Desktop video capture

July 27, 2005 4:59 PM

What's the best program to use for capturing video from the desktop? Say, if I wanted to provide a visual tutorial in Photoshop that I could save as a video.
posted by jimmy to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Mac or PC?

For the Mac, Snapz Pro is hands-down the best.

For the PC, I've used Camtasia and it did the trick, but it's expensive and someone else might have better advice.
posted by pmbuko at 5:30 PM on July 27, 2005

Best answer: I have heard good things of RoboDemo (though now it's apparently called Macromedia Captivate). This is a commercial app though. This and Techsmith Camtasia seem to be the major ones.

There are some shareware programs but I suspect that most of them will have a logo or watermark (or time restriction, etc.) in the unregistered version. Examples: Bulent's Screen Recorder, Quick Screen Recorder.

This is an area where there should be open source solutions but there probably aren't many. I found iCord but it looks like it's not being actively developed.
posted by Rhomboid at 6:07 PM on July 27, 2005

Response by poster: Yeah, I guess I should have specified that I was looking for a shareware/open source solution. Bulent's seems to work quite well, and the watermark it produces isn't a problem. Thanks a lot.
posted by jimmy at 6:34 PM on July 27, 2005

I started using Windows Media Encoder 9. It's a free download if your working on a Window system and it works quite well. Once installed there is a wizard that walks you through the process for screen capturing. You can capture the whole desktop or just the specific windowed program you are working with.
posted by monsta coty scott at 7:10 PM on July 27, 2005 [1 favorite]

"Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users."

It's freeware and I've had great success using it for visual tutorials.
posted by ecrivain at 7:14 PM on July 27, 2005

Nobody mentioned Wink which I've just toyed with, but looks to be a fabulous tool.

And it's free.
posted by gfroese at 7:49 PM on July 27, 2005

I've done a lot of work with Wink. It is easily one of the best freeware apps of any sort. Highly recommended.
posted by MotorNeuron at 9:18 PM on July 27, 2005

I have used Easy Screen Capture Video before. Shareware.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:20 AM on July 28, 2005

Another vote for Wink...
posted by Arthur Dent at 9:18 AM on July 28, 2005