Free screen capture tool: CamStudio

Yesterday I gave a 2 hour presentation to all our new developers about some of the tools we use. Unfortunately, I neglected to mention one of them. Rather than schedule another meeting for a 5 minute topic I decided to record a quick screen cast.

I thought it would be quick, anyway.

I've done this in the past using Snagit which has a video capture function. But for whatever reason the act of recording the screen caused my actions to suffer a terrible delay. For example, click a menu item and wait 45 seconds for the menu to react. Not good. I lost about an hour trying to get the system to work correctly while recording without success.

Over lunch a coworker suggested using a free tool called CamStudio. I installed it, changed a couple of settings to record audio and boom! Done. Free and easy. Two of my favorite four letter words.