Cam Studio Pro Review

CamStudio Pro is a screen capture program that offers effective and user-friendly features for internet marketers. This software program was to help people effectively use video in their online businesses. The software promises to be easy to use and loaded with features, making it helpful for beginners and experienced internet marketers alike.

A lot of people out there will say what is screen capture? How can this be useful? What are the common uses? Let me explain.

A screen shot, screen capture, screen dump, screen grab or print screen is an image taken by the computer to record the visible items displayed on the monitor, television, or another visual output device. Usually this is a digital image taken by the host operating system or software running on the computer, but it can also be a capture made by a camera or a device intercepting the video output of the display. An example would be a Digital Video Recorder.

Screenshots can be used to demonstrate a program, a particular problem a user might be having or generally when display output needs to be shown to others or archived.

Now that we have a general understanding of what screen capture or screen shot, let me explain how software can be used to make this process much simpler than trying to compile screen shots then trying to make a presentation or video afterwards. This explanation will greatly help you in why Cam Studio Pro will make this work simple and easy for you.

Let’s say you have a computer with Microsoft Windows. In Microsoft Windows, pressing Prt Sc captures a screenshot of the entire desktop and places it in the clipboard, while Alt+Prt Sc captures only the active window. In most versions of Windows, captured screenshots do not include the mouse pointer.

Once captured, the screenshot must be pasted from the clipboard into a separate program, such as Paint in order to be viewed or saved. Already you can start to see the time involved and this is only the beginning steps if trying to do this manually!

Ok, now that you are armed with some knowledge of what screen capture is and what it takes to do that, let’s get onto the Cam Studio Pro.

Initially, you would think that a program to do this would be large in size. Well Cam Studio Pro is just 6mb in size. Remember what mom always said…Good things come in small packages! Well this is a great example.

Installation of this program is easy. In a matter of minutes it is installed and ready to go.

There are also instructional videos to help with all aspects of this program.

I personally took the time to watch the videos and I am impressed. The information is at a great pace, not too slow and not to fast so everything that is mentioned, you will remember.

The list of videos that you can view covers everything. The list includes installing the software, Creating your first screen capture video, Changing the button styles, How to use the Video Web Wizard, How to use the video webpage designer, Uploading your video files to the internet. There are also videos there that will help if you are interested in making money online with your videos. This is also great for those of you who type articles online. (Learn how to get paid to make Articles). These videos are How to add your video to an eBay auction and eBay classified ad, Recording Tip - How to join avi files and add more effects to your recording, How to integrate Google Adsense ads as well as any custom HTML into your video WebPages.

Cam Studio Pro also has a dedicated FAQ page that covers practically every question and answer you could imagine that is related to this program. There is even a list of several video websites similar to Google Video where you can upload your marketing videos ... and the best part is, they are FREE!

Once you have installed the program, the first thing you will want to do is record something to see how it works. I would recommend following the installation video and install the other 2 files (and by the way, links are provided to download them and there is no additional cost).

Ok now we are ready to test CamStudio Pro. I know, I am excited about seeing how well this really works. Once you open Cam Studio Pro, you will see a splash screen then the application opens. Simply click on Programs tab and click on recorder. A neat thing I noticed is that when you do this, the program minimizes and you have just the recorder window.

At first look, you may think gee, this looks too simple there must be more to it. The reason behind this is just that. They used the kiss method (Keep It Simple Stupid). There are 3 buttons, Record, Pause and Stop. This is pretty straight forward. Now if you are like me, you want to see what else is in this window.

The window looks basic with headings of File, Region, Options, Tools, View and Help. This is almost like your browser window. This makes it easy to maneuver and with headings that make sense, makes it appealing.

Under File you will see Record, Stop, Pause and Exit. I do not think I need to explain any of these options as they are straight forward.

Under Region, you guessed it; it has to do with the region (area) you are recording on your desktop. There are 3 options available, Region, Fixed Region or Full Screen. If you select Region then hit record button, you can make the exact region size you want to record. If you select fixed region, it is a fixed size in which you can select the width and height of the area. Also, if you choose this and you have the fixed region and you are recording, you can use your mouse to move the fixed region and it works smoothly as I have tried it myself. The full screen does as it says, records your full desktop. Now depending on what you are recording, and what windows you have open, this is a smart feature as it allows the user to have more control of what gets recorded.

