800x600 Camtasia screen recording

Bubbayoshi · 01 Jun 2011

Hey, I'm doing a video walkthrough on The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind right now, and I'm using Camtasia 7 as recording software. I'm recording at 800x600 so that viewers can read the on-screen text, and I can still have my notes off to the side. The problem is it seems like I lose half of my frames. A good example of this can be seen in a video from a couple months ago, when I did a fullscreen recording. Entire seconds go by with no movement onscreen. I know that reducing the amount of running programs while I record can help, but I'm still losing a lot of video...
There are a few compressor options available to me:
Microsoft Video 1
Intel IYUV codec
Cinepak Codec by Radius
TechSmith Screen Capture Codec
Uncompressed

So far I've been using uncompressed, because I wanted full compatibility with other programs (I edit in Pinnacle Studio). Would any of the other compressors reduce my frame loss and still work in Pinnacle Studio? Are there any less lossy alternatives to Camtasia?

MrNeeds · 03 Jun 2011

Camtasia is a badly coded program, it isn't ideal for any situation, seems to be terrible at it's primary function and as you've described, badly optimised.
Fraps does a much better job at recording desktop and direct 3D games, it's completely uncompressed with minimal loss of frames, and has the ability to record at very high resolutions (you can zoom video in pinnacle studio so I wouldn't worry about that).

Bubbayoshi · 04 Jun 2011

Just got the latest version of Fraps and did a test video, it doesn't slow down the game itself. That's one of the reasons I turned to Camtasia in the first place was Fraps would slow down my games.

MrNeeds · 04 Jun 2011

i did the same as you my friend, camtasia was my first choice but after looking at videos on youtube, all bad videos were recorded with camtasia and all the smooth and good looking videos were recorded with fraps, so it was a no brainer for me, have a look at my youtube channel, all of my gaming videos are recorded with fraps YouTube - ‪bombhead2's Channel‬&rlm;

MadSupra354 · 04 Jun 2011

MrNeeds said:

Camtasia is a badly coded program, it isn't ideal for any situation, seems to be terrible at it's primary function and as you've described, badly optimised.
Fraps does a much better job at recording desktop and direct 3D games, it's completely uncompressed with minimal loss of frames, and has the ability to record at very high resolutions (you can zoom video in pinnacle studio so I wouldn't worry about that).

+1 for that. Using Camtasia to record games = Fail :)
Or I would rep you except for the last couple of weeks I'm unable to.