For those who do screen recording: Do your plugin GUIs get recorded to the vids?

Some screen cap programs have builtin scripting to prevent capture of videos (copyrighted material). I am not sure if this is at play or not for you, nor if the feature makes the "video" transparent.

Is it possible that you're capturing the Sonar window instead of the entire screen?
 
 

works fine with Hypercam 2, which I believe is free.

Hi Beepster, I use Camtasia and it works fine. It's expensive but if making videos is something that you are regularly gonna do it might be worth it.

@sausy and Karl (and big ole howdy to Karl... hope you been stayin' safe on the track and had a good season)...
 
Camtasia is most definitely on the Beepster "DO WANT" list. It is pretty cost prohibitive at this point though but it does seem like it would make my life a lot more streamlined in this regard (editing right in the capture program would be nice as well as all the fancy post-prod goodies designed for tuts).
 
I'm guessing it also has a pretty low system footprint as well while making the vids (or my fave tut makers using it just have much nicer systems than I do).
 
Again... good data point to have because I can point that out to Mirillis support. I know it's supposed to be mostly for gaming but I'm sure they wouldn't mind picking up some DAW hound business. Of course being able to show off plugs and ALL behavior (like the plug GUIs opening/floating) is kind of a big deal for PROPER tuts.
 
I'm mostly hackin' it at this point so I can just explain why I have to dock the plugs in the vids but it is a little lame.
 
Thanks for popping in, guys.
 
Cheers.

gswitz
Using MS Expression, I'm able to record everything without issue.

Cool. Thanks, Geoff.
 
I'm going to try a couple other tests today. I want to see if the same thing happens in other DAWs or if maybe switching to the "Gaming" mode might work for this specific task.
 
Cheers.

tomixornot
Tried Camtasia ..some how for me, the audio / video won't sync. Active Presenter is working great for me, it's also free.

I think sometimes latency is incurred. I get a very slight lag with Action! (I also get serious lag with my webcam using the higher res settings).
 
You probably know this but if you import the video file into Sonar it will put the audio in a separate audio track where you can line it up properly.
 
I've putting in kind of a ghetto arse, DIY "clapboard" type noise at the start of my vids with voivemeeter's input meters showing. I tap the mic a few times then I can line the transients up to the meter spikes at the start of my vid.
 
I can also use those transients to line up any additional discrete tracks I recorded into a separate audio program (so I can get full separation of my voice, system sound and any other inputs).

Hi Beepster,
I can recommend the Active presenter.
It takes some time to get this software to work properly,
but your first language is englisch so you don´t have 
that probs like me. 
The functions of the free version is nearly compareable to camtasia -
but not that neatly arranged.
 
regards
 

Whew... okay, catastrophe SEEMINGLY averted (thank dog for Windows restore).
 
Apparently my little "experiments" switching over to Game Play mode and the "Area" mode thingie (both of which completely fuxxored up royally on their own... especially the Area capture thing... as usual) decided to stomp all over a bunch of stuff that had been previously working.
 
I lost my cursor in the recorded vids (no matter how much I futzed with those settings). The system itself started going a little haywire/weird (terrifying!) and no matter what I did (including uninstalling, reinstalling, re-reging Action!) all these issues persisted.
 
I restored the system back to when it was working and all is well again but I have a few more, perhaps a little EXTRA flavorful, data points for Mirillis now when I contact them.
 
We hear sooooo much about how "unstable" Sonar is (which used to be very true) but seriously, any time I wander outside of the loving embrace of Sonar (or many of my other beloved programs I've been using for ages) it becomes quite apparent... that's a load of horsehockey.
 
Anyhoo... I am calm again... for now.
 
Cheers.

HyperCam version 2 is the free one that may or may not have creepies in it.  Hypercam Version 4 is not free and can be found here:
http://www.solveigmm.com/en/products/hypercam/
I have not used HyperCam 4, but I have used HyperCam 2...Back when you had to pay for that, and it worked well.
 

Beeps have you ever tried Camtasia? I am not sure if you burnt up any trial period with them yet. If not, it would be worth trying out. Ultimately that would also come down to if this is an intended long term venture or flash in the pan, but I tried it a couple years back and worked well. If I were to do videos regularly I would tend to lean toward them. CamStudio has also gotten good feedback, but dealing with software "for entertainment value" has worn thin on me and if needing to do a task I will turn to the least painful solution.

Camtasia offered some nice editting tools even then (like green screening), so the post production tools also have merit (you have not dealt with this yet, I think, and is another "not fun" task). Again, this comes down to intended usage...

Thing is I can't have any time restrictions on my recordings AND I gotta keep the resource consumption down.
 
I have actually been researching all options for... well almost a year now. So although I can't recall all the specifics on each program and why they got eliminated they all "failed" on one point or the other (price, time limits, poor performance, malware, etc).
 
Action! did indeed end up being the best option BUT now that I'm using it of course the noted flaws have become apparent.
 
Really so far the ONLY major problem to what I need to do is this plugin window thing which I have a workaround for (docking the plugin then floating the dock... which looks kind of dumb). I personally don't find it acceptable and as noted there are some other oddities ticking me off but they are easily avoided.
 
I did test this in Reaper (the plugin window thing) but as far as I can tell Reaper puts plugins into a specific window anyway instead of just the "Popup and float" system Sonar has going on.
 
So it WORKS but it's like Reaper is "docking" the plug in a wrapper window anyway (which looks just about as dumb as docking the plugs in Sonar).
 
What I'm trying to do though with all this is make some general tutorials and examples many of which will of course use Sonar but are certainly not limited to Sonar. For now I'm not trying to keep up with ultra high production quality like Craig or FBB's vids but would like them to reflect the actual onscreen "action" (lulz). This is certainly working out ALMOST flawlessly aside from these few weird omissions.
 
I'm still not entirely unconvinced this has something to do with my setup/system but I'll explore it all more and maybe take a look at other options to maybe just use in cases where I absolutely need these "flaws" to disappear.
 
Certainly nothing stopping me from having multiple programs on hand to do this stuff. Maybe i can get a base level Active Presenter setup going for when I need to show off plugs within Sonar... or something like that.
 
This is all very helpful and educational so thanks a ton guys.
 
I'm hoping to have my first (somewhat meandering vid) posted soon describing ALL of these programs, my routing and this crazy screencap adventure.
 
Currently it's pushing to over 2 hours... lulz.