Capturing screen video to AVI then burn to DVD

[AmericanBwana]

First time post here.

I'm trying to record an educational video (from my computer screen), then convert and burn it to a DVD.

I've tried Camtasia, Snag it, and camstudio (With the lossless Codec). All of these create an AVI. Of these camstudio produces the best video by far.

When I import these AVI's into MovieFactory, the resolution and/or quality really goes away. Even to the point where we can not even read any of the text on the DVD.

Is there a preferred CODEC, refresh rate, or recorded screen size (320 x 240px is to small, I really need to use the entire screen 1024x768).

Thanks
AB

[DVDDoug]

Of these camstudio produces the best video by far....

...Is there a preferred CODEC, refresh rate, or recorded screen size (320 x 240px is to small, I really need to use the entire screen 1024x768).

This is a difficult problem, and there may not be a perfect solution...

For the capture step, use the highest resolution allowed by camstudio. "AVI" is a "container" format, and it can contain video with any type of compression. (I don't know wht choices camstudio allows.) You are usually better-off with less compression (uncompressed AVI, or AVI/DV). And, you should choose a framerate that matches your video system (29.97 FPS for NTSC, or 25 FPS for PAL).

You might want to decrease the resolution on the computer to get bigger fonts, if that won't mess-up the presentation too much.

You can directly save the AVI file as "data" on a DVD, but if you want a regular video-DVD that plays on a standard DVD player, the resolution is limited (by the DVD spec) to 720x480 for NTSC or 720x576 for PAL.

Besides the potential loss of resolution, there is always some additional loss when converting from still or "computer video", because the pixels on a computer monitor are square, and standard video pixels are rectangular.

And, analog-composite-video just isn't as "sharp" as digital-video... You can usually display 1-pixel-wide line (or a one-pixel-thick letter) on a computer screen. It's not so easy to do on a TV.