Thanks, doods.
 
At this point, even though I THOUGHT I had put Action! through its paces before plonking down a (modest and not unreasonable) chunk of change to activate it it's kind of exhibiting some problems for my needs. Maybe I can get their support to shed light on this or maybe patch it.
 
However I may need to keep probing around for something a little more suited to what I need to do. Of course Camtasia is top of the list but I was scoping Active Presenter and I'll take another look at Hypercam.
 
BUT... those both seem to require an investment to get full versions so I'll have to make what I've got now work.
 
It DOES work... just not as perfectly as I'd hoped.
 
Cheers!!!

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...

Beepster
Thanks, doods.
 
At this point, even though I THOUGHT I had put Action! through its paces before plonking down a (modest and not unreasonable) chunk of change to activate it it's kind of exhibiting some problems for my needs. Maybe I can get their support to shed light on this or maybe patch it.
 
However I may need to keep probing around for something a little more suited to what I need to do. Of course Camtasia is top of the list but I was scoping Active Presenter and I'll take another look at Hypercam.
 
BUT... those both seem to require an investment to get full versions so I'll have to make what I've got now work.
 
It DOES work... just not as perfectly as I'd hoped.
 
Cheers!!!

Beepster,
the free version of active presenter  is  comparable  to camtasia.
The pay versions offer simply more export possibilities (formats).
cheers
 
http://www.chip.de/downlo...-Edition_60021520.html

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.