Recording from Laptop

bolt wrote on 12/31/2004, 11:17 AM

I am putting together a training video for a company and i'd like to show some of the software as a video demonstration.

I have recorded from my laptop into the PC but the quality is poor. What is the best way to do this kind of thing? How can i take the output of a Pc to PC and still have a gret pic quality?

Thx

Comments

Mandk wrote on 12/31/2004, 12:15 PM

Have you tried camtasia? I had a project and it worked well for me.

Spot|DSE wrote on 12/31/2004, 12:32 PM

Camtasia (techsmith) Hypercam, Canopus Twin Pac100 are all great screen capture options. Instant Demo is a good tool for Flash-based screen caps

bolt wrote on 12/31/2004, 6:02 PM

What is camtasia? It is software or hardware? And if its software where can i get a demo / purchase?

JohnnyRoy wrote on 12/31/2004, 6:18 PM

Camtasia is software. You can download a demo at http://www.techsmith.com/.

~jr

farss wrote on 12/31/2004, 6:39 PM

Just be aware and this is prehaps at the core of your problem. PCs run at very much higher resolution than video and a lot of what's on the screen of a PC doesn't downsample at all well if not really badly.
The trick is to run the PC at close to DV resolution if you can. A couple of the products also let you do pans accross the screen so the PC screen can be seen better, that can help a lot. Oddly enough you may get quite good results simply pointing a camera at a LCD screen, sometimes the simplest things work the best.
Bob.

bolt wrote on 1/1/2005, 5:57 AM

Been trying Camtasia which seems to have done the job. Much clearer than the other recommended software packages mentioned in the thread.

Does anyone have any recommendation as to what my monitor screen size should be set to to get the best possible resolution when played back on TV?

bolt wrote on 1/1/2005, 2:18 PM

any ideas on what resolution to use on the PC so that it comes out as clear as poss on TV?

Spot|DSE wrote on 1/1/2005, 2:45 PM

640 x 480 will give you the closest resolution to what you want. Unfortunately, it also leaves you litte room for much on your computer monitor.

bolt wrote on 1/1/2005, 2:48 PM

thank you spot. much appreciated.

bolt