I am interested in Screen Recording software. I have seen a few people on YouTube use them, but I do not know what the software is.
Features wanted:
Any suggestions?
Get with Kee
He records his classes includong screen
VLC meets the first criteria. Please let us when you find something that works.
As a benchmark, more than as a suggestion, Camtasia by Techsmith is kind of the standard in the EDU world. Because, I presume, the bar is low for entry, and it mostly gets the job done, and probably works a deal on site licensingā¦ Point by point:
Free/Low cost
highlight cursor
Zoom in to area with cursor
log and display key presses (so if I use a keyboard short cut, esp combo, that this be displayed)
I looked into this about a year ago at my last job and itās been on my list of things to revisit because of the Training Development SIG
What Iāve found is that if youāre looking for free and fully featured in one package you have to deal with watermarks or some other nonsense which is a total deal breaker for me. Better off using a few freeware programs for each task.
For screen grabbing there are lots of options, OBS seems to be a popular one for streaming, but I havenāt gotten a chance to get real deep with that program to give an opinion.
I like VLC for screen capturing. Getting it set up to capture video from my desktop was relatively easy. It has the added benefit of already being installed on all my computers at home, YMMV.
The other features like zooming in to your cursor and calling out keystrokes are available from a bunch of different freeware programs.
As I mentioned it was about a year ago that I cobbled together a solution, and I did it on a work PC, so all my documentation is gone. Iāll do more research when I get home and post my results.
@talkers, which ones have you looked at/trialed so far?
I typically use OBS (obsproject.com) for broadcasting gameplay on my PC. It also records. I am not 100% it will zoom on cursor, but there is a switch to turn itās visibility on/off
Did a little googling, and IIRC this was the best looking freeware ākeystrokes on screenā program I was able to find last year.
Apparently Windows has some built in zooming features, but I havenāt tested them out to say whether or not itās good for this type of thing.
Iām almost sure Windows also has a built in cursor highlighting feature. I know it definitely has a thing where it will draw a circle around your cursor when you hit CTRL (that part I know because my laptop has it activated and Iāve been too lazy to turn it off)
EDIT: Hereās a first page google result that has some promising programs for zooming other than the one built into windows. Iām at work on an ancient G5 Mac so I canāt test any of this stuff out just yet.
Vokoscreen, perhaps. Works for me on Ubuntu.
http://www.kohaupt-online.de/hp/
Not exactly a list of features ā¦
http://www.kohaupt-online.de/hp/tip.html
I think if we spent $300 or so on decent software that is relatively easy to use would be money well spent at DMS for developing things.
I just got a program in the mail 20 minute ago that by Nuance that does what Adobe Acrobat does. I want to be able to have fillable forms and ability to export the fields into a database. If it works well Iāll recommend we buy some licenses, $100<. We need to have PDF forms online that can be filled out and submitted electronically.
No need for them to be PDFs for that to happen, but yeah, electronic forms are niceā¦
I can do all of it in Word but PDF is a format everyone can open multiple different programs they have. Not everyone uses Word or other formats. Also PDFās are a format that works with a lot of our internal programs as attachments. Have to pick something, PDF is an industry standard.
if you intend for them to be filled out and submitted online (and, in my opinion, you should), they should be web forms, and not in any particular document style.
If you want them filled out and turned in physically, then PDF are the industry standard, and would be highly recommended, and, unless you just like angering people, make them fillable (though with Adobe Reader X and later, theyāre fillable regardless).
I agree. The situation where something can be submitted via web or in person is the only use case I can think of that makes a PDF more useful than a web form.
Of course, if one doesnāt have web dev skills then sometimes a PDF is just easier to create.
@Photomancer is this an ongoing thing, or do you just need a couple of forms?
Iāll defer to your expertise. Take charge, make it happen. We use PDFās now and apparently oblivious to angry crowds being referred to.
Iām sure what youāre objecting to, I stated: We need to have PDF forms online that can be filled out and submitted electronically.
If you want something that only a web developer can do again: Take charge, make it happen.
On going. Iām starting with the PDF forms we currently have have Finance.
I have made no objections; merely attempted to illuminate a pathway. Feel free to tread where you will.
@mblatz screencam, by Lotus Software
OKā¦I didnāt want to start looking at ones you already have 86ād.
Downloaded and was looking at Cam Studio earlier today. Itās free, but doesnāt have at least one of your requirements (#4). It does have a āautopanā feature where the recording region follows your mouse around, but that may be standard in recording software for all I know.
edit: a follow-up suggestion: when I have been hunting for software like this before I realized how exasperating it is to download, install, set-up options etc. on several contenders. I finally realized if I just go look at the better YouTube āhow to use this softwareā videos. E,G, here is one for Cam Studio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR-EHIAy4Rk. Autopan stuff is around 5 minute mark.
I use Snagit for screen capture. It costs $50 and does a decent, not great, job. You need a computer with some power to record full 1080 or larger screens. I see they offer a discount to educational institutions. It is one of the Techsmith products, the same company that provides Camtasia for $170. I believe it is worth checking out the Techsmith website to see if they have what you are looking for.
Be aware that it and probably the other recording programs cannot record DVDās or BluRays or other sources that block recording of their images.
One other option you may want to consider (which gets around the DVD/BluRay blocking) is to use your video camera to record directly from your screen, For best results, use a tripod to position the camera directly in front of the screen and record in a totally dark room.