A Thorough Look At CamStudio As An Effective Screencasting Tool

A Thorough Look At CamStudio As An Effective Screencasting Tool

Screencasts are those videos depicting a shot of a computer screen.  There are many applications for such a program such as tutorials and software reviews.  It is also often used to record video chat conversations.  There are quite a few tools for creating screencasts.  Today I would like to review another free screencasting tool that has actually been around for awhile.  It’s free, good at what it does and offers several key features.

The purpose of this article is to review some of those key features. So, buckle in and come along for the ride and see if CamStudio is the tool for your screencasting needs. I will touch on 4 different key features. When you try CamStudio, you will see that there are also other features and I think you’ll be pleased with them, but for the sake of this article I will be focusing on 4 key features of this free screencasting tool.

Regions

CamStudio allows you several different options when it comes to the region of your screen being recorded.  Choose “Region” from the Region dropdown menu and upon clicking Record, you will be able to draw out the square area you would like to see recorded.  Choose “Fixed Region” and you will be able to enter numbers indicating possition and size of the desired screen recording area.  Choose “Full Screen” and the whole screen will be recorded.

You also have the option to turn on autopan which will allow the recording area to follow the cursor around.

This will allow you to record a smaller screen area, effectively zooming in on what you’re working on, and still be able to use the whole screen.

Cursors

One difficulty that arises while creating screencasts is the difficulty to see the mouse cursor.  CamStudio offers some options to combat this issue.

As you can see in the screenshot above, you have several options such as using a different cursor, highlighting the cursor, and even hiding the cursor altogether.

Audio

There are several options with this free screencasting tool when it comes to the audio.  If you are planning on adding some kind of audio later on, you can choose to not record any audio.  However, you can also chose to either record your voice through the microphone or record the sound coming through your computer.

Screen annotations

CamStudio also gives you the ability to add screen annotations, little memos, speech balloons, arrows, etc. that can be added to a screencast to bring attention to areas of the screen.  Creating the annotations is quite simple but there is a bit of a trick to adding them to the screencast.  Don’t worry, we’ll go through it to make sure it isn’t all that difficult.

Find the screen annotations option under the tools menu.  Choose something from the list and double-click it.  Right-clicking on the balloon, cloud, etc. will also give you some needed options such as edit text, edit image, edit transparency and resize.  There are also options to save and clone the annotation.  Unless you want to mess around creating these things in the middle of the recording, you may want to save them for quicker access.

If you want to add the annotation to your screencast, simply pause the recording, go to the annotation you saved, place it where you want it, and continue recording until you want it to disappear.

Camstudio runs on Windows only.

It’s your turn to give your opinion and/or advice!  What tools do you use for creating screencasts?  In what ways to you use screencasting tools?  What are your thoughts about CamStudio?