: I thought I’d also let you know – YouTube will accept videos encoded with SCLC/MP3 audio and video compression methods onto its site … and they come out pretty nice too …
If uploading to YouTube, you’ll get the best results if your source video has the same dimensions as YouTube’s which are 450 x 325 … anything larger than that and you’ll get slight blurring when the video is compressed into smaller dimensions and in FLV by YouTube …