Decent video screen cap with sound?

March 2, 2009 8:40 PM

Decent free video screen capture *with*sound*?

I've been gifted a month on a training website with riches of lessons. There are a few instructors' videos which I would like to screen capture the lessons so I can watch them over and over without having to keep a subscription going (I'm cheap). Problem is, most screen cap programs seem to be designed for making training videos - "see, here, click this spot..." and thus record sound from your microphone, not the sound from the sound card.

I know they're using some sort of flash movie viewer, and I've trolled my cache for flv files to try and watch (even did a cache clear, to winnow down candidates), to no avail.

posted by notsnot to computers & internet (10 comments total)

What operating system are you using? For Windows I believe you can find old versions of Camtasia (with sound capture) for free.

Maybe you could try recording the sound simultaneously with Audacity, then combining the two streams in an editing program. The sound might be a bit out of sync, but it would get the job done.
posted by fearthehat at 8:47 PM on March 2

Hmm, seems I got Camtasia confused with Camstudio. That was what I was referring to before...

You might also have a look at the Wikipedia list of screencast software if you're not using Windows.

Also another option I forgot to mention was using Firefox with a video downloader extension (like Download Helper)
posted by fearthehat at 9:01 PM on March 2

You should check out replay media catcher. Trial version only saves 75% of a file, $40 for full version. I know it seamlessly captures the .flvs behind youtube videos, so it should work as long as they are using a basic flash player.
posted by ghostmanonsecond at 9:59 PM on March 2

http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html worked for me so I could rip some movies from a boxing site.
posted by TimeDoctor at 10:19 PM on March 2

The free online screen recorder ScreenToaster will capture sound from the soundcard, and doesn't need any software to be installed.
posted by chorltonmeateater at 10:34 PM on March 2 [1 favorite]

How is the media playing?

If it's flash video, you might try Realplayer. Realplayer is free and the latest versions include capability to download flash video.
posted by SocialArgonaut at 9:03 AM on March 3

If anyone's still listening, I'm on Windows, and the player is embedded Flash.
posted by notsnot at 1:22 PM on March 3

For posterity, I wound up using Time Doctor's program. It wouldn't pick up the sound directly, so I had to use a patch cable to connect my speaker out into the line in on the sound card. Kludgey, but it works.
posted by notsnot at 1:06 PM on March 10

camstudio is better.
posted by joelf at 9:55 AM on April 7

IMO. It's the one I use.
posted by joelf at 9:55 AM on April 7