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#1
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
With no limitations and can handle live videos on screens to record in
web browsers. Also, it has to work well on a decade old updated 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 PC with 6 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon 4870 video card (512 MB of RAM). -- "But, you may argue, our uniqueness is so extreme! More extreme than the platypus which looks like a collection of leftover parts? More unique than the societal honeybee with its division of labor? More unique than the communist ants who keep aphids as farm animals?" --John Logan Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly. /\___/\ If crediting, then use Ant nickname and URL/link. / /\ /\ \ Axe ANT from its address if e-mailing privately. | |o o| | http://antfarm.ma.cx / http://antfarm.home.dhs.org \ _ / ( ) |
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#2
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
On Sun, 11 Nov 2018 09:48:45 -0800, Ant wrote:
With no limitations and can handle live videos on screens to record in web browsers. Also, it has to work well on a decade old updated 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 PC with 6 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon 4870 video card (512 MB of RAM). I favor FastStone's FSCapture, but it's not free. Try this: http://www.gilisoft.com/free-screen-recorder.htm I've used Gilisoft products in the past, and they are reasonably good (their RAMDisk crashes a lot). But their video products are OK. Not sure what the limitations are vs the PRO version. If you do try it, some feedback would be nice. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#3
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
On Sun, 11 Nov 2018 17:07:31 -0200, Shadow wrote:
Not sure what the limitations are vs the PRO version. If you do try it, some feedback would be nice. It's a good question of which free screen recorder is best on Windows. Of course, the limitations matter greatly, where o It should be truly free (open source is good, no trialware accepted) o It should have zero ads o It should record any length of time o It should have no watermark o It should work offline o It should handle common formats o It should not require registration o etc. I don't use them, where I would ask folks who use them to comment since we learn most from users of the software whose opinions we trust. I wonder if one of the freeware classics (like vlc, irfanview?, ffmpeg? shotcut?) can be used in a script to capture the screen in enough screens per second to count as video? What would a minimum number of screens per second would we need anyway? Googling, I see these (I searched for "freeware screen recorder windows"): The best free screen recorder 2018 | TechRadar https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-screen-recorder 1. OBS Studio https://obsproject.com/download 2. Flashback Express https://www.flashbackrecorder.com/express/ 3. Debut Video Capture https://www.nchsoftware.com/capture/index.html 4. ShareX https://getsharex.com/ Generally, I look at a few "best" lists to see which overlap. To that end, let's look at this next Windows freeware listing... 8 Free Screen Recording Software For Windows 10 | 2018 Edition https://fossbytes.com/best-screen-recorder-windows-free/ 1. VLC https://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.php 2. Game DVR https://github.com/FunkyFr3sh/GameDVR_Config 3. OBS Studio https://obsproject.com/download 4. Flashback Express https://www.flashbackrecorder.com/express/ 5. ApowerREC https://www.apowersoft.com/record-all-screen 3. TinyTake (5m) https://tinytake.com/tinytake-download 7. XSplit Broadcaster https://www.xsplit.com/broadcaster Well, that's scary in that there isn't a whole lot of overlap. That's generally bad news, when it comes to functional freeware. Moving to a third listing, we need a better venn overlap... 5 Best Free Screen Recorder For Windows of 2018 https://www.viralhax.com/best-free-screen-recorder/ 1. ApowerREC https://www.apowersoft.com/record-all-screen 3. TinyTake (5m) https://tinytake.com/tinytake-download 3. Icecream (10m webm) https://icecreamapps.com/Screen-Recorder/ 4. XSplit Broadcaster https://www.xsplit.com/broadcaster 5. CamStudio https://camstudio.org/ Let's try more, because we need more overlap to save test efforts: Top 10 Screen Recording Software for Windows https://elearningbrothers.com/blog/top-10-screen-recording-software-for-windows/ 1. DVDVideoSoft https://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products/dvd/Free-Screen-Video-Recorder.htm 2. CamStudio https://camstudio.org/ 3. Ezvid https://www.ezvid.com 4. TinyTake (5m) https://tinytake.com/tinytake-download 5. SmartPixel (watermark) http://www.smartpixel.com/ 6. Icecream (10m webm) https://icecreamapps.com/Screen-Recorder/ 7. Screencast-o-matic (15m, watermark) https://screencast-o-matic.com/ 8. iSpring Free Cam (wmv) https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-free-cam Let's try one more, because the overlap can save time & effort: Best Free Screen Recorders, Lifewire https://www.lifewire.com/best-free-screen-recorders-4151715 1. OBS Studio https://obsproject.com/download 2. Flashback Express https://www.flashbackrecorder.com/express/ 3. TinyTake (5m) https://tinytake.com/tinytake-download 4. Icecream (10m webm) https://icecreamapps.com/Screen-Recorder/ Finally we begin to have some overlap (assuming independent reviews). Which do you trust? Dunno. Everyone loves VLC, so that would be the first I'd test. But I'd defer, as always, to someone I trust who uses this stuff daily. That lessens the immense cost of freeware (which is the cost of picking the best one). |
