CamStudio Review
Cam Studio is a screen casting program that has a free software gives videos in an AVI format. It can also
convert these AVIs into Flash Video format, embedded in SWF files. Cam Studio
is written in C++, but Cam Studio 3 will be developed in C#. Sometimes you need
more than a still image from a screen. For cases where you need to show
on-screen actions—for example, showing a tech-support specialist a sequence of
actions that results in an error—you can turn to one of these inexpensive
screen recorders. Cam Studio is a free software that uses AVI format. But you
can also convert movies to Flash (SWF) files without spending a penny. Like
some of the other best things in life, Cam Studio gives you flexibility. It
lets you choose from a number of codecs and offers an auto-adjust setting for
the frame rate; you can also set it to capture frames every 5 milliseconds up
to once per minute. By either entering coordinates or dragging the mouse, you
can select a region of the screen to be captured or just choose to capture the
whole screen. Cam Studio also offers sound recording with interleave
capability, and an auto-pan feature makes video recording follow the mouse
cursor. The original Cam Studio was released as an open source product by
Render Soft software in October 2001. The source code license was converted to
the GNU General Public License in December 2002 with release 1.8. The Source
code of versions 1.0, 1.4 and 2.0 are still available at Source Forge. In 2003,
the company was acquired by eHelp Corporation who owned a competing product
called Robo Demo (now called Adobe Captivate. eHelp Corporation was released and
updated version as Cam Studio 2.1 under a proprietary software license only and
removed the ability to create SWFs. A succession of acquisitions led to the
company being owned by Adobe. Cam Studio is a free software to use and no cost
to it. I’ve never used Cam Studio before even though it’s free. You can also
record audio from your speakers or microphone, although I did not test this
feature. Screen annotations allow you to add custom text captions and callouts
to your movies. These annotations must be saved as a layout prior to recording
and can be called up with a hotkey during the recording process. Cam Studio
does not offer editing capabilities, so your movie and annotations must be
carefully planned before you begin recording. AVI movies can be quite large,
but by converting them to Flash format the file size is reduced considerably.
The conversion process is somewhat slow, but generally worthwhile for the size
reduction.
If your needs are fairly basic, Cam Studio
is a handy little tool for recording screen activity and audio in AVI and SWF
format. And you can't beat the price; it's free. Screencasts are those videos
depicting a shot of a computer screen.
There are many applications for such a program such as tutorials and
software reviews. It is also often used
to record video chat conversations.
There are quite a few tools for creating screencasts. Today I would like to review another free
screen casting tool that has actually been around for awhile. It’s free, good at what it does and offers
several key features.
The purpose of this article is to
review some of those key features. So, buckle in and come along for the ride
and see if Cam Studio is the tool for your screen casting needs. I will touch
on 4 different key features. When you try Cam Studio, you will see that there
are also other features and I think you’ll be pleased with them, but for the
sake of this article I will be focusing on 4 key features of this free screen casting
tool. Screencasts are those videos depicting a shot of a computer screen. There
are many applications for such a program such as tutorials and software
reviews. It is also often used to record
video chat conversations. There are
quite a few tools for creating screencasts.
Today I would like to review another free screen casting tool that has
actually been around for awhile. It’s
free, good at what it does and offers several key features. The purpose of this
article is to review some of those key features. So, buckle in and come along
for the ride and see if Cam Studio is the tool for your screen casting needs. I
will touch on 4 different key features. When you try Cam Studio, you will see
that there are also other features and I think you’ll be pleased with them, but
for the sake of this article I will be focusing on 4 key features of this free
screen casting tool. Cam Studio allows you several different options when it
comes to the region of your screen being recorded. Choose “Region” from the Region dropdown menu
and upon clicking Record, you will be able to draw out the square area you
would like to see recorded. Choose
“Fixed Region” and you will be able to enter numbers indicating position and
size of the desired screen recording area.
Choose “Full Screen” and the whole screen will be recorded. You also
have the option to turn on autopen which will allow the recording area to
follow the cursor around. Cam Studio also gives you the ability to add screen
annotations, little memos, speech balloons, arrows, etc. that can be added to a
screencast to bring attention to areas of the screen. Creating the annotations is quite simple but
there is a bit of a trick to adding them to the screencast. Don’t worry; we’ll go through it to make sure
it isn’t all that difficult. Camtasia Studio is one of the most popular
screen-capture recording applications; however, it costs around $299. No doubt,
Camtasia Studio a robust platform to record online video and includes a lot of
functionality, but not everyone can afford it at that price. Therefore,
CamStudio is a great alternative for creating online vids, especially for those
who are just venturing out into the world of online video creation.
