So, until this point I have been using Microsoft’s Expressions Encoder to do video capture for tutorials on this site. I am an MSDN subscriber and already had the Expression Studio installed, so even though I was really (…….. really ) pushing the bounds of my license I went ahead and used it. Then I ran into a pretty big snag, see the encoder that ships with my Expression Ultimate version is the “free” version, which you can download here. It is an impressive product, that makes for very small file sizes that are surprisingly detailed. That is, until you hit the 10 minute mark. That… is a sizable gotcha.
So, I started looking into alternatives. Camtasia Studio is easily the big player in this space, but with a pretty severe 350$ price tag. The before mentioned Expressions Encoder can be had for a more modest but still too high 200$. The I found Cam Studio which is a free and open source alternative, but it really wasn’t a viable option. My first test was 15 seconds long and a little over a GB in size! Plus frankly, it looked awful. I just don’t think Cam Studio is set up to do HD video. I played around with various codecs and settings but frankly never got anything that approached usable.
I was really starting to fret that I would have to put out a couple hundred bucks to simply capture video and frankly me and my money are rather tight friends and don’t want to part so easily. Then a moment of serendipity occurred… I came across a shareware product called FastStone Capture which effortlessly recorded my screen, at > 15FPS directly to WMV. After a minute of recording at 1080p I was well under 20MB! What is so serendipitous about that you ask? Ironically enough, I had already purchased this product a couple years back for helping me with screenshots! SCORE.
Anyways, if you are looking to do video/screen capture on a Windows machine, I highly recommend you check out FastStone. Comes with a fully featured trial and is only 20$ if you register it. Keep in mind, it is NOT a video editor and isn’t even in the same league as Expressions Encoder or Camtasia for features, but if you want to just capture the screen in a high quality but small size, this is the best product I’ve seen. Actually as I am using Blender for NLE and not Expressions, my work flow just became a heck of a lot faster, as I lost an encoding step!
Totally Off Topic