Friday, April 6, 2012

19 Free Screen Recording Software | Make a Video Tutorial Easily

One way to keep your visitors on your site longer is to add a video clip on your site. You can want to know how to make a video tutorial. You can shoot videos using your camcorder, but that will take a lot of time and sometimes that quality of the video is not high. The easy way to create a video tutorial is to use a screen capture software, also known as screen recording software.

What is the best screencast software available on the market?
I can tell you that many people recommend Camtasia, a product brought to you by Techsmith. But here I am not going to talk about Camtasia, because it is not a free software. If you want to use it, you have to pay $299 to buy it.

What is the free screen recording software alternative to Camtasia Studio?
There are open source free screen recording software that can serve similar function as Camtasia, even though the free ones may not be as powerful as the professional version. But for your casual use, the free screen capture software should be good enough. You can download them and install on your computer, record what you see on your computer, save and share it with your friends or family.

Jing
The first one I want to mention here is Jing that is a free version screen capture software also developed by Techsmith, the developer of Camtasia. Here is their official website: http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html. You can use Jing to take screenshot or screencast. It is both PC and Mac compatible, so both PC and Mac users will like it. But one caveat for Jing is that you can only use it to create maximum 5 min video clip. If you want to record a long video episode, I am afraid that Jing is not good enough for you.

Wink
Wink is another freeware that can help you capture screen shots and make tutorials, particularly if you want to show other people how to use a software. Right Wink can only be used on Windows and Linux systems. If you are a Mac user, this one is not for you. Here is the site to learn more about Wink: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ .

Also check out Free Video Editing Software.
CamStudio
CamStudio is the best available free screencast software alternative to Camtasia in my humble opinion. It can not only save your video in format AVI format, but also allows you to convert it to SWFs that is a bandwidth-friendly format. To learn all the features offered by CamStudio, visit http://camstudio.org/.

So with these free screencast software, you can easily make demonstrations or how tutorials on your computer. You can turn your images or photos into video shows easily. Check them out, when you need them.

Tip:
Some of these software may not be good at recording sound. If you need to record sound at better quality, consider use Audacity, a free audio editor and recorder with the screen capture applications.

Update:
For me, Camstudio is good enough. But if you like to compare more free screencasting programs before making your final decision, you may find the list below useful.
List of related free screen recording tools:
http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/
http://taksi.sourceforge.net/
https://github.com/nullkey/glc
http://recordmydesktop.sourceforge.net/about.php
https://launchpad.net/kazam
http://www.uvnc.com/screenrecorder/index.html
http://xvidcap.sourceforge.net/
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/EncoderPro_Overview.aspx
http://www.virtualdub.org/
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/index.html
http://www.hyperionics.com/hc/
http://www.smallvideosoft.com/download.php
http://www.nbxsoft.com/screen-recorder.php
http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/pyvnc2swf.html
http://live.gnome.org/Istanbul
http://www.tortall.net/mu/wiki/Cankiri

No comments:

Post a Comment

Search & Win