I use camstudio on default large file settings as it seems to be able to save in that better than compressing at the same time. Then I take the file and push through mediacoder and save it in XviD format which is the MPEG4 type which has great compression. Only H264 might be better but not so many players play that ok. The most popular playback format is MPEG but the compression is at least 2 - 3 times more with MPEG4 than older types. I dont believe that there is a popular and free MPEG4 other than XviD anyway. When compressing I strip the audio off and put the bitrate at about 800 which for video is pretty low hence the low image quality.