Thread: the Best Screen Capture Program (record ANY video from your screen)
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Old 01-26-2010, 11:26 AM
Stream Recorder
 
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Re: Screen video capture software: Getting better quality

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Originally Posted by Stream Recorder View Post
Screen video capture software need some tricks if you want to record in high quality:
  • You need a 2-PASS encoding to get smaller files. But you can't capture from your screen using a 2-pass encoding!
  • For the best quality it is recommended to record using HUFFYUV lossless codec first. Huffyuv provides very good quality, but generates a data stream of 10-15 MB/sec.

    If your hard drive is not fast enough then you may use a MOTION JPEG codec: Morgan MJPEG, PICVideo MJPEG, MainConcept MJPEG. Motion JPEG codecs generate data stream of 3-8 MB/sec while providing good quality.
  • After that you may compress your Huffyuv or Motion JPEG recordings using MPEG-4 AVC codec (like x264) or MPEG-4 ASP codec (like Xvid) and a 2-pass encoding method.
  • It is usually a good idea to convert WMV to WMV, RM to RM, .MOV to .MOV, .FLV to .FLV (Windows Media to Windows Media, Real Media to Real Media, Flash video to Flash video) to have less quality loss.

    But you can test other codecs as well. For example: free x264 or free xvid.

If super high-quality is not very important, you can try Replay Video Capture. It records from screen using MPEG-2 or Windows Media codec and I'm very satisfied by its quality.
I do not suggest to use 2-pass ABR encoding anymore. This practice was widely used in the past, but no longer recommended

Best practices for recording video from screen:
  • For the best quality it is record video from screen using HUFFYUV lossless codec. Huffyuv provides very good quality, but generates a data stream of 10-15 MB/sec.

    If your hard drive is not fast enough then you may use a MOTION JPEG codec: Morgan MJPEG, PICVideo MJPEG, MainConcept MJPEG. Motion JPEG codecs generate data stream of 3-8 MB/sec while providing good quality.
  • If you need MPEG-4 or MPEG-4 AVC video, recompress your recording using CRF (quality based) 1-pass encoding. You can use free x264 for creating MPEG-4 AVC videos and free XVid for MPEG-4 videos. I recommend you to use MKV or MP4 container for your files depending on hardware that you have.
  • When you record anything from screen, close all unnecessary applications including instant messengers, e-mail clients, Web-browsers. It is also a good idea to stop your antivirus, anti-malware, anti-spyware software, disconnect from the Internet (if your game doesn't require it) and stop your firewall.
    Don't forget to turn on your system protection after recording.
  • Consider lowering the desktop screen resolution
  • You may need to turn off hardware acceleration when recording from screen. Otherwise you may get black screen instead of the video.

Any other ideas?
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