#4
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
Ant wrote:
With no limitations and can handle live videos on screens to record in web browsers. Also, it has to work well on a decade old updated 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 PC with 6 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon 4870 video card (512 MB of RAM). "can handle live videos" That's a problem right there. It's one thing to find some piece-of-crap recorder with a convenient feature set. It's quite another to solve the sampling rate problem and the non-linear drift of video and audio in the time base. I've got recordings here, that I couldn't "re-align" the video and audio to fix it later. I couldn't even tell how many seconds the audio was off by, it was that bad. Movie playback in a browser, doesn't use VSYNC. Screen recording doesn't use VSYNC. It typically accesses the double buffer that feeds the screen. The sampling jitter is so bad, that if you run the (asynchronous) capture speed 3x faster than normal, the number-of-identical-frames in a row varies from 1 to 5. This means that the hardware does a ****-poor job of sampling the browser video playback. By all means, play with the various tools. It won't matter whether you pay $0 for a tool, or $39.95 for a tool, the output will suck. I would love to be proven wrong. ******* When recording content, the programs creating the content should have "hardware acceleration" turned off. For example, if you were recording Adobe Flash video, right-click the render surface and bring up the Preferences. Untick hardware acceleration. Only then will your run-of-the-mill recorder get something other than a black or green square. The program FRAPS could record from all three render planes. You could record games with it. It "cheats" by injecting a DLL into each and every Program Files folder. However, Win8 and Win10 have "Hollywood-grade armor", including the ability to limit GRIGRAB to 30FPS. FRAPS might run OK in Windows 7 (Windows 7 would be my First Choice for this project). If you're lucky, there might be a trial you can test, before spending money on it. Your AV will *hate it* when FRAPS installs, as the AV will think FRAPS is putting the computer "under attack". You'll have to turn off real-time scanning during the installation. But FRAPS still isn't likely to solve any sampling-theorem problems. What FRAPS might allow, is leaving hardware acceleration enabled or something. It's really a question of what the "interception method" that FRAPS uses, is effective against the various video wrapper softwares used out there (BrightCove or similar). https://support.brightcove.com/overv...ent-protection ******* If you run the HDMI connector on your computer into an HDMI capture card, that will capture based on VSYNC. The capture card will be synchronous to the frame rate the video card is using (somewhere between 59 and 61 FPS, and a function of the modeline perhaps - the number doesn't have to be precisely 60.00Hz or 59.94Hz either). However, this still doesn't solve the problem of the "sloppy job" the web browser, the Flash container, the Flash itself causes. Some cards were limited to 1920p30, but you keep seeing products claiming to break that barrier and do 1920p60. Maybe $500 would buy a product capable of p60. You need a Chinese HDCP removal box, for any capture card to capture HDCP protected content. ******* Modern video cards have furthered the study of protecting content. There are video cards now which prevent making copies of video card internal memory. And this means the "good guys" are quite far ahead of the people trying to copy content. When I started playing with this stuff, I naively thought "it would be easy". I guess it all depends on what you plan to do with the output, as to what captures will be acceptable to you. See the section on "Malicious software" before you get too excited by some of these products. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamStudio Paul |
#5
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
In message , Arlen_Holder
