Screen Recording - PC tivo
Screen recording is an incredibly useful invention. It allows you to show people what’s going on in your PC record tutorials of how to perform functions and document errors in software when they come up. In this article I am going to talk about a few screen recording tools that I use and why I use them for different purposes.
My Primary high quality screen recording tool is Camtasia (www.camtasia.com). Camtasia has great quality screen and audio recording capacities. It has a killer noise reduction function for using mediocre computer microphones in noisy areas. Camtasia also has a great editing wizard that allows you to quickly fix your recordings without having to start over again. The downside is, the system isn’t cheap. It’s a completely worthwhile expense if you are running a training group or find yourself making screen recordings all the time, but for a casual user it’s not economical.
Jing ( http://www.jingproject.com ) is a great tool for casual screen recording and image grabbing. It doesn’t have as many cool features as camtasia for editing or noise reduction, but it does have a super simple interface and very easy file uploading capacity. You can upload to a few services and also your own ftp location with the push of a button. This is great for those ” the button is here” conversations over the phone.
BB Flashback (http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/Home.aspx) is another cool screen recorder that has a very unique feature, it lets you run rolling recordings that don’t exceed a certain file size or recording length. This allows it to run like a tivo on your pc giving you time shift power over what you have done. I will often find myself hitting buttons in software to get something done and then forgetting what series of steps I went through to get something done. With bb flashback you can just rewind and see what you did. The company sells screen recording software for several specific purposes and has versions at different price points. Their developer version is designed for testers to produce perfect error reports including all kinds of relevant information. They also have an express version that is a great free alternative to camtasia. It provides more functionality than jing but less than the full software suites.