Under the Options section, there are a lot of things that you can set to make Cam Studio Pro best suited for your needs. There are Video options, Cursor options, Do not record audio, Record audio from microphone, Record audio from speakers, Audio Options (which include setting options for Microphone, Speakers and Audio and Video Synchronization), Enable Autopan, Autopan speed, Program options , Record to Flash options and keyboard shortcuts.

Now let me explain what these options can do. For the video options you can select the compression and depending on the frame rate you choose, will dictate the frames per second. (The higher the frame per second, the better the video is as far as for clearness).

The cursor option allows you to either have the cursor hidden during recording, or you can show the cursor and have it changed to a custom one as well as allowing you to highlight the cursor so the point of focus of what you are recording shows better.

The audio options allow you to set up how you want your microphone to work, the speaker allows you to set up what device to set for your sound. The Audio and Video Synchronization, you guessed it, allows you to adjust the audio to the video so it all matches smoothly.

The Autopan feature is very convenient as if you are recording and need to focus on a different point…it allows you to do so with just dragging the window.

The program options are just that. It allows setting things like where to save your video file, what format to save as, save your settings on exit, and even troubleshoot any issue you may be experiencing.

The Record to Flash options are cool as you can set it up to automatically delete the avi file upon completion. This is very useful as you do not want a recorded session of one format saved if you only want the flash one. This will definitely save space on your hard drive.

The keyboard shortcuts are awesome as you can set specific keys to do certain functions in Cam Studio Pro.

Now let’s jump into the Tools section of Cam Studio Pro.

In this section you can choose Screen annotations or Video annotations and SWF Producer (This converts your Avi file to Flash).  Screen annotations allow you to create specific items in a bubble that can be used to emphasize a certain part of your recording. Cam Studio Pro allows you to customize these to fit your style. Everything from the type and style to having the ability to edit text inside them. The same goes for the Video annotations. This feature requires a webcam to be installed on your system. The Video Annotations window is essentially a webcam window. By placing a webcam window on your desktop, you can record its content along with other screen content when the webcam window is inside your recording region. The Video Annotation window does not only stream video content to your desktop, you can also add a text caption, make a cutout region, or set transparency values to the video annotation just like you did for screen annotations. Basically, annotations are just that, it allows you to post notes and links in your video. The best feature so far is that you can embed a link into the SWF file so that when it reaches the end of the movie, it can redirect right to the webpage of your choice.

The view section is how you want to see Cam Studio Pro. Normal, compact or button views are the options.

In the help section, click and select Help. This will open up a webpage and to my surprise, it has everything you can imagine to help you with anything about this program.

Here are just some of the possibilities in which Cam Studio Pro can help you with your project: demonstrate features of a new software, create training manuals, provide step by step instructions for  a project, record a movie stream, the possibilities are endless.

You can also set to record either to avi format or Flash.

The web wizard helps you to upload video to websites. A very cool and also a bonus feature of Cam Studio Pro.

Stoik Video Converter Program is another tool in this package.

Let’s say you are creating a training document for a software program. You have multiple formats that you are using and now are in completion mode. Well this tool converts the different formats into one format for you. It  is an universal powerful video converting, enhancement and video processing software, that allows you to make video format conversion quite easy (such as converting AVI to MOV, AVI to MPEG, WMV to AVI, MPEG to WMV and other popular formats such as DV, MKV), and also create video clips. Available in Free and Pro editions, STOIK Video Converter Pro can convert between AVI, DV, MKV, MOV, MPEG 1, 2 and 4, and WMV formats in all possible combinations. It’s the simple way to transform video clips in any needed format. The free version is included in Cam Studio Pro.

Now lets talk about the Producer aspect of Cam Studio Pro.

