I was just asked to prepare some demo videos of OPSMAN to be critiqued before I am unleashed to present overseas. I have never created demos before and recorded them. I have given plenty of demos but webcams and recording is new to me. I asked around and everyone I know said to use Camtasia. (http://www.techsmith.com) I was able to download a 30 day eval copy to use for free. The pricetag is $299 which to me seems steep until I used it... Now I have been working in IT for almost 15 years and even if software is not intuitive to me, I can usually figure it out pretty quick...
This package rocks! I was up and going in less than 1 minute... No joke. I wanted to demo on my external screen using an extended desktop in full-screen mode. No problem. Drag over the area you want to capture and you're done! wham!
I recorded for 5:51 minutes of demo while I configured my virtual SBS server I am testing DPM on for backup. The file was 16MB when I stopped the recording and chose to produce the recording for sharing. You have a variety of options including optimizing for size or quality and it helps you choose where the file will be viewed from, you can pick remote or network drive, or even an iPOD amongst other intended formats. Thumbs up to Techsmith!
I contacted a colleague Mitch Garvis who is also a good friend and spoke to him about Camtasia. it turns out, he has had similar experiences with the product and blogged about it back in May. Here is his post.
http://mitchgarvis.com/blogs/mitch/archive/2007/05/13/recording-demos-made-easy.aspx