WHAT PROGRAMS DO YOU CATS USE FOR YOUTUBE VIDEOS AND SUCH?

I record with Camstudio with a lossless codec (what it is doesn't matter). If its acting up with capturing Speaker Out I'll use Audacity to capture the audio.

Once I've got the raw footage I open it up in VirtualDub, combine the video/audio if I captured them seperately, cut out the garbage, then encode with a two-pass h264 for video and MP3 for audio (since I can't get OGG to install properly with Vista 64 ). Post the video and watch its reencoder turn the beautiful h264 into FLV garbage.

i use windows movie maker and fraps.

Fraps. I love it. Then I run it through VirtualDUB to compress it with XVid.