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Creating Screen Recording Tutorials for the Web

John P.

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Screen RecordingI’ve had several people ask me how to create video screen captures like the one I did for my Roboform demonstration video. Here are a few options, with a focus on the free CamStudio screen recorder.

If you do not require video (it does audio) to be captured concurrently (like you talking on video) with the screen recording you can use the free CamStudio to make the recording. You can also still use CamStudio if you don’t mind recording the video and then splicing it into the screen capture later. It will even do picture in picture if you prefer.

  • Download CamStudio here
  • Download the CamStudio Codec here
  • Install them and then follow these instructions to create screen captures.

Tutorial #1


Tutorial #2

Depending on the codec you use, CamStudio will often save your video as a large uncompressed AVI file. This file can be imported into other video editing software as usual. If however, you would like to prepare it for upload to the Web as is, you will need to compress the AVI using a program called VirtualDub.

Here is how to compress the video using VirtualDub:


And here is an alternative description:


VirtualDub Compression – Watch the best video clips here

Other free screen recorders:

If you’ve got the budget to spend on slightly easier or more feature rich alternatives here are a few to take a look at:

Comments

  1. if one want to create web based tutorials like what you said, I suggest flash demo creation tools. because those software records on screen actions and export tutorials as flash movies, which are much smaller than video clips. A one minute movie is only hundreds of kilobytes. Wondershare DemoCreator can cope with this easily. also ,camtasia and captivate, but they are kind of costful. or you may like to try flash demo builder and demo builder. they are also good alternitives of camtasia and captivate.

  2. I’m glad… this is something that has been requested of me many times and I just got around to posting it. Even my own brother has been waiting weeks for me to share this one. :-)