writes: [] It's a good question of which free screen recorder is best on Windows. Of course, the limitations matter greatly, where o It should be truly free (open source is good, no trialware accepted) o It should have zero ads o It should record any length of time o It should have no watermark (Or let _you_ specify your own, as the one mentioned in another post in this thread does) o It should work offline o It should handle common formats o It should not require registration o etc. A good wishlist (-:! [] I wonder if one of the freeware classics (like vlc, irfanview?, ffmpeg? shotcut?) can be used in a script to capture the screen in enough screens per second to count as video? What would a minimum number of screens per second would we need anyway? [] An interesting seed for discussion. It depends what you're going to use the capture software _for_. If it's actually capturing streaming video, then see Paul's post - but, in general, "if I was going there, I wouldn't start from here" - screen capture software is not the right _tool_ for that. So what _are_ you going to use it for? I'd say mainly for making "how to do" videos. [Note that I've avoided a contentious term there (-:.] Since we've separated the light source from the frame rate, we can realise that a lot lower frame rate can be used. In the days of CRTs, we needed a _refresh_ rate greater than - it varies between people, but I'd say at _least_ about 45 Hz - frame rate to avoid _flicker_. But (and even with CRTs, provided you had a _refresh_ rate different from a _frame_ rate), you can have a frame rate of quite low - I'd say below 10 a second - even if you wanted to give the impression of movement, except for very complex or detailed scenes. If you're only wanting to show how to do something in software, one a second is probably sufficient - though if you want to at least give the impression of mouse pointer movement, I'd go for three or four a second (and with pointer trails turned on). The one time I wanted to do such a capture (to show an energy company how their website worked, or rather didn't!), I used something called Debut Video Capture software (works under 7, but I'm not recommending it - or not, for that matter), and the hardware I had at the time _did_ produce only one or two frames per second. (Which sufficed for the purpose.) So, apart from capturing streams (see above) and making "how-to" clips, is there anything _else_ people might _want_ to do with capture software (including the above suggestion of using IrfanView or other to just take pictures fast)? -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf So, Heresy be damned (well, it would be, wouldn't it?). Radio Times 24-30 July 2010 (page 24) |
#6
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
"Shadow" wrote
| Try this: | | http://www.gilisoft.com/free-screen-recorder.htm | I just downloaded it. Clean. I just unpacked the Inno installer and it seems to work OK. But then it immediately tried to call: 184.173.250.45 SoftLayer Technologies Then the window came up and asked me to buy or "evaluate". That's sleazy. Even the download name calls it the free version. But the program is not free. It's just a trial version. I never tried it to see whether it works. Years ago I had a nice little program that came with WordPro 96, which I got free from a magazine CD. (Back when computer magazines actually had CDs with good, free software, fonts, etc. I still use buttonizer plug-ins in Paint Shop Pro that I got from one of those CDs. The WordPro movie maker easily made little movies of desktop activity and packed in the player for sending to others. But I think it was 9x-only. |
#7
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
"Charlie+" wrote
| Try BB Flashback Express - free version for personal use, register to | get key. C+ I just tried it. Mixed results. First, it's too big. A 21 MB installer. 109 MB installed (!) Then it worked but couldn't save to mp4 without getting QuickTime. (I'm definitely not installing Apple software. They're among the worst for spyware, while Timmy Cook squeals that he's the only moral, privacy-respecting CEO in tech. Spyware is bad enough. Baldfaced lying about it is worse.) So I resaved the proprietary file format as AVI. That played OK, but it put a sizable black rectangle in the middle of the screen saying it was an evaluation. Though I was able to minimize the black box the next time I recorded. After recording I had to open the player to re-open the proprietary file and resave as AVI. (Later to use Avidemux, I suppose, if I wanted an mp4. So two complex operations just to get a compact file format.) Spyware functionality called 3 different IPs: Recorder: 130.159.196.117 University of Strathclyde, UK LogSysServer.exe: 104.27.150.13 CloudFlare Player: 176.34.137.58 Cloudfront on Amazon web services, Ireland This one tried to send every few seconds while playing back. The destination is an Amazon storage service, especially for caching videos. It appears the program was trying to upload the video. So.... It works. But it takes up a very bloated 109 MB and that's without even being able to save to mp4. And it's rather extreme spyware. This kind of software is handy to have for giving help to others, but it seems like it should be so hard to find a simple, non-spyware, compact program that just stitches together screenshots and makes an mp4. |
#8
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 09:04:58 -0500, "Mayayana"
