Once I finish building the website I'm currently doing, I'm going to be writing tutorials for people to follow so that they can learn to build websites too.

I have been using screen recorders on my desktop and laptop (specs can be found here).

I've used ManyCam, Camtasia, and a few other recorders but when I upload the video to youtube, the video is highly distorted.

Is there any good screen recorders for Windows that won't give me really bad quality and won't completely ruin the video?

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Permalink Reply by Darwin Anderson on April 3, 2012 at 2:30pm

For strictly desktop recording and app demos, I've always used CamStudio. It's free, allows recording of your audio line, and is generally good quality. The only drawback though is that it may take a little tinkering to get the best quality with a good frame rate.

On a related note, are you sure that the distortion on the youtube videos is not from the conversion? If you are using a widescreen display, it can sometimes distort the image when converting to the 4:3 aspect ratio.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Forbes on April 3, 2012 at 2:33pm

Thanks for the reply, Darwin.

Even with the display I have, I often try use a set screen size, and always keep a 4:3 ratio. So if I have it at 1200px wide, then I'll always have it 900px in height. But for some reason the text that I record goes slightly weird and just doesn't look right on youtube. I recall using CamStudio, but I think I deleted it a few months ago... I'll try that again though

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Permalink Reply by Darwin Anderson on April 3, 2012 at 2:42pm

It might possibly be a DPI setting with your recorder then. Do you happen to have a link to one of these videos by any chance? It'd be good to see what issues you are experiencing in order to better troubleshoot them.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Forbes on April 3, 2012 at 2:46pm

When I upload them, I don't publish them, I'll check if I have any, then I'll link you. If not, then I'll record another one after tonight's TLDR

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Permalink Reply by Mark Forbes on April 3, 2012 at 3:03pm

Hereyou go Darwin, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsHEEhG6zYg

Recorded at 1200x900, and even on notepad the text is distorted :(

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Permalink Reply by Darwin Anderson on April 3, 2012 at 4:59pm

Well, the youtube quality is stuck at 240p, so there might be the root of your issue. What file format are you uploading to youtube? .mov? .wmv?

Also here, take a look at this, it may help a bit.
http://support.google.com/youtube/bin/static.py?hl=en&topic=172...

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Permalink Reply by Mark Forbes on April 3, 2012 at 5:00pm

That was recorded directly from screencapture. That was using ManyCam.

Can you recommend a screencapture software that would be best to record?

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Permalink Reply by Darwin Anderson on April 3, 2012 at 5:13pm

Well, give Cam Studio a try. It's free, decent quality, and can get you a sharp image. It's what I used to record my desktop demo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28egbWNPqgo

As you can see, it's got decent framerate and good quality. You just have to tweak the settings a bit and play with them at first. It is not ideal for games though, however for your tutorials it should do the trick.

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Permalink Reply by Mark Forbes on April 3, 2012 at 5:21pm

Nice desktop haha.

Thanks man, I'll give that a shot :)

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Permalink Reply by Dillor Zaarour on April 7, 2012 at 6:35pm

Yea it could be alot of things resolution, dpi, I guess the YouTube 360, 480, 720, 1080 all have something to do with it I would prefer camasta I never have this problem if the resolution was right, I don't know. Wish I could say thats
My best guess