Hello I've been looking to take some video of some applications I've been developing in order to show it to other people. I've been looking around for some video capturing software and one that a coworker of mines recommended was snag it, but it looks like for me to purchase the video license for it is 300$, Iam not opposed to purchasing one but 300$ is more then i would like to spend, and I'm also a little weary of downloading the first application I see on a random google search.

So basically can anyone recommend me one?

Fraps is excellent and pretty cheap. The video quality is pretty good although it does slow down execution on games quite a lot.


Having said that, I was about to link to Windows Media Encoder as an example of what I use to the convert the AVIs into WMVs for uploading but it looks like maybe WME is now supporting screen capture, or maybe always did and I was too dumb to notice.

[EDIT] Hmm, well it does but the quality seems a bit iffy. Worth having a better look into before paying for Fraps though.

If you're doing general desktop or application captures, Taksi is relatively good. For a more low-level approach, UScreenCapture is a capture filter that can be used with any other recording/capturing software.

Neither are great for full-screen/3D applications, though; for those you'd probably be better off with something like Fraps (commercial software).

I'd highly recommend Camtasia Studio but it might be exactly the $300 software you were talking about. My next suggestion would be to go to download.com and try a few of the higher rated video capture tools there, free or not. Download.com tests the software on their site for spyware so anything you get from there should be safe. They also have reviews, which should help.

I also recommend Camtasia; I've purchased a license myself, and use it reasonably frequently. It's $300, as you say, but it's the only program I've found that records decent video. I still use a separate NLE to edit the video afterwards, but the one provided might be enough for you if you have modest needs.