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In due course a new forum will be available to help support newer CamStudio versions.
Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
In due course a new forum will be available to help support newer CamStudio versions.
Sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.
Comments
I'll look into this but may take a little time as I need to locate a VS2008 license to install with VirtualBox ...
I'll pass it over to my programmer anyway in case he has any insights in the meantime
Cheers
Nick
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11093
Just to clarify, does CamStudio actually install OK but won't run properly or are you not able to even install it?
Thanks
Nick
Thanks
NSMB2miner
Terry
Cheers
David
It sounds like your installer is indeed corrupted. I don't know how you tried other versions of the installer (??) as we only have one up, and actually, it is the same installer regardless - it controls the download of the one we put on their servers.
Watch for an email with a direct link download, though. I don't want you waiting any longer.
Terry
As far as the soundcard is concerned, I've never encountered a situation before where the sound card was not recognized. If you leave the settings at Default it should follow whatever your settings in the Recording Devices settings are.
Let me know what happens once you get that new one installed.
Terry
cheers Geodav
Wait for the 2.7.3 version. This version isn't working right still with the keyboard shortcut keys.
Terry
but for some reason it wouldn't save my audio settings !!!
Terry
Win7 x64, Conexant audio card with Stereo Mix enabled and working fine in other programs.
http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Voicemeeter/
Tricky to describe succinctly because it could have so many repercussions. Perhaps the best summary is:
"CamStudio main window may be irretrievably lost if explorer.exe was killed and restarted but CamStudio was *not* restarted".
Make any sense?
1. Start CamStudio.
2. It should have a system tray (systray) icon.
3. Kill explorer.exe (End Process from Task Manager)
4. Run explorer.exe (from Task Manager).
5. Systray repopulates.
- Expected: CamStudio icon (re)appears in systray.
- Result: CamStudio icon does not appear.
Here's a scenario where that's a big problem:
- Prerequisite: disable all CamStudio keyboard shortcuts.*
- See through steps 1-5 above.
6. Do not minimize CamStudio's main window at any point.
7. Although the systray icon has disappeared, the main window should remain.
8. Click record, and minimize CamStudio (or enable the "minimize program on start recording" option).
9. CamStudio is recording.
10. Work on a screencast, then try to stop the recording.
- Expected: use the stop button in the main window or from the systray popup menu of CamStudio.
- Result: main window and systray icon have disappeared, so there's no way to stop the recording.
11a. Kill CamStudio's Recorder.exe process, enjoy a moment of the screen going crazy, then attempt to recover your temp recording file.
* I usually like to keep all keyboard shortcuts disabled, however I tested enabling a keyboard shortcut for "Stop Key", and mercifully, this provides a usable workaround.
- See through steps 1-10.
11b. Use the "Stop Key" keyboard shortcut.
- Result: CamStudio's main window magically reappears, and the recording stops and finalises appropriately.
- The systray icon will not reappear.
Hopefully that's enough detail to get started with looking in to this one. I've lost a few recordings to this issue, now, but at least there's the keyboard shortcut workaround until a more permanent fix is found.
Thanks!
Win7 Pro x64, CamStudio 2.7.2 r326.
-- edit:
Just remembered that this connects with a slightly separate issue, "CamStudio forgets settings" (which is probably a bit more nebulous).
After stage 11a above, restart CamStudio. It has lost all user-set options and returned to defaults. This seems reproducible (though there might be other paths to this behaviour); I'm assuming it's something to do with killing Recorder.exe rather than the systray disappearance.
(Apologies for the long post! Hope it's helpful.)
I will try to be direct and clear in my posts. That is not because I want to bash the program or the makers, but because I see potential in this project and I think this "cracking" (and squeeking) program is potentially a powerfull smooth runner.
My first posts will mostly regard the UI. I think there is quite some work to be done to make this program user friendly and usable in a wider range of use cases.
General information: I have a laptop with Windows 8.1 64 bits on it with enough memory and a strong processor (i7-4700, 6GB). My main activity with CamStudio will be longer captures of a part of the screen. So my issues will focus on that use.
My first issue is not a very important one, but quite easy to solve.
When I start the program it allways opens in the same spot. In my (full HD wide) screen somewhere in the left top quadrant of the screen.
I think it should open in the place where it was closed the last time, or, if people disagree with that, there should be an option in the settings to let it do that.
This issue seems a real bug:
In the options I can set a custom output directory, and I can set a custom temo files directory. When I set both to different directories, both types of files will be saved in teh same directory, namely the last one I set.
So: the custom output directory and the custom temp files directory options point to teh same setting.
Obviously I do not really need a separate temp files directory, but if the option is there it should work properly.
The naming of the default directories would improve by changing it to "CamStudio" or "CamStudio Recordings" or something like that. Again the issue would be less severe if the location could be found in the output settings window that does not yet exist.
The default location for videos in WIndows is (at least since Vista) not the "My Documents" Directory, but the "My Videos" directory. It would look much neater if the default CamStudio Videos directory would be in My Videos rather than My Documents.
A separate Temp files directory is out of place both in My Videos and My Documents. It polutes the already full user directories of intensive computer users. The place for a real temp directory in WIndows would be in the App Data directory.
However this temp directory is not really a temp directory but a work in progress directory. Because we may want easy access to the temp file in case of emergency, it will make sense to keep it in My Videos, but not as a separate directory. Make it a subdirectory of the main Camstudio Recordings directory.
The most blatant error this leads to that I noticed so far is the strange equal treatment of output file types. If I click the orange star thingy in the Toolbar I toggle between output formats in a peculiar way. It seems I can just record to avi, mp4 or swf as I please. But when I try to output swf it turns out the program does not record to swf at all. It records to avi and then converts to swf. That is something totally different. Because this limits the possibilities of swf output by any limitation an avi might have this is a very significant difference, that should be made clrear in the way these options are presented.
Simply changing "Record to SWF" to "Convert AVI to SWF" would already make a difference.
The codec determines the output format. I am not an expert in video compression, but as far as I know the output of an MPEG4 codec is never an avi, but an MP4 file or a wmv in case of h264. So why have separate settings for compression codec and for the output file format?
Just make it a package. A certain compression will result in a certain file format.
First recording and then converting is not the same as recording to the resulting format straight.
Make settings clear and meaningful. Think about what a setting actually means and set it up accordingly.
In the video options I do not see any reference to an ouput format, whereas the video (compressor) options in fact define the output format. Bring them together.
These settings should all be in the output settings window I mentioned earlier.
Many users will not need or want that kind of flexibility. So a setting controlling access to it would be in order. This setting would be in the output settings window together with the codec and video format options.
For simpler formats and codecs the settings could be limited to the standard resolutions we all know, more advanced codecs could allow a 2 pixel or 4 pixel grid, and the most advanced codecs could allow total freedom.
One point of notice that I didn't find in CamStudio but just for the record: If you open a file for write ALLWAYS close it immediately after writing. Otherwise a crash or problem may easily corrupt the file.
Simply because the person programming the error message is aware of the inconsistencies but still allows them to happen. Such a dead end in a program is a useless end. The end should be connected to some meaningful result. Instead of hitting the user in the face with his faulty actions the program should lead the user through them. One way of helping the user is greying out inconsistent settings once a main setting is selected. In some cases the secundary settings can be automatically adjusted to the most likely consistent setting. But in many cases the original setting should not be changed but the output should be adjusted in a hierarchical way.