Free Alternative to Screen Capture Camtasia

The best screen capture software on the market is Camtasia Studio, there is no denying in that. It has a lot of advanced featured, both on the screen capturing and on the editing process. The problem is that the software is not cheap. The latest version costs $299.

If you are going to produce videos from your screen frequently, it could be worth the investment. If you just want to record your desktop sessions once in a while and to experiment with it, though, a free version should suffice right?

Well, thanks to the open source movement now you have one. CamStudio is an open source alternative to Camstasia, and the project just released version 2.5, which solved many bugs that were present on the older versions.

It does not bring all the features of the paid software, but it should get the job done, so give it a try.

Daniel Scocco on July 16, 2008 Subscribe to our RSS Feed

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16 Responses to “Free Alternative to Screen Capture Camtasia”

Nathan Rice on July 16th, 2008 11:56 am

Also, for those of you who really like Camtasia, but don’t want to spend the money, Techsmith offers a free version they call Jing. Jing has some limitations in comparison to Camtasia, but it is still very nice.
http://www.jingproject.com/

Nathan
Technotip.org on July 16th, 2008 12:35 pm

Hi Daniel,
its very nice info, but I would like to see a review of this software from you.
I have tried using many such softwares, but I always had problem with the audio recording. Audio will be very low in all recording.I have very good mic and audio system, but still.
Todd Andrews on July 16th, 2008 12:44 pm

Good stuff, thanks
LearningNerd on July 16th, 2008 1:13 pm

I love CamStudio! I use it for all my video tutorials.

I’ve found the best way to make it more professional is not to use the Flash format option, but to record and save as AVI files and then stick those into a video editor. You can then edit the screencast like any other video, as if it was from your video camera.

CamStudio lets you record voice and video at the same time, but I find the sound comes out better if I record the voiceover separately in the free program Audacity, and then add the voice to the video afterwards.
Bilingual Blogger on July 16th, 2008 1:24 pm

This doesn’t work for Mac. Does anyone know of a free alternative for Mac?
Daniel Scocco on July 16th, 2008 2:13 pm

@Nathan, didnt know about the Jing project, thanks for sharing.

@LearningNerd, I need to test recording the audio separately. On Camtasia I find it works good enough though.

@Bilingual Blogger, not sure, lets hope some Mac users will share if they know.
JACKIE JACKSON on July 16th, 2008 2:20 pm

‘Screen Capture Professional’ is another great option, and importantly free as well. Should try it !
Rajaie AlKorani on July 16th, 2008 5:33 pm

I am constantly looking for software like this, thanks for sharing.
Erica DeWolf on July 16th, 2008 9:50 pm

This is a great screen capture alternative! I was lucky enough to find a free version of Camtasia out there (it was for a limited amount of time), and use that- it works great and I love it.

I heard that the newest version of Camtasia, though, is incredible. My dad has a copy- I should get on and play around with it a little…
Beth on July 16th, 2008 11:02 pm

Thank you for this post! I have Camtasia 3.0 and find it to be a wonderful product, but to find it in Open Source! Now I can recommend it to people who would really benefit from CamStudio and can’t think of affording Camtasia. I’m most anxious to try the voice changer.

I agree that Jing is a good product, but the video is limited to 5 minutes. I like having choices…thanks for CamStudio!
abhishek on July 17th, 2008 4:37 am

didn’t knew about it…thanks for sharing.
Thierry on July 17th, 2008 8:37 am

I use Screenflick and I am very happy with it. It works on Mac (10.5 compatible), offers a lot of options you don’t find in other softwares (it records in the movies the shortcuts that you are typing…) and though it’s not free, 29 $ is a bargain (especially at the actual Dollars/euro conversion rate). ScreenRecord and Snapz Pro are also interesting but Screenflick is my favourite and open source alternatives did not manage to convince me.

http://www.araelium.com/screenflick/
LiviuX on July 17th, 2008 1:45 pm

It’s really good, if you want a simple program.
Nathan C. on July 30th, 2008 10:00 pm

If you have every used captivate by adobe then you will like wink. This works very well, but the narration can be low, so when I use it I also use audacity to make voice overs. It can be exported to variety of formats.

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/