Lightweight Screen Video Capture

Hi Antionius...

You can google all day long for freeware video capture tools and the discussion and debate of such tools could drag on forever. My advice would be to skip the whole thing. Take yourself to www.techsmith.com and download JING. It's free and it does screen capture of static and video images (limited to 5 minutes or less). Here's a link http://www.techsmith.com/jing-features.html

Of course, if you'd like the next step up... go to the same website and get SnagIt. SnagIt is easily one of the best screen capture softwares ever produced. It captures static and video images just like Jing but it adds a host of incredibly useful features. You can snap a picture and have it automatically cropped and added to a powerpoint presentation, word document, or a host of other files. It can even do text recognition. You can grab a snapshot of a PDF file or a webpage and it will convert it to editable text. It's insane.... and it's about $49.95. If you're a college student they practically GIVE it away with additional discounts.

If you want the Deluxe model... then stay on the same website and look for Camtasia. Every video I produce is done using Camtasia. I'm quite certain PTC uses it, too. It's excellent, easy to use software for about $300 (free 30-day trial). Unless you need editing capabilities, you can likely get what you need from Jing. If not, you can certainly get a ton of features with the low-cost SnagIt. And if you want to produce your own line of professionally edited videos, use Camtasia.

Now then, I need to go pick up my check from the TechSmith people for being their spokesperson.

But seriously, save yourself the headache of investigating 900,000 pieces of freeware from cnet.com and try out some of these products.

Thanks!

-Brian

Antonius,

In addition to Brian's recommendations, here's a list of resources compiled by other community members, http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-1382

-Dan