I've personally used Cam Studio since
late 2009 and have enjoyed using this free screen-capture software to capture
on-screen video recording. On this web page, I will share my experience using
Cam Studio and show you how to effectively set it up to get the most out of
this versatile video-making application. You will also see some examples of
videos I've created using this free application. With the need to have the best
software for your computer increasing, there’s no wonder there’s an overflow of
downloadable programs for screen recordings, including Cam studio and
Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder. Cam studio is an open source of screen casting
for all-screen and audio recordings on Windows computers. This means that the
only people capable of benefiting from this program are those with Windows XP,
Vista, or 7. In this case, anyone who owns a MAC or Windows 8 PC will not be
able to use this wonderful program, which poses a major need for an alternative
to this software. On the other hand, a few of the cons include its
compatibility dilemma, one full shot screen capability, and SWF video viewing
troubles. All of these are consistent complaints made by frustrated customers.
In addition, many customers complain about its fussy setup process, handle
complications, and beyond reach of HD videos. Though many of these issues are
tedious to the users, they make the experience less worth attempting. The best
alternative to Camstudio is Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder. This
software is similar to camstudio in the fact that it is free and anyone can use
it without time limitation. However, when Apowersoft Free Online Screen
Recorder is compared to Camstudio, it has a clear edge in the following parts:
No setup process
Run on Mac
More recording mode
Better quality in recording video and audio simultaneously
Record audio separately
Take Screen shots
Edit while recording
A few of the pros to having this
software like cam studio on your computer include its convenient free pricing,
it’s ability to assist with the makings of high quality instructional tutorials
and presentations, as well as its anti-aliased screen captions. The program
offers user-friendly and effective features for internet marketers. It
capitalizes on one of the hottest trends in internet marketing video today:
screen capture. When you present a screen capture video, you are showing
viewers exactly what you are seeing and what you are doing on your screen. A
simple resource I have made for students on how to use CamStudio. This is a
free piece of software that can be used to record whatever is happening on the
screen and has a variety of uses for both teachers and students across the
curriculum. Some of the CamStudio alternatives have been listed for users who
wish to explore other options for the purpose of making screencasts. Screen
recording software come in extremely handy for multiple purposes like creating
demos, presentations, video tutorials and much more with absolutely no hassles.
The program in question can capture audio as well and lets you make use of your
webcam for a picture in picture effect on your screen grabs. And the AVIs you
record can easily be converted to bandwidth-friendly SWFs, a feature that
proves to be of help when you wish to share them on the web. In case you are
looking for utilities that can carry out all of these functions and more, then
here we have some of the most efficient ones. Camtasia Studio allows you to
record interactive and engaging videos of software, PowerPoint presentations or
even video games. The developers claim that it produces smooth-flowing clips
and one of the key highlights of the program is that it lets you edit them or
personalize with photos, music or other videos. You can make use of the green
screen effect for superimposing yourself or carry out simple operations like
crop, copy and stitch. Furthermore, you can record audio, while capturing the
screen and make use of the webcam for the picture in picture effect. By
default, the application records in the full screen mode, but you can customize
the area of the window you wish to capture. The next option on our roster
featuring programs like CamStudio is said to be one of the easiest screen
recorder and screen capture software designed for Windows. All you need to do
to capture everything that can be seen on the monitor is hit the ‘screen
capture’ button and the program does the rest. On the website, you will find a
button to launch the screen recorder and as soon as you hit it, the program
begins to record the screen as well as the accompanying audio. As it needs a
web browser, you can use it on computers running virtually any operating
system. And what’s more, these clips are perfectly compatible with select
mobile devices like iPhones. You do not have to shell out a single penny for
it. You can also add screen captions to the video recordings and you can even
personalize your video. CamStudio also comes with its own Codec which produces
high quality audio with smaller file size compared to other popular codecs. You
can have complete control over the video output. It is possible to use custom
cursors to record the full screen or a part of the screen on your desktop and
you can also reduce or increase the quality of the recording. CamStudio comes
with a built in help file so you can use the help feature to get the answers
that you need about CamStudio. CamStudio is completely free to download for
personal as well as commercial projects. This software can be downloaded from
The CamStudio website. http://camstudio.org/ It is very easy to install CamStudio
Software. Download the software from CamStudio website indicated above. Once
the binary file is downloaded, follow the instructions given below to install
CamStudio.
