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any way to rewind or skip back just a few seconds?

edited March 2010 in General Discussion
I'm looking to us Camstudio to record instructional videos (tutorials on spreadsheets to be exact). The available controls lets me pause the recording, but if I want to rewind, I have to go all the way back to the beginning. I really would like to be able to distribute the files to my students so they can pause the video and rewind it back 5 or 10 seconds so they can see again something they just saw but didn't quite grasp. Is there a way to place "skip back" buttonns or a dragable progress bar in these swf files that Camstudio produces?

Comments

  • that is really a feature of your movie player, not camstudio. Most players have a rewind feature, did you look at vlc?
  • edited August 2010
    ajardine,

    walshlg is right - any media player should exhibit a "progress bar" at the bottom which your audience can use to back-up or fast-forward to wherever they'd like. Even the flash players have this unless you specifically set them up not to show it.

    Keep the "Set Key Frames Every" setting around 30 frames for the best control, though this low a setting will result in a higher file size. (Set this in Options/Video Options)

    From the docs:

    "Set Key Frames Every"

    "This setting specifies the keyframe rate. When a frame is saved in an AVI file, they can either be saved as a full frame, or only partially as a difference to the previous frame. The keyframe rate specifies how often full frames are written to the AVI file.

    "A high value means you can fast forward/rewind to a particular frame in your movie much faster. But it also means a higher file size."

    I should add that the last two sentences from the docs are quite confusing.
    They remind me of my famous saying for which I am still known to this day, that being:

    “Although the moon is smaller than the Earth, it is further away.”

    In an attempt to clarify what is intended by those statements (not the moon one, though):

    Higher settings result in coarser control (and faster seeking), and lower file size.
    Lower settings result in finer control (and slower seeking), and higher file size.

    Example:
    Two test recordings, no motion, 30 seconds each at 1280X720, with 16-bit color using CamStudio Lossless 1.5, CFE=40 PBR=25

    Set Key Frames Every set to every 25 frames = 10.5 Meg file
    Set Key Frames Every set to every 200 frames = 4.15 Meg file

    [Also, this is off-topic, but as you are seemingly a beginner:

    Avoid audio/video sync problems - use 25 for the "Capture Frames Every" setting and 40 for the "Playback Rate" preferably using a 16-bit display color setting for fastest/smoothest playback rate (see http://screencasttutorial.org/18/best-settings-for-camstudio-to-sync-audio-and-video-28 to understand why...) This setting produces very smooth results, albeit with large-ish file sizes. ]

    Truth be told, I even make great screen recordings using 100 for the "Capture Frames Every" setting and 10 for the "Playback Rate" setting, also with perfect video/audio sync, which produces even smaller file sizes.

    Example:
    Three test recordings, no motion, 30 seconds each at 1280X720, with 16-bit color using CamStudio Lossless 1.5

    SKFE=25 CFE=25 PBR=40 produces a 12.9 Meg file
    SKFE=200 CFE=25 PBR=40 produces a 4.95 Meg file

    SKFE=25 CFE=40 PBR=25 produces a 10.5 Meg file
    SKFE=200 CFE=40 PBR=25 produces a 4.15 Meg file

    SKFE=25 CFE=100 PBR=10 produces a 4.4 Meg file
    SKFE=200 CFE=100 PBR=10 produces a 2.37 Meg file

    SKFE=”Set Key Frames Every” CFE=”Capture Frames Every” PBR=”Playback Rate”

    Terry
  • And that's why folks ... he's the CamStudio Oracle!
  • edited August 2010
    'That's-a Me!!!' :-)

    Terry
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