CamStudio SWF Producer converts AVI movies to Flash (.swf) files. Normally, an AVI converted to SWF by the producer results in a much smaller file that can be streamed across the internet.
The SWF Producer is able to convert AVIs to Flash files in a lossless manner. This means there is no degradation of image quality or decrease in frame rates. For an AVI with small dimensions running at high frame rates, the .swf file size is about 30% of the original AVI file. For large image-sized AVIs, the reduction in file size is even more dramatic, with the converted file being only 5% of the original AVI.
The SWF Producer can operate in 3 modes. The modes are Standalone Mode in which it runs like a normal program. You can launch it by selecting the Tools: SWF Producer command inside the Cam Studio Pro Screen Recorder. Or you can simply double click the Producer.exe file in the installed directory.
To convert a file, simply click the convert button. The producer will ask you for an AVI file to convert. It will then display a dialog box below where you can adjust some of the conversion parameters. Used Internally by Cam Studio Screen Recorder, you can set the Cam Studio Pro Recorder to record directly to Flash. This is toggled by the SWF button in the Cam Studio Pro Recorder. Command Line Mode - Silence Mode is the third one. The Producer can also be launched on the command line (in DOS Prompt) by typing  Producer –b filename.avi
When Producer is launched this way, it opens the file “filename.avi” and automatically converts the AVI movie into a Flash file and then exits. It will not issue any error messages or display any HTML preview during conversion. As such, it is useful for converting multiple copies of AVI into Flash files.
The output file name will usually be filename.swf, and will be stored in the same directory as filename.avi. Additionally, a second file, filename.swf.html, will also be generated for testing the SWF file.

The SWF Producer is most effective for converting files that are created as tutorials. These AVIs are usually characterized by having a limited number of colours (i.e. do not have many gradient-filled regions), not changing much in between each frames, except for the mouse movements and being saved in perfect quality (e.g. with MS Video 1 codec, the quality is set to 100)

For AVI files that do not hold the above attributes, the compression algorithm in the SWF Producer will not work well and may even cause the SWF file to be much larger than the AVI file.

There are even Advanced Conversion Parameters.  The Manage Flash Player Memory will reduce unnecessary memory usage. It achieves this by freeing objects / frames that have already been displayed. However, because of this, movies with the “Loop” option will need to reload every time they have completed playing.
If your AVI file is very large, Cam Studio Pro will not be able to squeeze all the information into a SWF file. This is due to the 16000 frame limit imposed by the Flash player. In this case, Cam Studio Pro will split your movie into several SWF files that are chained together. For deployment, you will need to upload all the SWF files to your server.
You have the option not to chain the SWFs together if you are creating an external SWF file that will load and manage them.

After going through this software, here are some helpful tips that will make your first recording a great one.

Setting the video options allows you to optimize your video recordings by choosing between the file size, quality and frame rates of your video files.  By using the Auto Adjust feature
settings to set the Key Frame Rate, Capture Rate and Playback Rate automatically through the slider. Shift the slider to the left to increase the frame rate and to the right to reduce file size. If the slider is situated at the right of the Time Lapse indicator, it means you are creating a time-lapse movie. In Time Lapse mode, Cam StudioPro will usually capture a frame only after a long period of time. (Example: after every 30 seconds). However, during playback, the frames will be displayed more quickly. (Example: at 20 frames per second).  The Compressor feature select-box allows you to select the encoder for your AVI file. An encoder compresses your AVI files to make them smaller in size and cause them to play faster. The default setting is the MS Video 1 compressor.
In the Configure feature just Click this button to configure the parameters of your selected compressor. The parameters for each compressor are different and some settings will cause Cam Studio’s performance to degrade or behave unpredictably. For some compressors, clicking this button will not have any effect.

The quality feature setting determines how nicely your picture is saved. A lower value means a lower picture quality but also a smaller file size. Only some compressors use this value.

This setting specifies the key frame rate. When a frame is saved in an AVI file, they can either be saved as a full frame, or only partially as a difference to the previous frame. The key frame rate specifies how often full frames are written to the AVI file. A high value means you can fast forward/rewind to a particular frame in your movie much faster. But it also means a higher file size.
Capture Frames every feature is used to determine the input frame rate. It dictates how long the Cam Studio will ‘sleep’ after capturing each frame. One millisecond is 1/1000 of a second.
If you set this to a large value (for example 1 hour, or 3,600,000 milliseconds), you practically create a time-lapse movie. Cam Studio will actually ‘sit and watch’ for activities on the screen that takes a long time to occur and take a snapshot (say, only once every hour).
Now the Playback Rate field determines the output frame rate. It specifies how many frames are played back per second. A higher value means a smoother playback. Typical values of 20 – 30 frames per seconds are adequate for most purposes.
OK, now that you have all this information, you are well armed and knowledgeable to do your own screen recording. You can now feel confident that Cam Studio Pro will accomplish all it was meant to do. Capture screen recordings in an easy to do way. Will all the added perks, you will be a pro in no time. Hope to catch one of your videos on you tube in the near future!