To make your screencasts appear polished and professional, you’ll want to lay out a plan before you get started.

Of course, a high-quality recording is just one part of producing a great screencast. Sound easy? It is what sets your video apart from others isn’t the software you use so much as the preparation you do before you start screencasting. While each app works slightly differently, generally you need to select the screen area you want to capture and press the record button to start capturing video. Valve recently released Source Filmmaker, a free tool that allows you to capture video from any of its source engine games (including Team Fortress 2 and any of the Half-Life or Portal games) and anyone who plays World of Warcraft on a Mac will find a built-in screen recording tool in their game settings menu. For example, if you’re looking to make machinima and need to screencast yourself playing PC games, a video capture tool specifically for your game of choice may exist. You get what you pay for, though, because the app includes a ton of video and audio editing tools along with free video transition clips for cutting between takes.ĭepending on what exactly you want to broadcast, various specialized tools can also help you out. Mac users must (as usual) shell out a bit more for screencasting software like ScreenFlow, which costs $99 (as of ). The best paid screencasting tool depends on what platform you prefer: Linux users have few options outside of browser-based recording tools like Screenr, but Windows and Mac users can find more choices.ĬamStudio is also free and easy to use.Windows users should first consider this pair of free, open-source apps: Wink and CamStudio both are Windows-only (and a little bit buggy), but they can record audio and video pretty handily. If you want to get more serious with your recordings, you’ll need to pay for an upgrade to a full screencasting program of some kind.

Free screencasting software reviews