Screen recording is not very clear for characters

[jagabo]

I played around with the WMV 9 encoder and found that you could only get clear text if you used a quality setting or 90 or higher.

[poisondeathray]

1. I have tried megui, but I can not find from its main GUI that it supports screen recording (e.g. I can select to record screen as input source), let me know if I am wrong.

It's not a screen recorder. You record the screen (hopefully in a proper screen recording format/codec) then use that (or any other front end) to encode. Are you still wanting to do this in 1 stage? Are you not planning on editing / PIP overlays etc?

2. Camtasia is free? I am using it and I remember we need to buy license key or else it is only trial version.

Camstudio is the free version, Camtasia costs $.

3. What is the benefit of using AVI VFW format compared of using h.264, and also compared of using my current solution of using Windows Media Encoder to record to wmv?

h.264 is a video format (MPEG4 part10), but AVI is a video container. Videos can use different codecs (e.g. xvid, mpeg2), but they can be "wrapped" by different containers (e.g. mp4, mkv). VFW is an older format (compared to DirectShow), but almost all older Windows programs support it. Most screen recorders use the AVI VFW format. There are dozens of codec choices, even x264 encoder has VFW version (the normal one isn't VFW). The benefit of using VFW is legacy support and ability to edit using free apps like virtualdub, WAX (I thought you wanted to overlay the speaker video on ppt slides or something like that. From an earlier thread, this is trivial to do if you know avisynth, but the only free simple GUI based solution I know of was WAX)

If we assume your end users are low on computer literacy, what was your proposed workflow for them and apps that you intended them to use/install?

I don't know what the requirements are for your previous .net software or what role it plays?

It depends how much you intend for them to do. i.e overlays, editing etc.. or is it just recording? If it's just recording directly to final format, go ahead any use WMV with the better settings, and make sure their PC doesn't drop frames. Note another option is using camstudio + x264 vfw in a 1pass crf mode to record directly. If it's PIP overlays and you want to do it for free you might need detailed steps to show them how to do it (e.g. illustrated video tutorial) for something like wax.

The actual screen recording software is very easy to use. You push a button. (there are other customizable settings, but that's basically it....). If you are doing any editing at all, I would still record to a lossless intermediate, or at least a very high bitrate intermediate. The slightly more difficult part is the editing part (e.g. using wax for the overlays). For encoding GUI's if you were to use h.264, ripbot264 would be the easiest IMO.

This is the way I would do it if I had no experience: 1) Use camstudio to record to lossless intermediate 2) Edit in some programs like vdub or wax, do the overlays etc..., export in lossless 3) Import the edited video and encode with x264encoder using some GUI (e.g ribpot264, because MeGUI is more difficult to learn as a GUI, it was only given as a .net example). If you think this will be too difficult, then you have to make some compromises on quality, filesize, or editing.