Double click on the downloaded file.
Then you will get a small window with a security message "The
publisher could not be verified, Are you sure you want to run this
software". Click on 'Run' button
Then the Welcome screen of the Set u wizard appears as shown in the
slide no.2 of the attached power point presentation
Click on 'Next' button. You will then asked to read the License
agreement. Select 'I agree the agreement" and click 'Next' button
Now select the destination folder to install the software
The next screen shows whether you want to install full, partial or
custom installation. You select what ever you want
Click 'Next' in the next screen. then it will ask for creating desktop
icon. If you want desktop icon, select the check box and then click on 'Next'
button
In the next screen click on 'Install' button. Once installation is
completed, click on 'Finish' button. that is all. I started using CamStudio as
a "no cost" alternative for adding video demonstrations to online
Help to accompany complex written procedures. It is an excellent tool. I also
had to escalate the use of this open source software product through our
corporate software standards group to get our company's approval for use. That
was a real learning experience... However, now that I'm using the product, I
have discovered that many of our customers do not have workstations equipped
with sound capabilities, so I have been forced to use the text annotations
instead. I have found it to be a very cumbersome process. I would love to see
the CamStudio evolve into something a bit more featured in this area. We'll
give it to you straight. You won't find a zoom feature, a huge variety of compressors
or file types, or a video editor in the free CamStudio 2.5 (beta). What you
will find is a small, sturdy screencast app that faithfully records your PC in
AVI and SWF (Flash) formats. There are many fine features in the intuitive,
open source app to recommend it, including an option to highlight the cursor
path during a recording session, automatically pan, and record with sound. A
brand-new effects menu scoops on the ability to annotate and append videos with
comments, a time stamp, and a territorial watermark. Just don't get too crazy
all at once. There's clearly a long way to go for CamStudio to catch up with
commercial rivals--most grumble-worthy is the lack of file type support outside
AVI and SWF files and the absent editor for trimming, splicing, and optimizing
a video. If those aren't strong concerns, this freebie, with its steady
playback and modicum of audio and video settings options, will provide the
necessary tools for creating quick demos and screencasts. I'm a long-time
developer but I am relatively new to A/V recording. I think of a codec as a
driver that sits between a capture device and the target file. If the codec
supports some feature like a certain fps setting then that's translated to the
file. But I don't understand how closely that relates to the codec that viewers
need to see the file. I look at that like compression where there are a ton of
options like zip, rar, etc, and image types like gif, jpeg, png, etc. - and we
all know that the application that opens these files needs to use the same
format as the app used to create them.
What I don't understand is how
universal some of these codecs are. My first attempt at using the CS codec
resulted in a "write-only" file because the target system didn't have
the CS codec. Unlike FLV, AVI, WMV and other file types, I think it's asking a
bit much to ask people to install the CS codec to view files. So I see this
codec as only being used to create material that will be consumed by people you
know. DivX and Xvid are very popular among people who create vids, but I'm not
sure how universal they are among typical user/consumers. I don't want to have
to tell people to download the DivX codec (run the installer, don't install the
player, and ignore the offer to install a browser toolbar...). I can edit files
created in CS using Windows Movie Maker. That creates a WMV which is fairly
universal for Windows users anyway, but with this I'm concerned about file size
and quality. CamStudio is similar as Camtasia with the screen casting
production. System sounds need to be captured via Stereo Mix from the
"Record from Speakers" dialog at present. Stereo Mix gets its signal
from the analog speakers, so those have to be the default device for playback. To
get system sounds AND preferably microphone together into recordings:
Presently that has to be accomplished
via a kludge performed with Stereo Mix as the default recording device, analog
speakers as the default playback device, and with the microphone's
"listen" tab selected, the "listen" box checked, and the
output sent to the analog speakers to route it into Stereo Mix -- which gets
its signal from the analog speakers buss. During the install process, the
software suggests you install various junk and I exploited declined this and
clicked cancel. Still, it installed 2 browser plugins and reset my start page
in both Firefox and Chrome to sweet-page.com. Resetting this did not help, it
was there again on every new start. Uninstalling CamStudio did NOT remove the
unwanted software. I had to remove it with some spyware removal tool and
reboot. While it seems the installed packages do not steal account credentials
or destroy files, this behavior of hijacking the browser and rerouting the
traffic and refusing uninstall is clearly very virus-like. For me, this is
malware and there is no doubt about it. So I would say NO, it is not virus
free. I have used countless open-source tools and none of them did not contain
any malware. This was the first exception.
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