wrote: "Shadow" wrote | Try this: | | http://www.gilisoft.com/free-screen-recorder.htm | I just downloaded it. Clean. I just unpacked the Inno installer and it seems to work OK. Yes, I do that too. And eliminate anything that looks like a downloader. But then it immediately tried to call: 184.173.250.45 SoftLayer Technologies Then the window came up and asked me to buy or "evaluate". That's sleazy. Even the download name calls it the free version. But the program is not free. It's just a trial version. I never tried it to see whether it works. Yes, well, I automatically block anything like that with my firewall. And trace it, so I can undo anything "extra" it might have done (with Gilisoft, usually only a few benign registry keys and some entries in App data or whatever). Do you mean I'm going to have to do it myself ? OK. I will. []'s Years ago I had a nice little program that came with WordPro 96, which I got free from a magazine CD. (Back when computer magazines actually had CDs with good, free software, fonts, etc. I still use buttonizer plug-ins in Paint Shop Pro that I got from one of those CDs. The WordPro movie maker easily made little movies of desktop activity and packed in the player for sending to others. But I think it was 9x-only. -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#9
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
"Ant" wrote
| With no limitations and can handle live videos on screens to record in | web browsers. Also, it has to work well on a decade old updated 64-bit | W7 HPE SP1 PC with 6 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon 4870 video card (512 MB of | RAM). I just found this: CamStudio https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/camstudio.html Reasonable size. Free, open source. Works on XP. Doesn't call home. Has limited editing tools and a help file. (The help is a bit funky, but informative.) Can only save to AVI. That can be converted to SWF but another program would be needed to save to mp4. I'm posting the MajorGeeks link because the website doesn't have a real download. The download there is a small kickoff installer that then wants to go online to get files. I was able to convert the AVI to mp4 in VLC easily, but for some reason the video is diagonal after conversion. I don't know what's doing that. (AVI is far to big to leave as a format for most uses.) |
#10
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
Mayayana wrote:
"Ant" wrote | With no limitations and can handle live videos on screens to record in | web browsers. Also, it has to work well on a decade old updated 64-bit | W7 HPE SP1 PC with 6 GB of RAM and ATI Radeon 4870 video card (512 MB of | RAM). I just found this: CamStudio https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/camstudio.html Reasonable size. Free, open source. Works on XP. Doesn't call home. Has limited editing tools and a help file. (The help is a bit funky, but informative.) Can only save to AVI. That can be converted to SWF but another program would be needed to save to mp4. I'm posting the MajorGeeks link because the website doesn't have a real download. The download there is a small kickoff installer that then wants to go online to get files. I was able to convert the AVI to mp4 in VLC easily, but for some reason the video is diagonal after conversion. I don't know what's doing that. (AVI is far to big to leave as a format for most uses.) Read the article first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamStudio Paul |
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
"Paul" wrote
| Read the article first. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamStudio | Are you talking about the reference to malware? The copy I got from MajorGeeks seems to be fine. It's an unpackable Inno installer. The files all seem normal. The install script holds no surprises. The EULA is a standard GNU license. The Wikipedia article is ambiguous. Many AV tests show no problem. Some do show a problem. Some find "PUP" malware, which is actually nonsense cooked up by the MalwareBytes people. It's not clear what these PUP prograsms actually are. The only convincing sign of a bug is the InstallCore files that are said to be part of a tool to allow for in-program ads. But none of that seems to be in what I installed. Nor did the installer advertise other software. Maybe someone else has more experience. The best I can gather is that they experimented with ad hosting but gave that up. But I don't know about the product on their homepage. I won't install anything that has to call out to download more stuff. |
#12
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
"Paul" wrote
| Read the article first. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamStudio | Second post: I do wonder about the diagonal image. The program is small, simple and easy to use. VLC plays the resulting AVI files fine. But if I use VLC to convert to mp4 or if I load it into Avidemux, in both cases it shows up as a diagonal image. The video seems to work. It just displays skewed at about a 45 degree angle. I've never seen anything like that before. |
#13
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 10:53:18 -0500, Mayayana wrote:
