How do you record things on your computer screen?

Can that be use to screen capture a video being played at a website with Flashplayer? I've tried to use Windows Media Encoder to do that but end up with no sound and a very jerky video.

with the flash movie running on the background, probably not. from what i know and what i see with video tutorials on desktop, it's really not that yet perfect. yes, it's somewhat jerky. but i don't see why you need the flash video on your tutorial. if that's what you want, then just download the flash video and edit it with video editing and start your tutorial there.

I am not talking about a tutorial. I just want to be able to download videos on websites that are shown with flash player. None of the download software I have will work with the more recent versions of flash player that most websites are using now. So as a last resort I was trying to do a screen capture. If you know of some download software that will download a video from a website where the video is shown in the more recent flash player, that is what I want. I'm not talking about Youtube; there are many online places to download Youtube videos. Thanks for answering above and any further help.