x264 in lossless mode sounds intriguing as a potential default recording format for ESR..

-mouser (July 18, 2013, 09:22 AM)

That would be a tricky proposition. The problem is that it's not designed as a realtime encoder. There used to be a VfW version around but trust me VfW should be considered a last resort option and VfW x264 is a bad idea.

I do put up with VfW for CamStudio because it's better than any comparable program that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars. And because the CamStudio Lossless Codec is only available in VfW.

What you could do in theory is pipe the video to FFmpeg for encoding since x264 is integrated into it. I know FFmpeg supports pipe input but other than that I know basically nothing about it. I can see a lot of potential difficulties there like buffering.

Actually, though, that does make me think of a different option. I seem to recall that ffdshow can decode CamStudio Lossless using libavcodec so there's definitely FFmpeg support of some kind. That leads me to believe there's probably encoding support as well.

Well that's it. Now I'm on a mission to work this out. Damn you mouser!  :P

I consider myself something of an expert on screenshot software. For years screenshots have been a staple of my work at AfterDawn. My philosophy for writing guides is to come up with images that explain a process in full. The text is just there to flesh out the details.

IMO there is only 1 program even in the same class with Screenshot Captor and that's SnapDraw. The 2 programs use basically the same object compositing approach. In fact they share most of the same core features but SnapDraw is oriented almost entirely toward doing things 1 way and Screenshot Captor is designed to customize for whatever workflow you want. It also has more and better actual image processing.

I do miss the separate preview tab from SnapDraw and also its option to composite a new capture on top of an already open one. There are also some cool resize and crop options which are cool in theory but I usually ended up fine tuning everything via text box anyway so no big deal. SnapDraw also has an Autonumber feature for its version of Arrows (Callouts) that was handy for me because I'm scatterbrained but not important as long as I can easily go back and change things manually.

The tldr version is that SnapDraw is best for doing things the SnapDraw way and Screenshot Captor is the best for everything else. Or to borrow an analogy a programmer I worked with used to compare VB and Delphi, SnapDraw makes the easy things easier. Screenshot Captor makes the hard things easier.