Screen capturing applications like SnagIt improve the process significantly. The program hijacks the print key functionality to provide users with powerful screen taking options. It is still possible to take a screenshot of the whole page, but also of a single window, a region on the screen, free hand, of scrolling windows or menus that are often hard to capture due to their auto closing. But SnagIt’s functionality does not end here. Techsmith have added text and video capturing capabilities and many specialized modes and options to the program as well.

All-in-one is the main screenshot taking mode as it allows you to take all kinds of screenshots without switching to a specific capturing profile. You can use it to capture the whole screen, a window or a region. Sometimes though you may want to switch to another capturing mode which you can do in the main program window.

You can pick a mode from the profiles offered in the main interface, or from the Input dropdown menu presented under Profile Settings. Specialized modes, for instance to capture DirectX, full screen DOS or custom scrolling regions are available for selection. Output settings, effects and options are configured here as well. You can save screenshots directly to the system or on an ftp server, send it to the printer, attach it to an email, save it in the Clipboard or open it in the built-in editor.

Effects let you add borders, edge effects, captions or watermarks, or change the screenshot’s dpi settings.

Options finally can be used to hide or display the mouse cursor on the screen, configure timed captures or preview the image in the editor.

New capturing profiles can be saved in the program. They appear under Profiles for quick selection.

Once configured, you take screenshots as fast as you would with the operating system’s default print key feature.

Snagit Editor can be used to edit screenshots before they are saved to the system. The program supports basic image editing options that include cropping, resizing or cutting images, adding text or lines, but also specialized options that are highly useful in regards to screenshots. These include highlighting screen areas, blurring information, adding watermarks, and effects like shadows or borders.

SnagIt keeps track of all screenshots automatically in a library as long as they are not deleted on the system. This combined with the program’s tagging improves the manageability of past screenshots.

The programs functionality does not end here though. You can install so called accessories that add functionality to the program. Accessories are available to instantly push screenshots to WordPress, Moveable Type or Type Pad blogs, to Skype, Flickr or Microsoft Office documents to optimize the workflow further.

SnagIt supports three additional capturing options. Text capture works like an OCR tool that reads text displayed in images or dialog boxes into text that you can copy and paste.

Web Capture allows you to capture all images that are displayed on a web page. You do however need to input the url directly to use the feature.

Video capture finally can be used to record screen activities. This is more or less a lightweight version of Techsmith’s Camtasia screen recording and production software.

The module can record a single window, a region on the screen, or all of the desktop. It is optionally possible to include audio and the cursor movement in the video. Videos can only be saved as avi files.

Camtasia Studio

Camtasia Studio is to video recording what SnagIt is to screen capturing. The program is an all-in-one solution for all video capturing needs on the desktop. It supports recording video and audio off the screen. Options are provided to create full screen recordings, recordings of individual windows, regions of the screen or directly from a connected web cam.

Camtasia Recorder is the small frontend program that you can use to start captures with a single-click of the mouse.

The most important configuration options are listed in the program window. You can select the video and audio source, and configure the recordings in detail. One interesting option is the lock to application feature. This basically links a window to the recording with the effect that recording dimensions are automatically applied to the window (the window is automatically resized by Camtasia). That’s useful if you want to record in a specific resolution.

Recorded videos are played in a preview window automatically once the capturing is stopped. Here it is possible to delete the video, save it as an avi file directly or send it to Camtasia Studio.

You can change the editing dimensions on the first screen in Camtasia Studio or keep the original size of the recording. Once done you can start editing and producing the video.

This includes adding additional clips to the video, cutting or splitting videos, adding callouts that highlight areas in the video, or making changes to the audio recording (volume leveling, voice optimization).

Additional features allow you to add captions, use the picture in picture option to display a smaller video in the video that you have recorded, record audio, transition effects, and to add title clips to the video.

Especially the option to record audio directly from within the editor is useful for users who like to create screencasts or tutorial videos. Instead of having to talk and demonstrate at the same time, it is now possible to capture the video first, and add the audio later on in the processing phase.

