Screen Recording Software

[JEB]

Hi,

Can anybody recommend a FREE screen recording software package. I have a one off need to put together an instructional presentation much of which would benefit from live cursor movement. I have been trying to work round this in PTE with screen shots but there is far too much action required for this to be practical.

Ideally, I would prefer to record the voice over separately and then synchronize the video and sound later. From what I have been able to gather from a quick Google this may not be possible with a free package but then who would have thought Audacity would be free!

I would be prepared to consider an inexpensive alternative.

The end product would be put on CD or DVD together with other material and played back on a PC with the minimum of fuss. i.e. WMP which everybody should have. I would like it to play back at full screen size in order that actions such as typing was visible. The play back quality doesn’t have to be up to PTE standard but readable.

Am I asking for too much for free?

Regards

John

[Ed Overstreet]

Interesting question, I'd be interested in something like this too.

I've been using Gadwin Print Screen for my tutorials on PTE, but it only captures still snapshots of the screen, not a live movie of what's going on. But at least it stores multiple shots in a folder for later access, unlike the Windows screen-capture utility which puts the capture in the Clipboard, which means you only get one shot to work with unless you tediously dump each shot into Photoshop or somewhere else before proceeding with the next shot...

I checked the Gadwin web page, they don't seem to have a product that does a live video capture of the screen, unless I'm missing something.

I support you could always try a video capture with a camcorder or a compact digital camera (or an SLR if yours is one of the new ones that does AVI or MOV capture), but that is a workaround that produces inferior results, you end up with "waves" (that isn't the right technical term but I'm blocking on the word at the moment) on your image, because the frame rate for the camera and the screen refresh rate aren't in synch.

[tc_leeds]

Interesting question, I'd be interested in something like this too.

I've been using Gadwin Print Screen for my tutorials on PTE, but it only captures still snapshots of the screen, not a live movie of what's going on. But at least it stores multiple shots in a folder for later access, unlike the Windows screen-capture utility which puts the capture in the Clipboard, which means you only get one shot to work with unless you tediously dump each shot into Photoshop or somewhere else before proceeding with the next shot...

I checked the Gadwin web page, they don't seem to have a product that does a live video capture of the screen, unless I'm missing something.

I support you could always try a video capture with a camcorder or a compact digital camera (or an SLR if yours is one of the new ones that does AVI or MOV capture), but that is a workaround that produces inferior results, you end up with "waves" (that isn't the right technical term but I'm blocking on the word at the moment) on your image, because the frame rate for the camera and the screen refresh rate aren't in synch.

Hi,

Don't know if this will help but it is worth a look:

http://camstudio.org/

All the best

Tony

[nobeefstu]

John.

You may want to have a look at Wink ... its made esp for instructional software purposes. Freeware ... exports to Flash. EXE, and a few other file fornats. Does records voice ... but I not aware of any additional sound editing.

Ive never used it ... but it has been around awhile.

Wink Homepage :

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

[JEB]

Hi,

Thanks for your input.

Nobeefstu - I have had a good look at some of the help and demo pages for Wink and also downloaded it. I think it is what I am after. I did notice some not too good comments regarding voice recording but as far as I can determine they apply to "live" recording through the PC as you build your show. Just what I don't want to do. I see that you can also import MP3 to slides (rather like PTE) so hopefully that will provide higher quality and be easier in the long run.

Tony - I had seen Camstudio and had it marked as an option to look at in more detail but as you can see I've given Wink the wink!

Ed - I think its worth a look

Regards

John

[Ed Overstreet]

Thanks Stu and John, I'm downloading it and will give it a try.

Now if there were some way of integrating a clip from Wink into a PTE show .... something along the lines of my suggestion a while ago on the other part of the forum for a new version of PTE (ability to insert an AVI or MOV clip into a show).

[JEB]

Ed,

I don't understand the tech issues but I have been plaaying with it and creating .exe files from it. Should this not make things simpler?

I have also tried to extport/copy frames from Wink without success. Perhaps you will have more success.

John

[Ed Overstreet]

Ed,

I don't understand the tech issues but I have been plaaying with it and creating .exe files from it. Should this not make things simpler?

I have also tried to extport/copy frames from Wink without success. Perhaps you will have more success.

John

Hi John. It will be a couple of days before I'll be able to play with Wink, but will let you know what happens.

