Softwares to screen capture

[Fonte Boa]

Optigon, maybe you can stick this thread: my intention is to put together the references to softwares to screen capture, essential to make tutorials, for example, and exemplify some users difficults/doubts.

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I use an very old Camtasia Studio, never upgraded, but that allows me to record all the video tutorials in youtube Wings3D Channel. The recent releases have for sure a lot of tools, but what i have is enough to what i am doing... Beyond this, i think Camtasia Studio is very expensive (US$300).

Another ones i could verify:

CamStudio: free and open source.
http://camstudio.org/

HyperCam: free
http://www.hyperionics.com/?AfID=CDN

SMRecorder: free
http://www.video2down.com/

Jing is from Techsmith, the same company that comercialize Camtasia, but is is free. It seems there is a time limit for video capture (5min).
http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Screencast-o-matic: It seems to be a record screen on-line. They record until 15 min for free, and can record without limit of time for US$15/year.
http://screencast-o-matic.com/

Debut Video Capture: US$ 20
http://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html

http://www.bsrsoft.com/: US$ 50
http://www.bsrsoft.com/

Snagit is from Techsmith too, but it costs U$ 50
http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html

[Ben kaufmann01]

Here is a good screen recorder to add to your list:
My Screen Recorder: Excellent quality screen capture, $50
http://www.deskshare.com/screen-recorder.aspx

[Geta-Ve]

I use Bandicam

http://www.bandicam.com/

Greta little app and it does everything I need it too.

[Ron Starc]

My Screen Recorder Pro is a better screencast software tool. Records your screen and audio from the speakers or your voice from the microphone - or both simultaneously. The recordings are clear and look great when played back on your PC or uploaded to YouTube. It will record directly to AVI, WMV, MP4, or FLV. Just perfect for creating tutorials, demos, and presentations. Plus, java is not required and there are no limits on recording length. Also, the recordings play back on any device.

[ggaliens]

HyperCam by Hyperionics

That's what I use for maybe 10 years.

[Nova]

Nobody seems to have mentioned Open Broadcaster Software. It's free, and doesn't output uncompressed files, which saves a step for me at least.

https://obsproject.com/

[ggaliens]

Nothing wrong with compression if you know what scheme to use. Plenty wrong with using RAW uncompress if you are looking for goot frame rates and hi-def.

XVID home theatre from xvid.org is good.

[Nova]

I appear to have been typing a little too fast. What I meant was that OBS is nice since it outputs compressed files, saving me from having to do that step

[ymike]

D3DGear (http://www.d3dgear.com) is good too.

[Extrudeface]

Active Presenter, FREE edition (there are commercial options for those needed some special feature)

http://atomisystems.com

I add it here because I have had EXCELLENT performance in full motion recording at full screen (I work at 1920x1080 res. ) while also having a lot more features. I used to use camtasia, but am loving this little tool as well. It offers a lot of power for training materials, making tutorials, etc, even with just the free version. The pro version seems super powerful(catches my attention the html 5 export) and indeed very focused on serious teaching materials production. I would not be able to justify any expense with any capture software from any company, anyway,(I'm not a teacher) and am pretty happy with the free version. (not using the latest just have not needed to update, I don't know how is the latest. I'm using version 5.5.2, Free Edition )

It has a time line where you organize stuff, which reminds me of Flash editing software, and a lot of tools to handle balloons and info quads that are produced automatically while you recorded your video tutorial(if you recorded in that mode, you can record as plain video, only). It can also save a lot of memory while doing so by skipping recording still frames and other tricks, but you are free to make it fully recording, great for games or animation screen recording. Use it "as a Camstudio".

I'm really happy with it, full performance in a core i7 860, 8gb of ram, pretty old machine, first super old core generation, now some cheapo pentiums behave better in single core situations. Well, not a glitch or frame skip full recording at 1920x1080 with this thing.

That said, I also love Camtasia(commercial) and Camstudio(open source), I used in my job the Camstudio and its own loss-less codec for a while, for editing without filling the hard drive (videos were from 5 mins to half an hour ones).

And while would be a little OT, I'd recommend Mediacoder for converting the videos, as well as handbrake(fast, simple and good) specially for mp4 format: https://handbrake.fr and http://www.mediacoderhq.com

I use mp4 format a lot. And xvid. Heck, even my TV (through USB) reads mp4 flawlessly. What is funny is that while working inside companies I tended to always provide a WMV. Wouldn't get same quality/ratio size than with mp4, but providing the two, less frequent marketing(or other departments) person would call back complaining the video could not be played. In the end I preferred very standard codecs and standard containers for this reason. For Youtube, mp4 container and H.264 worked really great (small videos high quality, good playback).