I've been considering making some Gimp and inkscape tutorials for some friends who live in other parts of the country. I can't/ don't want to use Windows because my Compaq is kind of old and there is a lot of nasty noise in the mic but i found last night that the Linux computer sounds perfect., which brings me to the point, finally. does anyone know of an application for ubuntu/mint that is similar to Camstudio? I've searched and haven't found anything yet but I know there is something because Rolf at MTG uses Linux and I've seen other tuts using it too.

The screen recorder program Heathen X uses is pretty awesome in that it shows a small set of icons showing the mouse clicks and keys used.Pretty cool.
Believe it's called ScreenKast - http://linuxappfinder.com/package/screenkast

I would have to re-watch a few HeathenX tutorials to be sure though.
Here are a few more
http://linuxappfinder.com/graphics/screencapture

RecordMyDesktop worked for me. It renders .ogv files though. Yopu can edit and convert them in Kdenlive.

I forgot about heathenx, yes, he uses open suse. I'll look into those and thanks, Jolie, I'll try that one too.

Linux appfinder is a very handy site, I'll be using it a lot, thanks Rod.

As mentioned, the usual one in linux is recordmydesktop and often a front end, gtk-recordmydesktop. I think the .ogg format while it is wonderfully efficient is a pita to edit and turn into something usable. Not many people can make a perfect tutorial from start to finish without errors.

I prefer ffmpeg straight from the command line and depending on distro not all ffmpeg's are equal. Providing you enable the ubuntu/mint multiverse repo it will work. You can output to avi or mpeg for editing. There is a front end for it, qx11grab, which is worth a look.
http://qx11grab.hjcms.de/

Try the command on the site and see if you get a result, also see the ffmpeg man page for more info.

Next thing is editing, I usually just record the video, edit it, then add the sound.
Tools for this, audacity to record audio and Avidemux for editing, then rendering to a final file.
A bit of a learning curve but then isn't everything.

One I did is in the tutorials section - text on a path.

You can go a lot further, look at the meet-the-gimp videos, made with demorecorder and edited with cinelerra. I think demorecorder costs $$$'s though.
http://meetthegimp.org/about-me-and-this-site/

Update:
I couldn't get screenkast to install, It was my lack of understanding not the application. But I did get recordmydesktop up and running and kdenlive installed. Everything works perfectly. There is a windows video editor called video studio that is very expensive and kdenlive is better. Thanks, a lot.

I have used OpenShot http://www.openshotvideo.com/ for editing

I find it to be stable and actively improved

Thanks for the tip on Openshot. I haven't tried that one yet. Kdenlive is pretty good and from what I hear, so is Cinelerra.

I did this a while back, using Kino.

Last Rose (.avi)

It was a little tricky timing the image transitions with the music and lyrics.

Kazam works great in Linux. Downside is uploading to YouTube in highest quality can take awhile.

http://www.webupd8.org/2010/09/try-kaza ... ation.html

I thought I had trouble editing the files from recordMyDesktop with Kdenlive because I was using a really old computer. Since kdenlive uses recordMydesktop as standard screen recorder I thought it wouldn't be a problem on a good computer? I rendered in mp4 I think.
The one thing I missed was the pause button. Maybe it has it but I couldn't find it. As long as I have a pause button, or shortkey rather, I can record in one take without needing to edit. I even pause halfway in a sentence and start speaking again with the rest of the sentence 5 minutes later and no one notices. I edit mostly to zoom and pan, clean up audio noise and leave the occasional annotation or end credit screen.

Your workflow sounds a lot more time consuming. (<-using this as respect smiley) I'm curious to see your end result so I'm off to the tutorial forum to have a look.

Well, the suggestions Jolie work perfectly and I couldn't be happier. Kdenlive is just completely cool. I've been debating with myself for years about whether to update Video Studio for years and this solves that problem. Tomorrow i'm going to take the firewire board out of my Windows box and put it in the Linux one. This application is the best thing I've found so far in linux. I can't express my thanks enough.
If you weren't so far away i'd send you a big box of chocolate, that or a pet rat.

Wow, glad to have learned of Kdenlive. I have never heard of it until reading here. Thanks, Jolie!

I use BSR screen recorder 5 and it has been pretty good.


http://www.bsrsoft.com/downloadbsr.asp

Kdenlive is cool. I could never get cinelerra to work right. I am a big openshot fan though. Takes a little tweaking to get it right, but its good. I like the multi track capability best of all. Try it out.

You gave me a chocolate craving.

Glad you found something that works well on your system.
Kdenlive IS cool. My linux laptop is too slow to edit video with it, but I remember that I was able to bump the volume up with it. Takes a pretty advanced video editor that can do that sort of stuff. It's a shame they don't support the live USB anymore.

I'll resurrect this post only to mention another GNU/Linux screen recorder that is command-line and written in Python: recordscreen.py

I tested it here and it was low impact on my CPU. Just mentioning it since I stumbled across it while watching a youtube video on LMMS.

jakeyjoey thanks for sharing that.I have been using Fast Stone or Wink and this looks much better.Downloading the software, and PDF manual now.

I've been absolutely dedicated to faststone for years, especially when i figured out that their image viewer did everything the other apps did all in one package. it views images, does batch processing, screen capture and other things so I only need that one app. But last year I tried to batch convert some files and it said they were corrupt and wouldn't read them. Since they were pics of me, my grandmother, my great grandmother and my great great grandmother they were special to me. I tire with Xnview and it worked perfectly. So now I'm at a crossroads on the matter.