Free Streaming Video Software What is it?
CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer
and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in
SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly
Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
Here are just a few ways you can use this software:
- You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
- Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most
frequently asked questions?
- You can create video tutorials for school or college class
- You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer
so you can show technical support people
- You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
- You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover
on your favourite software program, before you forget them
“Nick, here
is what I think I'll do; rather than fork out the $300.00 bucks for [CENSORED], I'll just keep using CamStudio.
“I am a self-employed consultant
that works in the public safety community (cops, fire, ems, dispatch etc). What I have planned is to use CamStudio to capture on screen video for
training vids.
“Thanks for a great product and your help!”
|
Don't like the sound of your voice? No problem.
CamStudio can also add high-quality, anti-aliased (no jagged edges)
screen captions to your recordings in seconds and with the unique Video
Annotation feature you can even personalise your videos by including
a webcam movie of yourself "picture-in-picture"
over your desktop.
And if all that wasn't enough, CamStudio also comes with its own Lossless
Codec that produces crystal clear results with a much smaller filesize
compared with other more popular codecs, like Microsoft Video 1.
You have total control over the output of your video: you can choose
to use custom cursors, to record the whole screen or just a section of
it and can reduce or increase the quality of the recording depending
on if you want smaller videos (for emailing to people, for instance)
or you can have "best quality" ones for burning onto CD/DVD.
But all of these features would be worthless if CamStudio wasn't easy
to use ... fortunately that's not the case. CamStudio can be learned
in a matter of minutes and comes with a comprehensive built-in helpfile,
so if you
do manage to get stuck, you can simply hit "Help" and
get the answers you need.
So where can I get it and how much does it cost?
You can download and use it completely free - yep - completely 100%
free for your personal and commercial projects as CamStudio and the Codec
are released under the GPL (for more details on this license,
click
here.)
There are no royalties or any monies to pay - although if you do use
it for a commercial product, I wouldn't say no to a copy of whatever
you produce
| Download Links Latest Version: CamStudio 2.6 (Build r294)
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To download CamStudio, click the top big green button and you'll be taken to a page where you can get the latest version.
The same procedure to download the CamStudio Lossless Video Codec.
To manually install the codec, download the zipfile by clicking the
small green button above, extract
the contents of the zipfile to a folder using your preferred unzip
software (7-Zip, WinZip, WinRAR, etc.), then right click the
camcodec.inf file and select
Install from the context menu that appears.
CamStudio's History
Over the last few months, quite a people have asked me about CamStudio's
history and the confusion with the V2.1 that's around, so I thought I'd
explain what the situation is, as I understand it ...
CamStudio was originally released by a company called RenderSoft who
were subsequently bought by a company called eHelp who used some of the
technology in their program, RoboDemo ...
Some time later, eHelp was bought by Macromedia who wanted RoboDemo
(which was to become Captivate) ...
Knowing that CamStudio did some of the stuff RoboDemo did for free (mainly
export to streaming Flash), they released a newer version
which fixed some bugs but most importantly, removed
certain features. Gone was the ability to create SWFs, added was the
requirement to register to use it, and over time, links to the various
webpages that had CamStudio and its source code, became broken.
However, I managed to find an earlier version complete with
the related CamStudio video codec (comparable to Techsmith's excellent
TSCC), the source code for both and just put the website up so people
could download them ...
Issues
A number of people have mentioned having trouble viewing SWF videos
generated by CamStudio. It turns out there's a bug which means you can't
see anything if you try watching them with Netscape or Firefox (Internet
Explorer works fine) ...
The next update (2.5) will fix this but until then, here's a temporary
workaround:
Open the related HTML to the SWF you've just
generated and look for the line starting with the "EMBED
SRC" command ...
Change the Width and Height values in this line
to match values in the line starting with "OBJECT
CLASSID".
Save the file and you should be good to go ...
|
I seem to be getting a lot of questions about a registration
code ... the version of CamStudio available from this site (v2.0) doesn't
require registration AND has more features, so uninstall v2.1 from your
system, download and install v2.0 from here and you're good to go!
If your computer's memory or virtual memory usage starts climbing rapidly
when viewing a SWF authored by CamStudio to the point when your PC locks
up so you have to reboot it, recreate the SWF from your source AVI file
and in SWF Producer, make sure you select the Advanced tab and check
the Memory Management tickbox (Manage Flash player internal memory).
That should sort the problem out.
Thanks to Ben Ward for the fix. News
AudioFlash is
audio recording software that will let you record a message or take any pre-recorded audio and
put it on any webpage with some nifty Flash play, pause and stop
buttons.
Just wanted to let you know, I've released another tool called
Podcast Autocue, which you can download as well from here:
Podcast
Software CamStudio Updates
If you'd like to be notified when I have some news related to CamStudio,
signup to the forum (link opens a new window) you'll be "in
the loop" ...
Spread The Word ...
I'd love to get CamStudio into the Top 10 Most Popular downloads at
SourceForge ... for no other reason than ... um ... I'd like to, so tell
as many people as possible ...
If you'd like to link back to this site, here's some example code you
can use:
CamStudio - Free Streaming Video Desktop Recording SoftwareA Plea For Help ...
I've got big plans
for CamStudio and want to continously improve it and the Codec as well
... but I'm not a programmer.
The potential for CamStudio to be used as a professional training and
support tool is huge and not just in the information technology and internet
marketing arenas, but also in diverse markets and tasks like home eduation,
recording online geneological research, keeping a video record of special
offer prices on your favourite snowboarding (or whatever) website - you
get the idea ...
It doesn't matter if you're at home in Las Vegas
or on an Alaskan Cruise - if you've got a laptop or PC you can use CamStudio.
So if there are any Visual C++ programmers
out there that have Flash, video encoding and codec experience who'd like
a challenge, please get in touch.
So, at some point in the near future I'd like to start accepting donations
so any coders that work on this project will get some kind of financial
reward in addition to the warm, fuzzy feeling they get from helping to
resurrect this cracking piece of software ... so if you're feeling generous,
please get in touch at the email address above and let me know.
I'd also love to get your feedback on CamStudio ... what you liked,
what you thought sucked and what you think is missing.
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