Is there a good open codec for screencast compression

This site What Video File Format is Best for Screencast.com Viewers? recommends use of H.264. But see also another alternatives.

Today I discover capability of VLC (VideoLAN media player, http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) record screen. It is opensource and free for downloading/use for all desktop OSes.

After googling I found that many people recommend use H.264 codec for screencast (and x264 as free implementation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X264). It is really good!

Under Windows I cd to VLC dir and run:

$ vlc screen:// --screen-fps=12 --screen-mouse-image=e:/home/.icon/cursor.png \
  --no-sout-audio --sout \
  "#transcode{venc=x264,quality:100,scale=1,fps=12}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=mp4,dst=desktop.avi}}}"

or less quality with free codes/container (theora/ ogg):

$ vlc screen:// --screen-mouse-image cursor.png --screen-fps=12 \
  --screen-width=1680 --screen-height=1050 --no-sout-audio --sout \
  "#transcode{venc=theora,quality:10,scale=0.75,fps=12}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=ogg,dst=desktop.ogg}}}"

PS. You can also check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs#Lossless_data_compression