Screencast software

Question

I want to screencast an application in windows. What good options are out there? I just want it for 1-3 videos, so I prefer free but am willing to pay if have to.

Thanks

Answer 1

I am a Mac man myself so I could be wrong about this, I have been told that Fraps might be of use.

Answer 2

Personally I have very good experiences with Camtasia. For an example of what it'll look like, check out the summer of nHibernate screencasts.. Just using windows movie maker/media encoder works too, but because the codec it uses isn't optimized for screencasts you'll either get a lot of compression artifacts, or a very big file.

Answer 3

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000721.html from our very own Jeff Atwood might be useful.

Answer 4

I got some good tips when asking a similar question here.

Answer 5

I personally have used Camtasia in the past and found it to be really good. However, it costs (a lot!)..

Good question.. I was thinking of perhaps getting more into this myself, both to help my study as well as obviously give something back to the community..

Answer 6

Wow, great info! Thanks people.

@Teifion Fraps is for DirectX and OpenGl so it doesn't work for me.

Answer 7

I just installed Community Clips from Microsoft Office Labs. It seems to do the job.

Answer 8

Debugmode Wink is free, and pretty feature packed.

Answer 9

Wink

Answer 10

Camtasia trial (http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp).

Answer 11

• BB Flashback
• CamStudio

Answer 12

Jing! Techsmith again, but this is free.

Answer 13

I use a combination of Luminosity's SoftCam and uStream to do live otherwise I SnagIt, to capture and record.

Answer 14

A search on SO might have turned up the following question: Tips on recording a webcast. See the various apps that are mentioned in that thread --- there are a lot of options, both free and commercial!

Answer 15

Take a look at Windows Media Encoder

Answer 16

Camtasia Studio works very well. Its awesome.

Also the free CamStudio is okay for basic screen capture.

Answer 17

HyperCam is cheap shareware and works on Vista. CamStudio is GPL but has issues with Vista. CamTasia will definitely work but is expensive after the 30 day trial.

CamTasia's editor lets you zoom, pan, add annotations etc - it is worth the money if you're doing a lot of screencast editing.

ScreencastOMatic is java-based and free, limited to 15 mins I believe, doesn't do zooming.

Answer 18

Wink rocks

Answer 19

Try http://screenr.com, no install and screencasts are instantly viewable.