Capture Fox – Firefox add-on for Screencasting

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.
  • Upload .avi to YouTube  or other free hosting service. From there the video can be embedded on other web pages.

Compared with Screen Toaster?

  • I like Screen Toaster’s instant hosting and storage of a high quality video.  And the ability to quickly embed that high quality video on other web pages.
  • To make Capture Fox screencasts available, you’ll need to upload to a free hosting service. The resulting videos will likely lose some quality in the conversion.
  • Screen Toaster lets you download a .avi copy of the video to your hard drive, but it doesn’t save your audio track.
  • Capture Fox preserves your audio and saves your files directly to your computer.
  • If you wanted to record several short segments then string them together into one longer video with MS Movie Maker, it would be simpler to use Capture Fox.

Which one to use? I like them both. You’ll need to decide which one  best fits your needs. There are other free screencasting tools available and if I have the time I’ll do some more tests and post my notes for them as well.

Capture Fox test video embedded from YouTube

8 thoughts on “Capture Fox – Firefox add-on for Screencasting”

  1. Hi Polly!
    Any sense of which of these is more Mac compatible? Sounds like post-production on the Capture Fox is for the PC? Can one use either one with Mac video software (iMovie, iDVD?)

    Hope things are well with you!
    Carol

  2. Hi Carol, Looks like the CaptureFox addon is just for PC’s. Screen Toaster should work on both. If you test it out, please leave a comment so we’ll all know how it works! As for editing .avi files on a Mac, again I’m not sure, but you might need to convert them to .mov for the iMovie? Really winging it on that though. Oh how I’d love to have a mac to test all this out for you. 🙂

  3. I thought CaptureFox was great to use, but I ended up with a 2 minute video that was too enormous to send via email or to even upload to dropbox. Is there some other screencast software that produces a smaller, more manageable file format?
    Thanks, Petter

  4. Petter – Have you tried Screen Toaster? It’s another new-ish browser based tool that includes hosting for the screencasts. Wink, a free desktop application is also nice. Of course, if you want to spend money, camtasia and captivate are very popular.

    And thanks for commenting here, that led me back to your blog, which I will now start following. Thx.

  5. Hi Polly,

    I have tried Camstudio and am trying Jing now. I am not crazy about Camstudio, annotating is very clumsy and Jing only allows 5 minute of screencasting. I am going to try both CaptureFox and Screen toaster, but I love Firefox so am hoping it will be the winner.

    I want to be ready to get a tutorial together for our customers once we launch the new website.

    Thanks for the great post!
    ~ J

  6. Librarychik – hope you’ll report back when you’ve tested these. Will be interested to hear what you think.

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