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Recommended settings and codecs for full screen vids?
Hi guys. I've been using CamStudio for a while now but I want to do some bigger videos, however, whenever I try to use full screen mode (in any codec mode) i get an AVI file error.
Also, if by some chance i do like half of a screen, it wont give me an error, but the video comes out all gray with just the sound.
The only way i can record vids if the resolution is 500x500 or lower.
Also, whenever i record using DivX, the video starts to chop up after 30 seconds, and the CamStudio Lossless Codec doesn't work for me (video comes out gray). I end up having to use the codec that comes with Camtasia. Im using version 2.0 by the way. here are my machine specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.4 ghz rated at 3.0ghz)
1.5gigs of ram
128meg of onboard shared ATI Radeon X200 memory
I've seen people with much worse (pentium 3, 512 megs of ram, and 32 megs of onboard video) record smooth videos at any resolution using different codecs. Could it be because of my AMD processor? Does it work better for intel processors?
Also, if by some chance i do like half of a screen, it wont give me an error, but the video comes out all gray with just the sound.
The only way i can record vids if the resolution is 500x500 or lower.
Also, whenever i record using DivX, the video starts to chop up after 30 seconds, and the CamStudio Lossless Codec doesn't work for me (video comes out gray). I end up having to use the codec that comes with Camtasia. Im using version 2.0 by the way. here are my machine specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.4 ghz rated at 3.0ghz)
1.5gigs of ram
128meg of onboard shared ATI Radeon X200 memory
I've seen people with much worse (pentium 3, 512 megs of ram, and 32 megs of onboard video) record smooth videos at any resolution using different codecs. Could it be because of my AMD processor? Does it work better for intel processors?
Comments
What settings are you using? I usually record at 15 fps. That is, record a frame every 66 ms, and a playback rate of 15fps.
Oh and also, whenever i try to go into the video settings menu within CamStudio after my first time in the menu, the entire program crashes on me. I don't know why. So now I can't even go back and change codecs and settings unless i reinstall the whole thing (this is on 2.5 by the way)
Im gonna try it on 2.0 and see if it does that. UPDATE just tried it on 2.0 and it does the same thing. =( I really don't get what's happening here.
UPDATE - well I can safely say that all the products based off of the CamTasia Studio source is doing the problem which I described above (crashing). This is odd.
I would advise NOT to record full screen unless you absolutely have to, because even with a good video codec, your AVI will get big REALLY quick and then you'll begin to run into the AVI filesize limit (2GB on a FAT16 drive, 4GB - on a FAT32 drive, virtually unlimited on an NTFS formatted drive) BTW, this is not a limit with CamStudio, but with the AVI filetype itself.
To record fullscreen at 30fps, you're going to need some serious processing hardware to do that and make sure minimal other programs are running to keep everything smooth, so that's another factor to bear in mind.
That said, I'm not sure exactly why you're experiencing these issues - and you certainly should be able to record screen perfectly above 500 x 500.
Are you using the most up to date ATI-issued graphic drivers?
Cheers
Nick :)
First I set the resolution of the screen down from the default 1440x900 to 1280x800. In Camstudio the video settings are set like this:
http://i27.tinypic.com/346xg13.png
When it comes to audio, I've mostly had to use another program (Audacity) to record that. The reason being that after I formatted the PC a while back, any recording including audio would create corrupt AVI-files that would crash any program they were opened in. Not an optimal solution as it creates a little extra work (encoding video in Vdub, exporting audio from Audacity, and then muxing them together with MKVmerge, instead of just encoding everything in Vdub) and could make audio and video a little out of sync, but it works.
You could try this approach:
http://camstudio.org/blog/tutorials/first-camstudio-tutorial-video-online (also, read the comments - more links)
EDIT: Nick, concerning filesizes: I just recorded a 7:27 minute video in 1440x900 with the settings shown above, without audio. The file ended up on 73,7MB. Of course, the audio would have added greatly to this, but still, it's a long way to go before reaching any file size-limits.
EDIT2: Concerning compression: This isn't what the thread is about, but I can mention it anyway. The audio is exported from Audacity using Ogg Vorbis with a quality setting of 0 (on a scale from 0-10). The video, as mentioned above, is compressed with x264. The video (if fullscreen) is resized to 80%, which makes it 800x500, and sharpened a little. I use two pass encoding with a bit rate of 100.
This probably obvious, but I'll say it anyway, if you have to record fullscreen or at a relatively high resolution, make sure audio codec is at MP3, 22kHz, 32 kbps, Mono if it's just you speaking.
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/DTS_x264_VfW.htm
And for audio, this (just Lame):
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/LAME_ACM_Codec.htm
Having heard that codec packs can cause a lot of problems (not saying they will, but they can), I've never installed any.
AMD x64 3200+
4gb RAM
2.5tb Disk space
MS Windows Vista
I have compatibility mode set to Windows XP sp2
The codec I'm using is CamStudio Lossless Codec v1.0
Quality set to 70
Capture frame every 50ms
Playback 20 frames/second
I recorded a 20 minutes video full screen just playing around and had no problems with the playback (other than the gigantic file size) AFTER I turned AVG off
I'm wondering OGWilson, if you have a lot of processes running in the background that is taking resources. It's a thought.
Acer Aspire 5100
(The graphics card is so horrible, don't remember it) Some ATI Radeon 1100 series
1gb of RAM
120 GB of Disk space
MS Windows Vista
Also, I use the "Disk Cleanup" utility whenever I use know I will make large files, and I encode with the Lame MP3 codec. Plus, as stated by djsmyers, make sure to turn off ALL of the programs running in the background that you don't need, and aren't part of the systems files that Windows NEEDS. The codec(s) can be found here:
Install ALL codecs, see what's the best. http://www.techsmith.com/codecs.asp
http://lame.sourceforge.net/index.php -- MP3 codec
As for your last post, OGWilson:
Did you mean that Techsmith's codec gives you error messages every time?
About Virtualdub: I use Vdub for further compressing the videos. The original video is too large for distributing on the web (I think), and anyone wanting to see it would have to install the MSU codec first. Therefore I use Vdub to 1) change the resolution of the video from 1280x800 to 800x500 and 2) converting to a codec that is more common to have installed (x264). This also reduces the filesize, to roughly 1MB/minute, while maintaining decent quality.