Feature Overview

• Record – Create video recordings of the screen, or part of it.
• Save videos in different formats and for different platforms (YouTube, Screencast.com, MP4, FLV, SWF, M4V, Avi, Silverlight comaptible WMV, Mov, RM, Animated Gif or MP3 audio only)
• PowerPoint plug-in
• SmartFocus – Keeps track of the action on the screen.
• Import media – import video clips, music animations into a project
• Speech to text feature to add captioning automatically. Option to import or export captioning files.
• Effects like transitions, title clips, cursor effects or callouts

Videos can be saved in various formats. Camtasia Studio supports saving videos for Blogs, YouTube, HD and DVD and mobile devices such as iPhones. Presets can be edited or created, which works similar to SnagIts profile feature.

Camtasia MenuMaker can be used to create menus to launch created videos automatically. This can be handy for video DVDs for instance.

Camtasia Theater finally allows you to combine multiple Camtasia Studio produced Flash files into a single web menu.

Verdict

SnagIt is a professional screen capturing software that leaves little to be desired. Workflows can be automated and optimized to an extend that the majority of comparable tools do not support.

Camtasia Studio can be used to create professional video screencasts, tutorials and demonstrations, and handles everything from the first second of recording to editing and production.

Both programs, despite their professional grade functionality, are easy to use and handle. Techsmith offers video instructions on their website for both programs.

Unrestricted 30-day trial versions are available for both programs on the developer website.

Giveaway

We have 4 SnagIt licenses and 2 Camtasia Studio licenses for this giveaway. Leave a comment below and let us know what you like to do with the programs if you win a license. Winners are then drawn from all comments.

The third and often best possibility is a software that takes screenshots in select intervals automatically.

Auto Screen Shot is a free software for Windows that can be used to do that. The software needs to be installed first before it is ready for usage. You see the following interface when you load the program after installation.

The first thing that you’d probably want to change is the save location for the screenshots. It is set to the root of drive c by default. Users of Windows 7 cannot save files into root by default. I’d create a new folder for the screenshots to make the organization easier. The two other options you have are the interval in which screenshots are taken and the image quality of the saved images.

The default interval is set to 10 seconds. You can change that to a custom minutes:seconds value if you like. The quality is set to 75%, which feels a bit low, especially if the screenshots are used in presentations or published online.

A click on Take screenshot now (Test) creates a single screenshot which you can use to examine the quality setting. A click on Start Capture takes screenshots of the desktop in the selected interval. You need to minimize the program window manually if you do not want it to appear on the desktop.

You stop the automatic screenshot taking with a click on Stop Capture. The button appears after you start the process.

A feature that is missing are hotkeys to start and stop the capture, and to take screenshots manually. All screenshots are stored in the selected directory in the format screenxxxx.jpg.

Auto Screen Shot works in all recent versions of the Windows operating system. You can download the latest version directly from the developer website.

It supports two video modes which can both capture the entire screen, a program window or a custom region defined by the user of the program. Both modes support microphone input.

The difference between the two modes is that one has been specifically designed for program demonstrations and user instructions. This mode captures everything on screen including mouse movements.

The screenshot taking capabilities leave nothing to desire, supporting full screen, window, custom rectangle, freestyle shapes and scrolling window grabs.

free screen capture software

Snap 3 places a hidden toolbar at the top of the screen by default. The toolbar becomes visible on mouse over so that the different screen capturing options can be selected.

Experienced users might prefer the keyboard shortcuts instead which speed up the process of taking screenshots and videos. The toolbar can be disabled so that it is not triggered accidentally which can be problematic when full screen applications are running. The system tray icon offers a third possibility to access the program’s functionality.

The settings can be used to make configuration changes like removing the toolbar from the desktop. Here it is possible to change keyboard shortcuts, output formats and locations or the position of the capture bar.

screen capture software

A fullscreen editor is opened after a capture. The editor contains basic image editing options like adding text or arrows to the screenshot, highlighting areas, rotating, zooming, resizing and adding effects. Various processing options are available as well, it is for instance possible to send the screenshot per email, print it or save it to a local directory.

Video captures basically work the same way as image captures. Options are available to create a video of a window, desktop, rectangular region or fixed region.

video capture

Snap 3 leaves little to desired when it comes to taking screenshots. The only two aspects that are missing are the ability to save screenshots directly without opening the image editor first and the availability of additional video formats that the video captures can be saved in.

