Camstudio is a great piece of open-source software for screen recording, but Microsoft's Windows Media Encoder is a much more user friendly and consistent piece of software. I recommend using it for making recordings due to both it's ease of use and file size (about 5x smaller than the camstudio produced moves = 5x shorter upload times!).

Step 1: Download and install Windows Media Encoder. It is free as long as you have a genuine copy of Windows.

Step 2: Open the program and select File -> New, then select Capture Screen and click Next



Step 3: This tutorial is going to focus on recording with the Region of the screen setting, but feel free to use Specific Window if you are only recording 1 window. So with that out of the way, select Region of the screen. If you are recording audio with your video, check the box Capture audio from the default audio device, then click Next. (If you use Specific Window, skip to step #5).



Step 4: Click the Selection Button (top button highlighted in the picture), then drag the cursor around the window you want to record. Since all videos are displayed on the site in a 640x480 window, try to capture an area with an aspect ratio of around 4:3 for best viewing. Also make sure to check Flash border during capture so you can see exactly what is being captured!



Step 5: Select any output file (just make sure you remember where you saved it!), and make sure it ends in .wmv, then click Next. On the next page select High Quality for the quality setting and click Next. On the next page you can type in your user information if you want, but it will all be lost during conversion, so to save time just leave it empty and click Finish.

Step 6: Once you are ready to start recording, click the button entitled Start Encoding!



Step 7: As soon as you are done click on the Stop button and then upload your video using the Chess-videos.com video uploader

I think that sounds like a great piece of open-source software for screen recording....



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Thanks for this Tutorial, but I have one (big) problem. When I follow this tutorial I get a nice video, but he doesn't record the sound. Is there anyone who know what I am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Check your microhone settings/level - I believe under the properties tab though I'm not sure since I'm away from my PC at the moment.

As kamus said- check all your volume settings on your computer.

Also, make sure you checked the "Capture audio from the default audio device" in the second window above. I've forgotten to do that so many times it isn't even funny.

i have a problem with windows media encorder . i can't see the video !

Microsoft site sends you to Silverlite encoding now... which only gives you 10 minutes capture free. Thankfully, I found Encoder 9.0 for free by doing a google search.

I always make chess video tutorials with screen recorder. Camstudio is one of the choice, and i use DemoCreator for the most situations. I like the video editing feature and the many output video formats it offers, especially for the Mp4 for YouTube. It work well with Windows movie maker, too.

I use Audacity to record sound seperately. It's free.

Hey, guys
Firstly, really thank you for this post, it's very useful to some people. But I'm used to my own way to record video from computer screen.

The one I used really helped me a lot. It can not only record what happened on computer screen with high quality, and it can record in a long time. I often use it to save video on screen.

What's more, it also can save the recording automatically to video file, you can export it to your portable device to share it with your friends.