looking for best open source desktop recorder!

You may take a look HERE. While I have not used it myself it is open source and does what you are interested in doing.

You can download and use cam studio.Its free and works great too.
here is the link CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software

Not open source FastStone Capture will do what you want and more. 5.3 is the last freeware version.

VideoLAN - Official page for VLC media player, the Open Source video framework! can record your desktop. Not its primary use but it works, is open source and free.

+1 for CamStudio, although you may want to change your video & audio settings to compress the video & audio more than the default codecs do otherwise you will end up with a multi Gigabyte size movie before you know it and could eat the crap out of your cpu/memory so you end up with a video that freezes during your tutorial.

As for audio its all about user preference and how crisp you want the sound to be, make sure you have your mic plugged in before you try to adjust your mic audio settings, you can also refer to the camstudio forum for more tips and answers to any questions you may have concerning Camstudio.

Then after your done recording you can Edit your video with a Free Video Editor or you can use Windows Movie Maker/Windows Live Movie Maker which also does a good job at editing videos, this way you have an intro and or other effects in your video tutorials so they look more professional and give the veiwer a greater tutorial experience.

try these video settings in camtasia or just adjust them until you find your own preference. You may also have to install codecs like xvid if you dont already have them, K-Lite Codec Pack is a good option as far as codecs are concerned, I use the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack wich includes just about every popular codec from CodecGuide.

I happen to use GoToMeeting for this exact purpose at work. We have the gotomeeting account for other things, but it also gives me the ability to record my screen, and the video capture is usually a very high quality and a tiny size at the end. Obviously, gotomeeting is not free, but they do have a 30 day free trial. Just throwing the suggestion out there.

Most free screen recorders deliver very poor quality - including CamStudio. I have tried a good dozen of the freebies.The acid test is when you record text which is often the case in tutorials. I found 2 products that really work well and I have been using them extensively.

1. WMCapture which costs $40 one time but it is worth the money. I use this most of the time. There is a 2 week free trial, so you can check it out.

2. MS Expression Encoder 4 - this is the ultimate in quality. BUT - the free version lets you only record 10 minutes each shot. That is usually OK for tutorials because after 10 minutes I have to take a break anyhow. The pieces I paste together with Live Windows Movie maker.
What is also important to know that this program records in a very funny codec that you have to encode to get .wmv. For that you better have a very powerful processor. I am OK on my i7 system, but on my 2.5GHz duo core I need 5 minutes of encoding for every minute of recording.
Neverthelss, the recorder is superb. I have even considered to buy the $199 pro version so that I do not have any constraints.

Whs,

Thanks for the links to the 2 applications you have listed. It sounds like WMCapture might be a solid fit for what I use screen recording for and I'm going to try out the demo. And $40 as a 1 time fee is pretty darn reasonable if the quality is high, and the hassle is low.

Here are a couple of samples that I made with WMCapture. Watch in full screen. You have to also consider that the quality gets a serious beating from the upload to Vimeo or YouTube.

Error Message on Vimeo
http://www.vimeo.com/10272197