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nudone:
this will probably be my last post before mouser gives the final verdict.

after messing around a bit more i still appear to get the same sort of results as already mentioned but i have to confess that xvid isn't the smallest file size.

there is obviously a point where the size and duration of the area captured makes it clearly better to use swf for screencasting.

that said i still find these results to be true:

camtasia - produced smallest swf output whilst still looking okay (i say this as viewletcam almost did the same but the color space wasn't so good).

bb flashback - produced larger swf files but smaller xvid. i suspect with tweaking, these video encoded files could be made smaller still with a little practise.

viewletcam - it is nice and simple to use. very immediate and direct if you want to add extra symbols like text boxes, etc. to your movie. some of the settings are kind of hidden away in the menus and it seems to be a bit unstable (on my machine at least) but it is quick to use and the results are good enough - if your system is  working in the right color space.

as i don't really need to do any of the extra annotation type stuff - for final file output quality and size i'd have to pick camtasia but for price it would be viewletcam (i'd tollerate the crashes and find a compatible set of screen colors for it to grab). but bb flashback is kind of fun to use - maybe not that good a reason to use it.

anyway, mouser, i hope you manage to arrive at a conclusion without too much of a headache. good luck.

moerl:
I'm sorry I couldn't be of much help. The discussion between you two was very "enlightening". I have to give Camtasia another chance. I tried it a while ago and didn't like it at all. I didn't try it thoroughly though, I must admit. For me, the two most impotant factors about a screencasting tool are crispness/sharpness of the output and the smoothness of playback. The problem is with these two factors, because the file-formats optimal for each is not the same. *.SWF is better for a crisp image, but video-encoded files are better for smoothness, I'd say. I have to find a middle-ground. I'll do some more testing as well, but my opinions probably won't make it in a timely enough fashion to be of any help. Sorry about that.

moerl:
Here's one thing I noticed. There are two features that I have not seen mentioned in the review that I consider rather important. BB Flashback seems to support neither of these features.

1. Anti-Aliasing for text-box fonts
This is pretty important, if you want the text you use in text-boxes in your demo-movies to look good. BB Flashback does NOT seem to support this, and because of that, many fonts will have "jagged edges". Not very pretty. I don't know about the support of this feature in any of the other products tested in this review.

2. Clickable URLs (far more important!)
One thing you really want to be able to do with screencasting software is to have the ability to create objects, (buttons, text, boxes etc.), that are CLICKABLE. It would help tremendously if it were possible to have the user viewing the demo be able to click on a link while viewing the demo. This is crucial when demonstrating a specific feature of one program that can be drastically enhanced with another tool that is available on a certain site on the web. As you demonstrate, you might want to include a reference to this second, possibly independent tool that will make the task at hand a lot easier. Again, BB Flashback does NOT seem to support this feature. Obviously, this is something that could only be done in flash-based demo-files, and which would therefore stand as a disadvantage of any of the video-based files.


That's all I have to say for now :). This review is excellent work! We should all be proud of mouser :)

Keep up the great work!

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