CamStudio - The Free Screen Recording Software

The first time I decided to create a video tutorial I had no idea what software should I use. I found various commercial products, but they were either too professional for my needs or just too complicated to deal with. All I need was a simple program that can record video and audio.
So after searching the net for a while, I came across this little freeware program called CamStudio. Despite the word “studio”, it’s pretty simple and could fit a floppy disk. I was very surprised that CamStudio had in fact quite a few features - almost everything I was looking for!
OK lets see what the program has to offer you in 1.3MB:

- record video (region, fixed region or full screen)
- record audio (from microphone or speakers)
- screen annotations - arrows, bubbles, other shapes (very useful when creating video tutorials)
- export/convert to Flash (.swf files)
- customizable keyboard shortcuts

When it comes to video compression and quality you can choose from a lot of encoders. From Microsoft Video to XviD and DivX you have a complete control over the quality, filesize and framerate. I suggest you to use the latest XviD encoder and here you will find a nice guide how to configure it for maximum quality.
The audio quality depends on your microphone mainly, but don’t worry. Even my cheap Mediacom microphone is performing well enough to satisfy any non professional needs.
As I said the program is freeware. 100% free for personal and commercial projects, CamStudio is released under the GPL license. This means you can even sell your video presentations and guides if you like.
Download CamStudio from SourceForge or its official website.
You can see some of the video tutorials for nLite that I’ve created with CamStudio here.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 7th, 2007 at 4:47 am and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.