Friday, May 6, 2011

What's a good screen capturing tool?

Camtasia seems to be used a lot, but I wanted to ask you guys out there what you would recommend for recording what you're doing in Maya (PC).

17 comments:

Emma said...

I know a lot of guys in my class use CamStudio, especially for when they've been rigging and modelling in maya. It's pretty easy to navigate, and it's free! :) you can check it out here: http://camstudio.org/

Fes said...

Second Emma's recommendation. CamStudio is awesome. I've been using it to do small tips and tricks tutorial on the PC. And it's free.

Jim said...

I like Debut Video Capture Software lot... weird name but they have a free version with less encoding options that works fine for me.

Kyle Kenworthy said...

also Fraps works pretty well

Jerzy Perez said...

absolutely... CAMTASIA!

Ray said...

Another vote for Camtasia, it's worked well for me so far.

Though, I have used Camstudio before, it's free and it does it's job, though sometimes it gives you weird stuttering issues (not sure if anyone else encountered this) even though I have everything set up right. :/

Bruno Andrade said...

if you want something simple and that works go with camstudio, very nice tool and it´s free as other said.
Camtasia is algo good, but if you dont want to fiddle with so many options, camstudio is quite simple.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Thanks for all the tips! CamStudio looks interesting. And I'm assuming all of you bought the full version of Camtasia or are you talking about another specific version?

Unknown said...

Definitely Camtasia is the best choice if you're willing to spend a few bucks. It just works, the quality and framerate is very good, and the encoding is super fast.

Regis Le Roy said...

i use camtasia, still version 3, but it is the best tool for desktop captures. If you need something from a DVD or videogame or so i go to FRAPS, this captures it uncompressed.

ak said...

I press the Print Screen key repeatedly very quickly! :)

Joking aside, can we expect some kind of tutorials or work flow videos from you as a rsult of this enquiry?

Morgan Loomis said...

I know you asked about PC software, but just in case anyone's on a mac, Screenflow is the best I've come across.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Yep ak, that's the plan!

Thanks Morgan, that's good to know!

Olivier Ladeuix said...

Camtasia seem to be the best recorder for Desktop capture as the techsmith codec seems to be the most optimised for that task.

I think I did several tests against CamStudio and Camtasia generated the best picture with the least amount of artefacts. Camtasia is so expensive though.

For 5 minutes recording you can also use Jing. An alternate method would be to use a screenshot capture sofware like .... hum I can't remember the one I use, I will update this once on my desktop... which you set to capture the screen every 2 seconds for example. That's what I do for timelapse videos.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Thanks Olivier, that's a lot of good information!

Olivier Ladeuix said...

here we go, I usually use Irfanview to automatically capture screenshots as uncompressed still pictures then create a timelapse video by speeding up the image sequence in Quicktime pro or Premiere. The final video never look as smooth as a video capture but unlike the latter, this doesn't require a very powerful computer

Olivier Ladeuix said...

actually I have a new one for you ;-)

I spent a bit more time with the free Camstudio and tried their losseless codec they offer and is perfect for desktop capture at 25fps. One issue though, Premiere is not happy with it. I will try to do an capture with no compression next time²