If you want single frames from your monitor, I suggest using Gadwin Print Screen for that. It's freeware and works great, plus you can capture as many single frames as you wish and direct them to a folder of your choice, so you don't have to keep pasting from the Windows Clipboard after every screen capture, as you'd have to do with the Windows print-screen utility. I suspect (but shouldn't really say until I've tried it) that I'd only use Wink to capture motion (e.g. mouse movement, maybe also voice-over) from the screen but not individual frames. All the screen shots in my recent PTE tutorial document for my club were taken with Gadwin, and it was a joy to work with. I saved the captures as JPGs and later opened them in Photoshop to mark them up and annotate them with arrows, circles and text.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ed,

Not to belabor a point, but depending on the length of the clip it's not difficult to do with my template. You just need to decompile into individual frames and rename them according to my instructions and the rest takes care of itself. There are a number of inexpensive and even free decompilers which will decompile an AVI into individual jpgs or png files. The template takes care of the animation to return the frames to movie or video. Obviously, this is more work than inserting an AVI but it's really not all that difficult.

On the other hand, if you want to run an AVI you can use Boxig's utility which runs video from PTE. There is much less control than doing it with the template, but it works fine.

Best regards,

Lin

Thanks Stu and John, I'm downloading it and will give it a try.

Now if there were some way of integrating a clip from Wink into a PTE show .... something along the lines of my suggestion a while ago on the other part of the forum for a new version of PTE (ability to insert an AVI or MOV clip into a show).

[JEB]

Lin,

Can you point me in the right direction to find out more about Boxig's utility please. I think it may be of help to me in the near future so would like to find out more.

Thanks

John

PS This is my fourth attempt to add this message. I'm obviously hitting the wrong keys!!!!

[Ken Cox]

Lin,

Can you point me in the right direction to find out more about Boxig's utility please. I think it may be of help to me in the near future so would like to find out more.

Thanks

John

PS This is my fourth attempt to add this message. I'm obviously hitting the wrong keys!!!!

JEB

if you do a search for boxig you will find his latest version

also dom had a thread re same piece of software

Lins time zone is +- 8hrs difference than yours

ken

[thedom]

John,

Here is the direct link to Boxig's utility called "ShowVideoPTE" : http://www.picturestoexe.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9870

A readme is included in the archive and the HideTaskBar utility (from Granot too).

[Guest daphne57]

I think you should use some screen recorder, which can help you record screen action. It can capture whatever streaming video and audio files on your screen, the video you got is exactly the same as the original video played on your computer. And you can also save the video to standard video format.

[Lin Evans]

Hi Daphne,

That thread is two years old, so I'm pretty certain those who were looking have it sorted out pretty much by now - LOL.

Best regards,

Lin

I think you should use some screen recorder, which can help you record screen action. It can capture whatever streaming video and audio files on your screen, the video you got is exactly the same as the original video played on your computer. And you can also save the video to standard video format.

[cjdnzl]

You could try Bulent's screen recorder, which grabs frames from the screen by a single selectable key press, and stores them in a folder as .bmp files. There are several versions of Bulent's, ver. 1.5 is free and works well. Get it from

http://download.cnet.com/Bulent-s-Screen-Recorder/3000-2192_4-10198471.html

The latest version 5 is more versatile, but costs $US49.95. I have always found 1.5 adequate and reliable.

Colin

[fh1805]

Colin/Lin,

I thought you guys would be more savvy than that. Look at the date "daphne57" joined the forum. Look at the date of the post. Look at the embedded hyperlink in the post. Look at the time elapsed since the post previous to the one from daphne57. To me, that post from daphne57 has the appearance of spam. When I first saw it, I let it stay because it wasn't overtly "hostile"; it did seem to offer additional relevant information.

regards,

Peter

[davegee]

If there was ANY way it could be implemented, ownership of a PTE licence key should be MANDATORY in order to post here!

DG

[fh1805]

Dave,

I have some sympathy with that point of view; but then how would a potential new user have their pre-purchase enquiries answered?

regards,

Peter

[jantanik]

As fat as i know CamStudio is one of the best free screen recording software that runs on Windows OS. Its nice but it's not suitable for game recording. To record a game in high quality, you have to use DirectX hooking program like Bandicam or Fraps.