Camtasia Substitute?

If you don't have a high quality computer, the video comes out not as good... For example, I use Camtasia on a Netbook, and dang is it slow...

Caleb

I am using product from Xara at MAGIX Products and quality of videos are great.
regards
Zm

Bill,

What happened to the ummm... eyes? in your sig.

Caleb

I use camstudio which is free and I haven't had any problems or issues with it atall so far, I know I'd definitely recommend

Ruchi

Yes, ALL the "big time coaches" are using Camtasia or Screenflow (on the Mac) to create those high quality presentations.

The problem is not with Camtasia but rather how you are using it. Black edges are improper aspect ratios...fuzzy could be improper recording size, zooming, or video production settings.

Just making the point that Camtasia does, in fact, produce exceptional quality and your search for something "better" probably won't prove to be valid at least as it relates to screen capture video.

My 2 Cents:

I totally agree with LonNaylor
Although there are tons of Video Editing or related SW's, A few of the popular are:
CyberLink Power Director
Adobe Premiere
Sony Vegas

Previously I have been producing Camtasia Studio Videos and they were awesome and the computer were old Too.
You only need high power or Core processors to speed up the rendering or other stuff but they don't help you with the quality.

The first thing that you need to keep in mind is what output is required. i.e: ipod, Youtube HD etc and accordingly check the Dimensions Tab in Camtasia. Although Camtasia recommends the default.

You need to first master Camtasia and experiment with different dimensions setting and output configuration settings and select the settings that you think is the best.

I use wink to create software turorials. It is free.

.

Personally, I use AVS Video Editor for all video editing/desktop recording purposes. I've always found it very easy to use and very effective.

I use Jing and CamStudio ... both are free but Jing's free product does have some limitations. Their paid subscription is only $15 a year. The videos are great but it has a five minute limit. That's where CamStudio cam in and it does terrific but lacks the annotation feature Jing has.

CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software

TechSmith | Jing, instant screenshots and screencasts, Download Jing

Hope this helps!

Nobody has yet mentioned the first thing that came to my mind when I read "fuzzy"...

What kind of camera are you using? If you're trying to use a cheap webcam that only does 320x280 pixels and then viewing it larger, there's nothing you can do to really fix the fuzzies.

When you are doing video, the first issue is resolution. Just like a higher pixel count on a LCD allows you to have a sharper image, so does a higher pixel count for the camera.

If you're doing screen capture video, that is, you are capturing video of a powerpoint presentation or other on-screen images and adding audio, make sure your powerpoint window is the same size as the resultant video image you are creating. For example, if you are making a video that is going to display at 640x480 pixels, make the powerpoint window that size, or a multiple of it (like 1024x960). That way, the conversion (scaling) of the image won't give you the fuzzies in the final video. If the window needs to be resized, make sure you constrain the image to use the same ratio (horizontal to vertical). Changing the ratio wider without the verticle the same amount will make circles into ovals, and faces will look really wide. It will also dramatically increase the fuzzies.

If you are using an external (non-USB) camera, the camera capture input of your video card may be a big part of the problem.

If you suspect your computer isn't fast enough, change the frame rate. If you capture at 15 fps (frames per second) and the images look cleaner, you may be having processing issues due to lack of processing speed (either the video card or the actual CPU, depending on the software and equipment you are using.)

For most videos, 15 fps is plenty unless you are trying to capture higher speed motion. (your old television did 30 frames per second, which are actually two interlaced fields, so half of the picture is painted the first pass, the alternate lines the second pass, and this was repeated 30 times per second. New LCD televisions will show 60 full non-interlaced frames per second.)

Motion pictures (at the theater) use 24 frames per second, which is fast enough so the vast majority of people don't notice the flicker.

There is nothing wrong camtasia. Everyone is using camtasia if they are on a pc and screenflow if they are on a mac. If you are having quality issues then it is probably your settings. Change up the aspect ratio and export settings and you should be get better videos. You can also frame your videos to draw away from any flaws you may have.

Basically, different editing suites are going to be able to handle different types of compression.

It is not about the computer you render on, but how you are rendering these files.

What format are you trying to render out with? What codec are you trying to use to compress these files?

Some suites are better at processing different formats, some you should avoid using for compression whatsoever but render as a lossless (.avi) and transfer to a program that can actually handle it.

Let me know what format you are trying to render to and I'll help you out.

Just in case it is for streaming and you don't know what format you should use, use mpeg-4. If you are in fact rendering to .mp4 then you want to be using the .h264 encoder for compression.

I advise you to get mpeg-streamclip from Squared 5 - MPEG Streamclip video converter for Mac and Windows (its free) and use ANY mpeg compression there because it is awesome for it. The quality is superb for streaming and quick.

Make sure you enable the options for multipass and b-frames (trust me on that one).

If of course the original file you are trying to render is poor quality then it won't matter what you do with regards to rendering the file out because there is no data in there to do anything with in the first place.

Sony Vegas is a step up from Camtasia in case you were interested but isn't cheap.
I use pro 9

Hope this helps.