Free streaming video software
Posted by Jacque on March 24th, 2009
I was interested in this “absolutely free” app I saw at WebWorker Daily, called CamStudio .
With it you can record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create “industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).”
According to their website, with CamStudio you can:
- Create demonstration videos for any software program
- Create a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions
- Create video tutorials for school or college class
- Record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people
- Create video-based information products you can sell
- Record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them
CamStudio can also add screen captions to your recordings in seconds and with the “Video Annotation feature you can even personalise your videos by including a webcam movie of yourself “picture-in-picture” over your desktop.”
It has its own Lossless Codec that “produces crystal clear results with a much smaller filesize compared with other more popular codecs, like Microsoft Video 1.”
With CamStudio, you have control over the output of your video: you can choose to use custom cursors, to record the whole screen or just a section of it and can reduce or increase the quality of the recording depending on if you want smaller videos, or you can have “best quality” ones for burning onto CD/DVD.
I haven’t tried CamStudio yet, but its makers also claim it is easy to use and comes with a comprehensive helpfile. As a user of TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio, which is definitely not free, I’ll be interested to find out — and hear from any of you — how well this free application actually works.