How To Get The Free Copy Of Snap 3

Visit the promotional page to receive a free key of Ashampoo Snap 3. Just enter a valid email address and click Send. The first email that will be send to the email account is a confirmation email with a link that needs to be opened in a web browser.

This opens the product registration screen on the Ashampoo website. It is sufficient to simply click the OK, Send button at the bottom. Users who do not want to be part of the Ashampoo community can disable that option before they click the button.

A second email will be dispatched containing the product key for Snap 3. Snap 3.40 itself can be downloaded from Cnet. (via Techno 360)

The portable software program hijacks the Windows Print screen and adds functionality to it at the same time. Pressing print on the keyboard will give the user the option to draw a rectangle on the screen to capture a part of it. Adding the Ctrl key to the procedure will take a screenshot of the whole screen while Ctrl-Shift-Print will capture a scrolling window.

The default action after pressing the keys can be configured in the program’s settings. It is for instance possible to open the internal image editor afterwards to edit the image or to open the screenshot history instead. The history lists a number of recently taken screenshots, by default 20.

Other automatic options include copying the captured image or the path of the captured image to the clipboard.

The image editor offers access to six drawing tools that can be used to add arrows, numbers, text and rectangles to the image as well as blur part of it. The crop, resize and border tools complete the image editing options that the program provides.

Screenpresso is a portable software program for the Windows operating system that should provide computer users with all the tools needed to capture screens and edit the resulting images. The image editor could use additional options like specifying the blur level or the compression level when saving images.

Windows users who want to try out Screenpresso can download the screen capture software from the developer’s website.

Both are provided in a suite but can be installed and started separately. PCHand Screen Capture is a sophisticated screenshot taking software that uses profiles for different jobs.

The software displays a list of already configured profiles after startup ranging from taking a screenshot of windows, the full screen, a scrolling window, freehand or rectangle.

Each profile consists of an input method, output setting and effect. Input methods define how and where the screenshot is being taken, output methods where it will be send to our saved and effects can be used to add additional information to the screenshot automatically.

It is possible to add new profiles to the program or remove existing ones in case they are not needed. The different profiles can be activated directly from within the software program or by configuring hotkeys to use the computer keyboard to trigger them.

Most of the preconfigured profiles use the editor that is shipped with the screen capture software. This editor comes with basic image editing options that include adding text, forms or arrows to the screenshot.

Additional options are provided in the file menu on top. There the user can select filters and other image manipulation effects like rotating or resizing the image.

PCHand Screen Capture is a sophisticated screenshot taking software that’s easy to work with and expandable thanks to the profiles that can be edited or created.

PCHand Screen Recorder is the second program in the software suite. It can record video and audio of a select region of the computer desktop. The program did not work correctly on our Windows 7 Professional test system.

When it was set to manual saving it seemed to record just fine but there was not an option at the end to save the video. If it was set to automatically save it stopped responding and had to be closed.

We will therefor only evaluate the screenshot taking software and not the screen recorder below.

Installation

The PCHand Screen Capture Recorder Suite comes with two setup files that need to be executed separately giving users the chance to only install one of the programs if that is desired. The programs can be registered by clicking on activate.exe after the installation of one or both programs have been finished.

Positive

• Uses customizable profiles
• Hotkey support
• Supports scrolling windows and freehand

Negative

• Some spelling errors in the application
• Effects cannot be configured when creating new profiles
• No option to send to another image editor

PCHand Screen Capture Recorder Suite can be downloaded from the Giveaway of the Day website. The program can be freely registered today only and is available for $49.99 regularly on the developer’s website.

PicPick is available as a portable version and an installer. The capture software places its icon in the Windows task bar after startup. The user can then make use of the functionality by clicking on that icon or by using one of the freely configurable hotkeys to do so. The screen capturing options include full screen captures (with multi-monitor support), active windows captures, window controlled, fixed region and free hand captures.

The screen capture is then displayed in the program’s interface which offers basic image editing features that include crop, resize and rotate options, basic image editing tools like adding text, basic geometric shapes, a color picker and magnifier.

