Been using CS2.5 to produce recordings of my narrated powerpoint presentations, so my students can review lectures online. Unfortunately, since switching from a P4 machine to one with Core 2 Quad proc,the file sizes have been growing tremendously large and a 1-hour lecture (1024/768 fullscreen with narration) was larger than 2 gig and, therefore, CS has been unable to save the file (I read about the 2GB ceiling on avi sizes, think that's what has happened).
Today I tried something new. Not sure what I did exactly, but it is cooking now :)
1. went back to good old CS2.0 2. configured my monitor #1 to the onboard video rather than my groovy dual mon PCI-e board. Don't know if this effected anything, sizewise, but did it just for kicks 3. changed the video codec to fddshow h.264. was using the CS codec previously 4. changed the microphone audio quality to mono 8-bit 11K (was CD quality stereo before) .. I think this probably made the most difference 5. even added a video camera annotation window with a talking head. Camera window sits in the top right corner and shows me in lecture.
Well, an hour-long lecture today (played it back and it isquite good video quality I might add) was recorded in only a 95 MB file. Unbelievable!!! Went from over 2GB to 95MB by making these changes. And this includes my camera window too (which I have not been able to do)!! Even shows my smartboard annotations during lecture. everything seems to be in sync (audio/video). And my quad core CPU temps seem to be staying about 10 deg C cooler than they were before! Crunch time for an hour production is now just a very few minutes. All is well with the world. I can hardly wait to convert them to FLV and start posting on our classroom server :)
Well, I solved my problem but I don't know how exactly. Guess I should not question it, just go for it. Anyone have any idea what I actually did???
I'm not sure why switching from P4 to Core 2 would affect the video size, maybe you went from a 16 bit color setting to 24 or 32. 3 and 4 would definitely lower the file size. The camera window could have been affected by hardware acceleration which would keep CamStudio from getting it, maybe you disabled it somehow by going with onboard video. I have no idea why your CPU is running cooler though, if anything I'd figure using h264 and onboard video would make it run hotter.
I don't know enough about CPU architecture, but I would imagine if processor work is being evenly spread across all 4 cores in a quad-core CPU, then less heat would be generated.
That said, I'm damn impressed a 1-hour full screen recording weighed in at just 95MB.
Well, the past couple of days I canned two lectures: 52 min (92 MB) and 50 min (about 96 MB), good quality video (including my talking head camera in the corner) and reasonable audio. A little bit larger, but still quite reasonable, I think. Full-screen 1024x768 resolution. In fact, timing is quite good, I can watch myself make a note on the board (in the video window) and at the same time see the note show up on the powerpoint screen. If A/V timing is a bit off, it sure doesn't show (over a 50 minute time period) .. darn close! Also, since it is voice, mono audio is fine.
I just ordered an omni surveillance microphone (like they use with camera systems) that is supposed to cover an area of 150 sq mtrs. I plan to ceiling-mount it over the student seating, hope it will satisfactorily pick up interaction with my students, while still using my wireless lapel mic for my voice. Hope it doesn't cause feedback, as I am using my speaker system as a PA at the same time ... This is starting to get good!
I might try v2.6 again, like being able to specify which monitor to record. Other than that one thing, v2.0 works just fine :)
If you want to encode your videos with H.264, you need to download and install the FFDShow Tryout "codec" and then select H.264 from the list of encoders.
I've personally gotten good results using these settings within FFDShow: FOURCC = H264 > One pass - average bitrate > Bitrate 3000kbps
[UPDATE 30th Aug 2010 = You can decrease H.264 Bitrate encoding to 900kbps with no loss of quality]
With bit of testing (and depending what you're recording) you might be able to reduce the final filesize even more, by testing lower bitrates and choosing one of the "two pass" options.
Go ahead and post any settings and links to videos you've gotten good results with.
the temps are not an issue, as multi cores typically get hotter then a single core.. 1 of those chips run at about the same temps as the old p4's x4 more cores into one heatsink.. tends to build more heat.. more quickly with less actual load..
sound quality , compression etc.. will effect how long, how big, and how hard the cpu will work..
what kinda gfx card are you useing?? video capture cards in my experience do litte to actually accelerate video rendering.. some may have dedicated processors, more cost effective ones simply support various codecs and features natively on the HW.. making things somewhat faster.. but try to multi-task, broadcast and record.. simultaniously.. might lead to issues..
Getting better results from switching to on-board from a PCI-e tells me that the card itself may not be seated right or is malfunctioning.. or is inadequate for what you are trying to do..
A card that supports cuda could also help significantly with compression and other number crunching.. and rendering tasks.. nvidia 7000 series and up cores should do this.. maybe look for one geared toward editing and digital content creation.. ATI i'm not too familiar with, they may actually out perform nvidia.. but i'm unsure if they support cuda like features...