I just found this: CamStudio https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/camstudio.html Reasonable size. Free, open source. Works on XP. Doesn't call home. Has limited editing tools and a help file. (The help is a bit funky, but informative.) Can only save to AVI. That can be converted to SWF but another program would be needed to save to mp4. I'm posting the MajorGeeks link because the website doesn't have a real download. The download there is a small kickoff installer that then wants to go online to get files. I was able to convert the AVI to mp4 in VLC easily, but for some reason the video is diagonal after conversion. I don't know what's doing that. (AVI is far to big to leave as a format for most uses.) Camstudio was in my original list: That list was based only on a half dozen recent (mostly 2018 dates) reviews of supposedly free Windows screen recording software (some of which is likely crippleware or bundleware, as always). So it's GREAT that you tested some of the software found on that search! I downloaded it from the canonical web site and now downloaded it from your link to report back to users what the hashes and file size differences are. https://camstudio.org/ --------------------------- Checksum information --------------------------- Name: camstudio.exe Size: 3014376 bytes (2 MB) SHA256: BF7BBCE5065083934528B540D67168A411F12B4D3676BEDD25 E136A61514F472 --------------------------- OK --------------------------- https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/camstudio.html https://www.majorgeeks.com/mg/getmir...mstudio,1.html https://www.majorgeeks.com/index.php...tion=download& --------------------------- Checksum information --------------------------- Name: CamStudio_Setup_2-7_r316.exe Size: 11438475 bytes (10 MB) SHA256: 370209DCB723B18A590430C9C8989F6ECBB2C563CDA97442EF 74C7766F26FD3F --------------------------- OK --------------------------- As you noted, they are VERY DIFFERENT! Thanks for warning us, as the cost of freeware is making all the same mistakes that everyone makes (and that they sometimes want you to make!). |
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 09:04:58 -0500, Mayayana wrote:
Then the window came up and asked me to buy or "evaluate". That's sleazy. Even the download name calls it the free version. But the program is not free. It's just a trial version. I never tried it to see whether it works. While I don't know if the half dozen "reviews" I found for "free windows screen recorders" are shills or not, that app didn't show up even once. http://www.gilisoft.com/free-screen-recorder.htm Sometimes that's a good thing (e.g., lots of editing reviews skip over Irfanview) but usually that's a bad thing. I think you found out that it's not viable software, given it's not freeware, so it's not of general use to everyone (which is always the entire point). |
#15
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What's a good free desktop screen recorder?
On Mon, 12 Nov 2018 12:46:48 +0000, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
A good wishlist (-:! Hi J. P. Gilliver, I agree it's only a 'freeware wishlist', where, it seems the tricks, subterfuge, & shenanigans "free to download" software plays on the hapless user is more prevalent in the "video" category than almost any other category. I don't know why, but, for example, you get far fewer of those shenanigans like crippleware posing as freeware in, oh, say, Android Emulation Freeware, or in Vector Graphics CAD freeware, etc. Given the propensity of "screen recording" freeware to play crippleware games, I suspect half (or more) of the finds I listed have them. That's why freeware is expensive - because you need to know someone who already knows the answer if you're going to find the best ones. What would a minimum number of screens per second would we need anyway? screen capture software is not the right _tool_ for that. The advantage of "frequent screen capture" freeware would be the simplicity. The disadvantage is that you have to dub the audio (but most of the time, that wouldn't be a disadvantage in a tutorial). Since we've separated the light source from the frame rate, we can realise that a lot lower frame rate can be used. Interesting point about the frame rate separated from the light source! I'd go for three or four a second (and with pointer trails turned on). Sounds like a good starting number of 0.25 second intervals, for testing. So, apart from capturing streams (see above) and making "how-to" clips, is there anything _else_ people might _want_ to do with capture software (including the above suggestion of using IrfanView or other to just take pictures fast)? I don't capture my screen in audio, but I do a tremendous amount of screen capturing, where, it might be nice, to have something running all the time which rolls over like a dash cam rolls over. That way it wouldn't fill the disk space but it would have a pre-set time of, oh, I don't know, the last five minutes. That way, any "mistake" I made in the past five minutes would be captured as long as I realized that mistake within that five minute period. Other than that, I have no need for screen-recording software, but, I can see, if you're doing facetime or some kind of real-time video display, that having a screen recording of a conference call (with audio) would be useful. |
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