Software for capturing screen movies

Summary of this page

This page describes software for generating screen movies. It was created by Peter Evans and adopted by Steve Pallett (Userpage:sjpalnz?) on 11 January 2008 as a basis for research in FET8611 project... Click here to view the page at the point of adoption.

Contributing and using this page

Anyone can reorganise and contribute to this page. It is released under the default knowledgeGarden Copyright license which you can access by clicking COPYRIGHT on the left menu.

If you want you can add your name or avatar to the list of contributors:

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Example screen casts

screen movie of using a wiki wikis

http://www.teluguvaariki.com/sri-addons/tikiwiki_videos/Wiki/ has a screen cast of someone editing a wiki page. Once you have looked at the movie click WIKI > SANDBOX and then you can practise without any danger of hurting anything.
http://www.keycontent.org/kc/flash/edit_demo.swf another screencast of editing a page or article (more professionally done but has some features which are not available in knowledgeGarden

other screen casts

• publishing files on the studentweb.usq.edu.au server using dreamweaver at the bottom of Howto: Use the USQ StudentWeb server

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Free tools for creating screen casts

Wink

http://www.debugmode.com/wink
-> freeware, available for GNU/Linux and M$ Windows)

CamStudio

http://www.camstudio.org
-> free software with GPL; but M$ Windows only).
-> other source: http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio
-> uses its own lossless codec, but comes with free converter to SWF (SWF Producer).

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Commercial tools for creating screen casts

Camtasia

http://www.techsmith.com
-> this software is not for free, but very useful for capturing video and audio from the screen. It allows saving in various formats, such as flash, avi, wmv, mov, with free control over settings such as resolution and audio compression. The best piece of software I have come across for this purpose so far.

(Mac) Snapz Pro X ($69)

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
For capturing both screen shots, and movies of your desktop. Outputs in a multitude of different formats, with control over resolution and audio compression. Probably the most powerful tool available for the Mac. Keep in mind though that this software will only capture - it can't add captions or edit the captured movie clip in any way. Example movie: social budgie (Richard Hawking)

Macromedia Captivate (know Adobe Captivate 2)

http://www.adobe.com/products/captivate/
Like Camtasia, Captivate allows you "to rapidly create powerful and engaging simulations, software demonstrations, and scenario-based training without programming knowledge or multimedia skills". Captivate files can be outputted as Flash SWF, standalone files for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux; Microsoft Word and Pocket PC. At US$599 though, it's not cheap!
For a product overview demonstration is available on the Adobe website.

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Recording a commentary

The applications above will do a good job of capturing what is happening on your screen, but the finished movie will also need to have a professional-sounding audio track.

Samson C01U - USB Studio Condenser Microphone

http://www.samsontech.com/products/productpage.cfm?prodID=1810&brandID=2
($79 @ amazon.com)
A superb USB condenser microphone. On a Mac it works seamlessly with Garageband, but using with QuickTime Pro requires running the applet software (available for download from the above link). However, it is a heavy microphone and needs to be mounted on a stand to allow it to reach its full potential. (see photo, above right). The audio on this page social budgie was recorded using the Samson microphone. (Richard Hawking)

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