Capturing Camtasia streaming video for later viewing? (operating system, screen, flash)

[Wartrace]

I am wanting to learn more computer programs and found this site-

Software training online-tutorials for Adobe, Microsoft, Apple & more

Lynda.com seems to have some very good training programs HOWEVER they are only available as streams using Camtasia. They do have an option to buy cd's but the pricing is not favorable.

I only have 20GB of monthly bandwidth at home. (Thank you very much Verizon ) and the courses are 6 to 8 hrs long each. I have no idea how much bandwidth per hour the Camtasia recording takes but it seems that I wouldn't be able to watch much on 20gb.

Is there any program that would capture Camtasia streaming video for later playback? I could record at work and watch at home if there were.

Does anyone know how much an hour camtasia stream will burn of my internet cap?

[Bo]

Originally Posted by Wartrace

Does anyone know how much an hour camtasia stream will burn of my internet cap?

It could vary widely from stream to stream. For a Hollywood movie on Netflix HD, the bitrate would be over a gig per hour. I'd be surprised if a training video used half that much data. You should be able to fit 6-8 hours of course video under a 20 GB cap.

I'd be wary of installing my own software on my employer's computer. Chances are that'd be against the employer's Appropriate Use Policy. Especially since your intent is to use it to violate another site's copyright licensing. Getting caught doing that wouldn't look good.

[hoffdano]

I think you misunderstand the requirements. Camtasia is a program that captures video, typically for recording the use of software programs. These captures are edited, often with voice over. Then they are made into mini-movies for playback on a wide variety of systems. The system requirements listed on the site are:

Minimum requirements for full site

Screen resolution
Recommended minimum screen resolution of 1024x768
Player
Apple QuickTime 7.5, Microsoft Windows Media Player 10, and Adobe Flash Player 9
QuickTime 7.5.5 with Safari for Mac
Browser
Internet Explorer 7.0 (64-bit Internet Explorer 7.0 is not supported), Firefox 3.0, Safari 4.1.2, and Google Chrome 11.0
JavaScript and cookies must be enabled
Operating system
Windows XP SP3
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Bandwidth
You need an Internet connection with sufficient bandwidth. Most lynda.com videos work best with a downstream bandwidth of at least 1 Mbps.

That tells me the "movies" are just standard video files, probably about the same as on Youtube. It is hard to say whether 20Gb per month is enough (I suspect it is). But you don't need any other software unless you don't have Windows Media Player, which is free. Most people already have it.

[TurcoLoco]

Hoff is right, the most common video format people seem to use for their Camtasia "edited" videos when sharing online is Adobe Flash (.flv) format so using any of the free YouTube Video Downloading software or Browser extension, you should be able to accomplish just that.

The size of the file will normally depend on the following at the very least:
Duration of the video, resolution of the video and format used. The size of the Flash videos I prepared/edited using Camtasia seemed to be roughly 6-7 Megabyte per minute.

This is just a rough estimate though but hopefully it will give you some idea.