Today I’m playing with Capture Fox, another screencasting tool. This one is a free add-on for Firefox. Like Screen Toaster, it’s very intuitive and has just a few simple settings.
Some features:
Records the action from your Firefox screen only or from your whole desktop.
Adjust the size of your Firefox screen to adjust the recording area.
Records audio.
Option to record in Low, Medium or High quality video.
Saves video to your hard drive as an .avi file. Files can easily be edited with MS MovieMaker or other video editing software. (more…)
ScreenToaster is a new (and free) browser-based screencasting tool. I tested this service when it was in beta last fall and was impressed with it then. I’m even more impressed now.
Some of the features:
Records action anywhere on your computer screen, whether in the browser or on your desktop.
Records full screen or a user defined rectangular area – easy to adjust the area.
Allows for insertion of a small video recording from your webcam if you want to have your smiling face shown narrating. I didn’t try this.
The audio quality is terrific and it’s easy to test your sound level before you start recording. (more…)
Have you ever picked up the phone, called a friend or colleague and said ‘go to xyz web site’ and then tried to say things like “click on that link at the top left”. “no not that one, the other big yellow button”, “see that thingie at the bottom” and so on. I have and it can be frustrating.
Flowgram is an interesting new service that I found out about today thanks to Greg Schwartz. It falls somewhere in the realm of screencasting services, though maybe we need a new term for this type of tool. (Maybe there already is a term?)
With Flowgram, you open up web pages, add highlighting to point out different parts of the page and add a narration to the pages. All this is done with live web pages.
When you share this with others, they see the live web pages with your highlighting in their browser window, with a small toolbar at the top of the window with start and pause controls. What’s really intriguing, and a bit confusing at first, is the ability to stop the presentation, go off and explore the web pages that are on the screen and then return to the Flowgram to resume the presentation.
I haven’t created any Flowgrams myself. The service is still in an invite-only beta version. I’ll be curious to see how this service develops. I can see it being very useful for quick instruction and sharing of content with others.
Wish I’d noticed this earlier today (Wednesday) but there’s still time to get this screencasting software for free through Giveaway of the Day.
Wondershare DemoCreator is a screen recording software package similar to Wink. I haven’t tested it out thoroughly, but after a brief test I can say I’m impressed. Glad to have a chance to get it for free, though this is one I might pay to upgrade.
In any case grab it while you can!
Installing it took a few tries. Here’s what worked for me:
– run activate.exe
– run setup.exe
– run activate.exe again
And on my Vista computer I had to run setup.exe again to get rid of the “demo only” banner that appeared in my screencast.
It was fairly intuitive to use, I created a short demo video of my browser window in about 5 minutes. Looks like it has lots of basic features. I don’t imagine it has everything that Camtasia and Captivate have, but this may be enough for many purposes.
For the upcoming screencasting classes in CT, I’ve put together a sample of a “slidecast” on Slideshare.net. Basically it’s a narrated Powerpoint slide show.
