How to: capture screen & convert to B/W

lewist57 wrote on 12/9/2014, 11:58 AM
Two questions:

1) Recommendations for screen recorder program for Windows 7? I have tried Debut, seems to work well, but resolution can be less than desirable, and Vegas does not like some of its AVI and MP4 file formats. MOV seems to work the best.
2) To convert a color screen capture to black and white, I have added the Sony black and white video plug in. However, the text in color still comes out very gray and hard to see on the screen. What is the best method to convert color text to a pure or near pure black text?

Thanks!

Comments

Stringer wrote on 12/9/2014, 12:27 PM
Unless it's black or very dark color on the screen it will not be black when you add a filter. It will be a shade of grey..


You might try adjusting your Windows desktop/font colors to get more contrast.


You will probably have to spend some money to get a good screen capture program that provides a crisp image..


You will also want the capture resolution to match your screen resolution, at a high bit rate.. Some type of lossless AVI would be best..
altarvic wrote on 12/9/2014, 1:08 PM
Camtasia is the king of screen capture programs!
You might want to take a look at Movavi Screen Capture
Or use free CamStudio
rs170a wrote on 12/9/2014, 1:16 PM
For #1, videoITguy made what seems to be a great suggestion for a screen capture program in the Screen Capture of On-Line Database?? thread so have a look at it.

Mike
lewist57 wrote on 12/9/2014, 1:30 PM
CamStudio appears to be bundled with malware, did not install.

I think I will use my BlackMagic Intensity Pro to capture the video off of my laptop. I have had good success with it in the past, although it does generate some really big AVI files.
SecondWind-SK wrote on 12/9/2014, 2:46 PM
videoITguy's recommendation was for Action by Mirillis. I bought it. I got great results. I used it to capture an on-line corporate information system including downloaded Excel spreadsheets with very dense text and numbers. I was not happy with the evaluation of Camtasia; however, that might have been operator error. I was not dealing with the issue of displaying the result in black and white.
Marco. wrote on 12/9/2014, 3:45 PM
I use BB FlashBack.
larry-peter wrote on 12/9/2014, 4:32 PM
For converting your color screen captures to B&W I recommend downloading AAV Colorlab (a free Vegas plug-in - just google it).

It allows a lot of control over which colors are interpreted as black. If memory serves, it gives you control over primary and secondary colors. It's a nice free color corrector, too.
lewist57 wrote on 12/10/2014, 9:48 AM
I was able to add a Levels plug-in and make adjustments to get the desired effect.

I also used my BlackMagic Intensity Pro to capture my laptop screen which generated a rather large but very legible AVI of the screen.
Laurence wrote on 12/11/2014, 7:50 PM
Another vote for AAV Colorlab here. What is special about this plugin for B&W is that it will let you control how each color in your original footage is added to the monochrome image. A little tweaking and you will get a far better looking B&W image than you would doing it most other ways.
astar wrote on 12/11/2014, 9:21 PM
I like encoder 4 with free 10 min capture. I have also used the BM intensity route, which would be the best bet if you need to capture a high frame rate like displaying video or games. General how to screen capture, encoder works great, and it can capture multi-monitor desktop. For capturing long webex meetings with audio, I will capture as low as 1FPS. It just depends on how much the screen is changing. That way you do not need to process huge files, like the huge files that the Black Magic route will give you.