CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

CamStudio - Free Screen Recording Software

Here are just a few ways you can use this software:

• You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
• Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions?
• You can create video tutorials for school or college class
• You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people
• You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
• You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them

History

CamStudio was originally released by a company called RenderSoft who were subsequently bought by a company called eHelp who used some of the technology in their program, RoboDemo ...

Some time later, eHelp was bought by Macromedia who wanted RoboDemo (which was to become Captivate) ...

CamStudio on SourceForge: sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio

When i had built my first site at netscape and tripod using things like netscape composer. I had also used RoboHelp later to create a DHTML page as i could not code very complex js. I tried this camstudio (old site) to make one short clip with web camera and desktop capture. This was a free software which could make non-interactive swf. I had listed all the free resources in my links page too. This later was moved to Freeware News. This may be before 2000.

In that software links page i had listed "camstudio < RoboHelp < Macromedia <  Adobe" and many more. It just looked like small fish to big fish eco system now, it could just be the flywheel in my brain. 

So from my gut feel i think this camstudio software is the cause of the Adobe flv format. Which created many Tubes online. Find this story interesting, read more here SAN Tube.