Nice to see that CamStudio Portable was updated recently. 
I was wondering if it was possible to integrate the CamStudio Lossless Video Codec with CamStudio Portable.
First, because of portability, of course.
And second, because that codec can be a real pain in the ass to install, especially on 64bit Win 7.
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It's a codec that needs to be installed at the system level. I couldn't get it working on a Win7 x64 local install at all.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
But it could work if it was already integrated by CamStudio developers, right?
(Although, I would still need that codec in VirtualDub, so I guess I'd have to nag them about this as well.)
The regfile to make it appear in CamStudio Portable on Windows 7 64-bit:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\drivers.desc]
"camcodec.dll"="CamStudio lossless codec [CSCD]"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32]
"VIDC.CSCD"="X:\\PortableApps\\CamStudioPortable\\App\\CamStudio\\CamCodec.dll"
Yes, the portable automatically becomes non-portable, but it works.
What do you think?
Maybe make the launcher import this to registry for the time CamStudio Portable runs, then delete it upon exit?
The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE classes root requires administrative privileges to modify, meaning you the launcher would require the admin/owner's password if that were to work.
In addition to what gluxon said, modifying the registry (even if it gets "restored" on exit - how safe is that?) goes against the "portable" approach, so I wouldn't be for it.
A lot of the apps officially released here fiddle with the registry as it is required by the base app, but the changes are reversed when the app is closed.
Really?
And what happens if the app doesn't close properly? (power goes out, system crash..)
I don't like that. I hope it's at least explicitly stated for such apps that they do this.
But if you ask me, I wouldn't allow such apps to be called 'portable'.
If it wasn't done like this, we'd be lucky to have 20 apps on the official list, as so many Windows apps require the registry.
If the launcher is unable to clean up after an app (power outages, system crashes or the like) the changes will stay in the registry, until you run the launcher again.
The launcher is smart enough to realize on first run after a crash that it has not been able to clean up, and will do so.
If you want a good file size/quality ratio, I'd revert back to 2.0, which is the version I carry around. I've also encountered numerous issues with this new version, I think primarily because it was a different developer who took over the project afterwards (screen annotations and layouts were not included, the size of the app more than doubled without any significant feature additions, and the quality/file size ratio in the latest version can't be tweaked to match the default settings of 2.0.
Also, the lossless codec did seem to work on default settings in CamStudio, but there wasn't an option to enable it, but you could tell it worked because a 30 sec recording prior to installing it was much bigger than a 30 second recording after it was installed. If you want to see for yourself, you'll need to use the non-portable version, because the default settings in the portable version were tweaked to avoid 1gb files for 1min screen recordings.
On a side note, the 2.0 version of CamStudio had only slightly worse quality under default settings (still better than then the latest portable version), and, if I recall correctly, a 1 min recording was about 40mb, but don't quote me on that.
I guess maybe there will be others like my, who would like to make the Launcher write the required RegKeys for the LossLess Codec when it is started and then remove them when it stops (if it is stoped properly, of course).
So would someone who knows what should be written in the Launcher .ini-file write it here down. So those of us who preffer this way, could do it.