I’ve experimented with countless video screen capture software or screen recorders if you like to call them. From the very expensive Captivate to the cheapest and free ones 🙂 Which ones won out? I’ll need a full review article for that but the only two that are still on my computer are Tech Smith’s Camtasia and the popular free video screen capture gem CamStudio.

The biggest reason I like Camtasia is because of the number of format you can create your videos in. This is very helpful for the marketer who uses video screen captures to sell on their website and also to produce into shippable products. Many software out there only record to AVI and this seems to be the standard raw file (even for Camtasia) but as per my last entry on screencast video formats, WMV can also turn out to be quite big.

But I’m digressing here. Getting to the point. I tried recording my new web conference room with Camtasia and was quite surprised that it couldn’t capture some of the room’s popup menus. That was a bit dissapointing because those popup menus contained important stuff I needed to show conference attendees and moderators. So, when I tried to do a video screen capture with CamStudio, and it picked up the menus I was of course so very pleased.

The more I research into the video screen capture software out there the more I see the familiar CamStudio interface. Many of these $30 and over software is based on a really solid Open Source code. A shame it’s not available anymore – well it is if you know where to look 😉

What about you? What have you tried? I’d love to hear about your experiences.

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