How to Capture Videos from Screen

U.S. Internet users watched 13.5 billion online videos during October, 2008, marking a 45 percent increase compared to a year ago, according to ComScore Video Metrix. Lots of YouTube users are keen on making video tutorials from screen capture and sharing them on YouTube. Do you know how to capture videos from screen and share them on YouTube?

There are mainly three ways to capture videos from screen: a camera or camcorder, a VCR (Video Cassette Recorder), and video screen recorder. We will make a brief introduction of  how they work on recording videos of computer screen.

1. Camera or Camcorder

This is the intuitive way to do the video capture from computer screen. Set your recording machine on a tripod, point it at the screen and record. It is simple, but quality of the resulting video will be fuzzy and blinking. It could be helpful to get an idea of what you do, but it can be difficult to see the details on the screen.

2. VCR

If your video card has a TV-out port you can connect it to a VCR and record directly to tape. The video quality can be improved on the first method. Because the resolution and sharpness of a television is lower than a computer screen, the video will still be fuzzy and downgraded from the original image. To get a better result you need to adjust your screen resolution to 800×600 at most, preferably 640×480.

3. Video screen recorder

It works as a background program and record what is going on your screen and generate the video files. The result is great without loss of details. Each frame of the resulting video could serve as a screenshot. Indeed, that's one way to think of how the software works: taking series of screenshots and stringing them together into a video. It may slow down your computer performance as it capture a lot of data in real time, but it could be the best way to create videos of screen activity.

Record computer screen with video screen recorder!

There are various applications help you record screen video by a few clicks. Even more, they could produce videos with standard video format for online sharing and on demand delivery. Here are two applications for you to consider.

Video Screen Recorder - DemoCreator

DemoCreator creates software video tutorials and website demos just by three steps: Record, Edit and Publish.

Step 1:Set up the recording option and record your screen

Select the Capture area and Recording mode. Start your recording and press F10 to stop it when your recording is over.

Step 2:Edit your recording slides (Optional)

When finishing the recording, you can go to edit the recording slides. There are music, narration, annotations, images, interactivities and even animations for you to enhance your recording, thus making the demos more animated and interactive.

Step 3: Publish as the format you like

Publish the video format you like. This screen recorder enables users to publish diverse formats of video such as SWF, AVI and EXE for easy sharing. You may upload the Flash movie to your host, or upload the the video to video sharing sites like YouTube, sharing the video demo with everyone!

For details, you can view this Guide Tutorial created by screen recorder DemoCreator. Click the Full Screen icon on the play bar to check the video in full screen.

Video Screen Recorder - Camstudio

As the free screen recording software, Camstudio is able to record screen activity and audio on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

Pros and Cons of Camstudio:

Cons: Free software; easy to use; Audio recording; Flexible outputs for easy sharing.

Pros: No interactivity; No video editing feature; No sound editing feature.

Final Verdict:

CamStudio can be learned in a matter of minutes and comes with a comprehensive built-in help file. It is easy and quick to make videos from your computer screen. The weakness of Camstudio is the editing feature and interactivity. But it can be an outstanding one in free screen recorders.

Pros and Cons of DemoCreator:

Pros:

Integration of multiple screen recording scenes

Automatically add annotations for screen recording

Callouts to highlight your important content

Interactive elements to enhance your demonstration

Background music and audio rerecording support

Cons: Shareware of $99.95;

Final Verdict:

The powerful editing features make DemoCreator an easy screencasting tool to make compelling videos that you will likely be quite satisfied with. DemoCreator is a commercial software application, but the function and quality of this software do deserve the reasonable price, considering most of its competition is in the range of $200 to $400 (and more).

Most users are recording what they do on the screen, such as the software tutorials and website demos. Software vendors/providers are making video demos of computer screen to initiate the sales cycle and improve marketing ROI. Website master are looking for the solution to promote the website features and reduce customer service costs, usually they would record compelling guide demos of the website operations to enhance user experience.

For example, you are making a Flash movie demonstrating a product or service and share it online. You can add the URL in your Flash movie to guide the viewers to the purchase page and they may immediately buy. This can increase your conversion rate. Then screen recorder like DemoCreator is in need.