There have been a few posts about this, so I thought I'd post a guide.
1. Ok, first off you are going to need some type of PC recorder. Two that I know are
Hypercam or
Camtasia. These are very easy to use.
2. You will need a media player.
3. Now, most videos you record are going to be VERY large. So you will need some kind of compressor. Either use Windows Movie Maker (if you have it) which compresses the files you save to make them suitable, or use other programs. What I would recommend downloading is
DivX and then
VirtualDub (download 1.5.10, that is not experimental).
4. When you are finished recording a video and you want to compress it, open VirtualDub and open your video. Go to Video on the menu bar and make sure it is on Full Processing Mode. Then still on Video click Compression. Choose DivX 5.2.1 Codec and then choose how you want it from there. Then go to File and Save as AVI. Download an example video
here.
5. If you want to add music, you are going to need Windows Movie Maker or Camtasia Studio. Both are very similar, except that WMM only saves as *.wmv while Camtasia will save as *.avi, *.swf, *.wmv, or *.mov.
6. Import your movie and then drag it into the video part of the timeline. Then import audio and choose a song that you want and drag it into the audio part of the timeline. Download an example video
here.
7. Now all you need is to save it. In Windows Movie Maker it will say “Save Movie File…” under the File menu and Camtasia will say “Produce video as…” under the file menu.
These files take a long time to compress and save, so you will need to have some patience.
Have fun!
If anyone wants me to make a guide on getting your video on the Internet, pm me.
Updates
5/25/05 Added an example video of putting music on the video.
5/25/05 Changed server for the example video for compressing a video. Now you can click the link.