Screen recording is not very clear for characters

[GeorgeTwo]

Hello everyone,

I am using Windows Media Encoder 9 on Windows Vista. And I find the recorded video quality is not very good, the major issue is the details are not clear enough -- for example, character is not very clearly displayed, and another example is when list a folder in explorer containing a lot of files (file names are not very clear), when quickly scroll-up/scroll-down a folder, the file names are not displayed immediately, but displayed gradually. I am using full screen recording (CBR) mode.

Here is my recorded video. Any advice how to improve quality?

http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=jrp73s&s=5

thanks in advance,
George

[dat720]

Lower your monitor resolution before capturing and or increase the font size.

You could probably do with a higher bitrate aswell.

[GeorgeTwo]

Thanks dat720,

I suspect there is seomthing wrong with my settings -- becaue the same resolution and lower bit rate works quite well for Screen Capture mode in Windows Media Encoder (but Windows Media Encoder has another issue which does not record background screen quite well, currently I am using Full Screen Videp CBR mode which solves background issue, but has this issue).

Here is my original file and all of my settings, let me know if you need more information or have any good ideas?

http://www.mediafire.com/?tzjccxdowny

http://i42.tinypic.com/fbgupv.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/2a7g5so.jpg

http://i42.tinypic.com/2qlqr78.jpg

Here is my Windows Media Encoder configuraiton file => http://www.mediafire.com/?jnycjnl5qvt Could you reproduce my issue?


Lower your monitor resolution before capturing and or increase the font size.

You could probably do with a higher bitrate aswell.

[dat720]

No i can't i use linux and i cbf setting up a VM to do testing...

The original uncompressed video probably looks fine, but when you compress it at 1000kbps @ 1024x768 your bound to loose detail, that bitrate might be fine at 800x600 as i said i would increase the font size and lower the resolution, this will work much better with a low bitrate liek that.

Reducing the keyframe interval might help but that will result in a larger video.

What is the target playback resolution? What will the video be played back on?

[GeorgeTwo]

dat720, it will be played back in browser during Http progressive download, any ideas or advice?

No i can't i use linux and i cbf setting up a VM to do testing...

The original uncompressed video probably looks fine, but when you compress it at 1000kbps @ 1024x768 your bound to loose detail, that bitrate might be fine at 800x600 as i said i would increase the font size and lower the resolution, this will work much better with a low bitrate liek that.

Reducing the keyframe interval might help but that will result in a larger video.

What is the target playback resolution? What will the video be played back on?

[dat720]

Definitely lower resolution, there's no point capturing at 1024x768 if it's going to be played back at 320x400 for instance....

You will get the best detail at playback time if you can capture at close to the playback resolution.
You'll also get a smaller file.

Does the capture software you are using have a mode that zooms in and follows the mouse? That way you can keep a higher res without loosing all the detail.

[GeorgeTwo]

Thanks dat720, my requirement is recording the same resolution as input, and play at the same resolution as input. So, both input and output are 1024x768.

Today, I have tried to use VBR mode, and it improves quality. But I am confused about the 3 types of VBR in Windows Media Encoder -- Quality VBR, bit rate VBR and bit rate VBR (peak), what are the differences between them and which one is most suitable for my scenario of screen recording?

Definitely lower resolution, there's no point capturing at 1024x768 if it's going to be played back at 320x400 for instance....

You will get the best detail at playback time if you can capture at close to the playback resolution.
You'll also get a smaller file.

Does the capture software you are using have a mode that zooms in and follows the mouse? That way you can keep a higher res without loosing all the detail.

[dat720]

Your best results will probably come from Quality VBR, you set a desired quality level and the encoder will attempt to keep that quality at all times.... Just make sure you choose a appropriate quality level and not something that is unrealisticly low, because you are dealing with text that maybe at best 2 or 3 pixels wide, using a low bitrate is going to loose fine detail and as the fonts are narrow like that they will probably be the first thing to go, video compression wasn't designed with text in mind!