Anyone know software that can "video print screen", akin to setting up a video camera in front of the monitor?
The best one I have ever used is Camtasia by techsmith which you can get a free trial of at www.techsmith.com. If you just want to record unedited clips, it is great as their CODEC has the best compression to keep the file size manageable. If you want to edit and add effects, you use the tagteam software Camtasia Producer which works like a movie editing program.
I've used Camtasia to capture live data ie. charts, level 2, T&S for a whole trading day for review. Its fantastic. Its just like replaying market action in real time at your own comfort for learning purposes. You have options to capture at various frames per second (fps). A whole trading day's capture of a single screen at 25 fps takes up about 1.3GB of hard disk space. As for system resources, my XP1800 hardly breaks a sweat using only about 5-10% of CPU load. On the other hand my Pentium 200Mhz running Camtasia and capturing at 10 fps used to max out at 100% CPU load but still usable! Hope this helps...
sweet...it does help. 25 FPS seems kinda high for trading uses, but if it doesn't sap up CPU power that sounds pretty impressive. does it work spanning across multiple monitors? or can you only capture from your main (AGP #1) monitor?? thanks!
If you're planning to capture level 2 on a fast trading stock, then you definitely need to capture at 25fps to maintain smooth screen updates. If not, 5-10fps will suffice. I've never tried capturing across multiple monitors but I doubt if its a problem cos Camtasia allows you to specify the region you want to capture. I used to capture everything on a screen for the whole trading day but now I only focus on capturing certain setups in order to review why they succeed or fail. enjoy...
How is replay accomplished to access the specific setups or time periods you are wanting to review? I have used video card with TV output to VCR but replay from VHS tape is obviously a problem. Thanks
Have you used Windows Media Player to watch a video file? Its the same as that. You just use the slider to fast fwd or rewind the Camtasia generated avi file to where you want to start viewing. However, media player does not handle Camtasia output well. The alternatives are using the Camtasia player that is bundled with Camtasia recorder or using a 3rd party freeware called VirtualDub. My preference is Virtualdub, especially when dealing with large avi files (>500MB) as the Camtasia player seems to freeze when attempting this. I've attempted the VCR solution and find that Camtasia beats it hands down.