Screen captures, very bad quality

[Andromedaris]

Hi,

I tried several options to encode a uncompressed avi-file (screen capture) into mpeg1 with TMPGenc. The meaning of the project we're working on is a sort of tutorial how to do something on a particular website, showed by the screencaptures. The results are always very bad. The user would hardly be able to read what is going on on the screen. I captured the screens at a 800-600 resolution, lower I can't go. The source avi file is superb quality. I know images with text is a pain in the *** with conversions, but has anyone a better option how to do this?

Thanks

[mats.hogberg]

800*600 would require quite some bitrate to look OK as MPEG (or any other not lossless format).
HuffYuv AVI may work better.

/Mats

[DJRumpy]

A few questions. What is your target audience? Have you considered using DivX/XviD? Mats is correct. The bitrate required to encode an 800x600 image would be very high. Anything less would look very messy/blocky/blurry.

What format are you trying to get to? What formats are an option? Will the video be for PC only, or will it also be viewed on a television?

[Rond66]

Have you tried CamStudio?
http://www.rendersoftware.com/products/camstudio/camstudio.htm

The Freeware Screen Recorder For:
Creating high quality demos in minutes with no programming knowledge required.
Producing e-learning materials to train your employees more efficiently. This cut the training duration and expenses.
Aiding your marketing and sales personnel in their presentation needs.
Capturing the complex steps in performing difficult tasks.
Recording the sequence of steps that cause the occurrence of bugs in faulty software.
Recording a gaming session.
Recording a movie (both video and audio) stream.
Producing Flash (SWF) movie files for streaming across the web.

[Andromedaris]

It has to be a VCD. So I have no other choice than mpeg1. Camstudio, Camtasia, I know all those products, I've done the screencaptures by them. I set my screen resolution at 800-600, so things would be more clearly to the audience. Lower I can't go and it wouldn't be good anymore, because you wouldn't see the site as a whole concept anymore.

I just search for a way to have a descent result in mpeg1. But I noticed, even in photoshop resizing a bmp of the same size to vcd format with a lot of text gives also no good result.

any other options?

[Gazorgan]

Can't be done. You are trying to squeeze 800x600 worth of webpage images(high res graphics?) into a 352x240 'ish box. Isn't going to happen. It's less than 1/6 the resolution. You can try cropping ( not resizing a window of the source file, but that's about it.

[mats.hogberg]

OK, so your original is 800*600, and you're going to 352*240/288? Then no bitrate in the world will help you (to boot, the fact that VCD is 1150 kbps period really limits your options).
Can't be done. Take another route. VCD will not be a working solution.

/Mats