I used camstudio (windows 7) which kind of sucks, but it was free. It was pretty finicky to get working and it's been a while since I used it, so I don't remember too well how I did it. I was never able to get both mike and in computer sound to record despite several hours of trying. I had software to convert from .avi to .flv (flash) since I didn't want to upload giant .avi files to youtube. There are better software out there, but I need a better laptop (or more likely, a desktop) to be able to run it.

I never had fuzziness problems. I did have a lot of de-syncing problems which took a while to resolve.

regarding your youtube videos where you walkthrough your competition character and the like: im trying to do something very similar but having trouble getting youtube to not ruin my quality when i upload. If i may ask, what program are you using for screen capture, what are you using to compress (codecs etc) to ensure that youtube doesnt ruin it, your screencap resolution, and what sort of format are you uploading the videos as? anything along these lines that might help

ive tried some techniques for compression and a slew of tools and capturing programs but nothing seems to upload without suddenly becoming fuzzy even at 720p viewing setting.
any advice would be greatly appreciated