Screen Recording Software

[phppete]

I would like some recommendations for screen recording software. I don't need many features so something like Adobe Captivate is overkill and more than I wish to invest.

I would be willing to pay up to $100, any recommendations?, thanks.

[johnfl68]

If Windows Media format is ok, Windows Media Encoder 9 is free, and does screen capture. I have used it for this purpose. Not as intuitive as to all the settings for what you want, but works good:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=5691ba02-e496-465a-bba9-b2f1182cdf24&displaylang=en

There is also CamStudio over at SourceForge which is open source - but I haven't used it, so I can't comment on how it is:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/

John

[Mandi]

There's the Jing Project (http://www.jingproject.com/) - I've seen video it creates, it's great.

[Matt]

www.camstudio.org works fine and is free. On my older machine I had to crank up the process priority and turn down the screen resolution, but you probably wouldn't need to do this on a machine built in the past 3 years.
-Matt

[phppete]

www.camstudio.org works fine and is free. On my older machine I had to crank up the process priority and turn down the screen resolution, but you probably wouldn't need to do this on a machine built in the past 3 years.
-Matt

Thanks for the suggestions, I downloaded Camtasia which was a little disappointing when compared to Captivate. I also downloaded CamStudio which crashed my windows xp so that has now been removed because it is totally unusable and not even fit for the trash bin. While open source apps are appreciated I don't see the logic in releasing apps that freeze and crash the users machine.

So far Adobe Captivate 3 is the only decent solution, but at £369 ($700) it is more than I was hoping to invest. I might look at some others I have seen for around $100 but so far it isn't looking very promising.

I might just manually do them with screen shots in Flash since I already have Flash 8, but that would be very time consuming.

[Matt]

I didn't have a problem using version 2.0 under Windows XP:
http://www.camstudio.org/CamStudio20.exe

The topmost link on the page is a beta and labeled as such.

[Kevin]

You could try using vnc2swf (http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf) to record the video through vnc.

I have never used it myself but I have seen presentations done with it and they look great. Plus the output is flash video which easy to put on a web site.

[phppete]

Thanks for the suggestions people. Unfortunately it looks like I will need to dig into my piggy bank and buy Captivate 3 from Adobe. Adobe Captivate has the best features and although over priced, probably still the best option.

[Slim]

I've had good experiences with SnagIt from TechSmith. It's $49, although my current client selected and purchased it, probably at a discount.

What are the features you are looking for?

[phppete]

I've had good experiences with SnagIt from TechSmith. It's $49, although my current client selected and purchased it, probably at a discount.

What are the features you are looking for?

I need to make demo help movies for my web applications. Lately I have been doing some quite complex apps with right click menu options such as editing nested lists and cutting and pasting list elements, dragging an dropping etc so some clients need a demo to see what features there are and how to do stuff.

I've just done one in Adobe Captivate 3, I'm on my 30 day free trial. It is an excellent piece of software, easy to use, no need to RTM, very intuitive like Flash.

[Kevin]

I need to make demo help movies for my web applications. Lately I have been doing some quite complex apps with right click menu options such as editing nested lists and cutting and pasting list elements, dragging an dropping etc so some clients need a demo to see what features there are and how to do stuff.
That is exactly what I have seen people do with vnc2swf. They record the video of themselves using an application while recording audio of themselves talking about it.