On Apr 9, 2006, at 2:46 PM, Alakazam wrote:
Another solution is iShowU, which is free :
Good to know; thanks. Looks like it will soon no longer be free, however.
On a slightly off-topic note, why do all the TextMate screencasts seem to be encoded in H.264? This surprises me, given that H.264 is a lossy codec designed for video cameras, not screen capture. As a result, TextMate screencasts often end up rather blurry with lots of artifacting, such as this one:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/beercaster/TextMateRailsBundle320x240.mov
I can hardly read the text on this one. Granted it's the low- bandwidth version, but still, I think the reason a low-bandwidth version had to be made is because H.264 has such a hard time with screen captures. I would think better results could be had without H. 264 and instead by relying on a lossless codec. After all, when using a text editor there's very little change in the display (and thus high compression), and with screen captures there's no analog-to- digital conversion as there would be in video camera sources (and thus no noise that would hurt compression).
For example, I've discovered a codec in QuickTime 7 called "Animation". I haven't done any extensive tests to see how it compares with H.264 for screen capture, but it seems to get good compression with the captures I've done. And one thing is certain: There's absolutely no artifacting as there would be with MPEG-type codecs. The movie is as crisp and clear as a real live display. For example:
http://doc.ece.uci.edu/~tharmon/files/disclabelScreenSnapz001.mov
Any thoughts on this? Has anyone tried the Animation codec for their screencasts?
Trevor