The memory consumption is lower than 10 Megabytes of computer memory which is acceptable for such a program. The screen capture capabilities combined with the imaged editor make PicPick a potent screen capturing program. The program can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

It adds itself as a toolbar button which can be used to trigger the screen capturing process. It is possible to capture the visible area of the browser window or the entire website. This leads to another menu with options to edit, save, print, upload or email the captured area. It is furthermore possible to open the output directly in an external image editor.

Fireshot comes with a basic editor if the edit option has been selected. This opens the screen capture in a new window that contains a preview and buttons in an header area. It is possible to add text or images, highlight areas, add annotations or pointers to the screen capture.

Every option can be customized. The font, size, alignment and typographic elements like bold, underline or italic can be customized for example when adding text to the screen capture. It is then possible to use the same export options that are available directly from the Fireshot button.

Fireshot could be an interesting screen capture software for users who only need to take screen captures of websites. The only negative aspect is that the edit window of the free version of Fireshot blocks the web browser window. Firefox for Internet Explorer and Firefox can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

It can be somewhat cumbersome to capture a screenshot in Grab, and then have to move it into a program like Photoshop to manipulate it. And if you want to share the image, you have to change its format.

An alternative piece of software is Skitch, screen-capturing software for OS X. Skitch provides screen-capturing facilities similar to Grub, but integrates some editing tools and also provides tools to share the images.

Skitch allows users to draw on screenshots and annotate them, through placing arrows and text. One can also make images have a transparent background, crop images, add a drop shadow to them or rotate them.

One of the cooler features is the ‘drag’ feature. When a screenshot has been captured and edited, if you click ‘drag me’, you can drag the image to a folder, an email or to open in another program.

Skitch can export images as JPEGs, PNGs, PDFs, SVGs, TIFFs, GIFs and JPGs. It can also upload images to Flickr, FTP servers, WebDAV folders and skitch.com, their own image hosting service.

The software boasts many features and I find it much better to use than Grab, as there’s no need to have to use other pieces of software.

Windows screen shot software programs like Screenie make it easier to create screenshots of parts of the computer screen. We already reviewed quite a few in the past including our favorite screen shots taking software MWSnap but also screen capturing tools like Greenshot, Screenshot Captor or Jing.

Screenie is another Windows screen shots software on first glance. It displays the contents of the current computer screen in its interface as soon as the user hits the Print key on the computer keyboard. From there it is possible to save the screenshot right away, zoom in and out of the image, select a rectangle that should be saved or edit it further in the default image editor.

The screen shot can be stored locally, added to the Windows Clipboard, uploaded to a ftp server or to Imageshack. It is possible to save them right away without seeing the interface of the application at all. Screenshots can also be saved to multiple locations simultaneously which might be interesting for users who want to keep a local copy but need to upload it to an ftp server or Imageshack.

Probably more unique than the export feature is support for dual and multi-monitor systems. We were not able to test this feature on the test system as no second computer monitor was connected at the time of the tests. The Windows screen shots software does come with a timer which works similar than a timer on a digital camera. It will create a screenshot after a specified amount of seconds have past.

Screenie is an interesting screen shot taking software. It is a bit high on the used computer memory while running and could use a few more screenshots that would make it possible to select part of the screen for the screen short immediately.

Users who never worked with screen capture software before will be able to start a capturing process in less than a minute as the software program has been designed with ease of use in mind. It takes for example only a click with the mouse button to start the first screen capturing process after installation. The program comes with a few options that change and tune certain aspects of the screen capturing.

It is for example possible to record audio narration (with a connected microphone) or webcam video (with a connected webcam) together in the process. The screen capture software would combine these automatically during the capturing process.

Other available options include the selection of the sound device and webcam if multiple devices are connected to the computer system. It is furthermore possible to set the frame rate of the recording. Available framerates are 5, 10 and 15 frames per second.

Webinaria will display the recording after the screen capturing process has been ended by the user. It is possible to view the recording frame by frame, delete sections and to publish it at the Webinaria website. The recording itself can be saved as an avi or flv video file on the computer system.

Alternatives are the screen capture software Wegame, the online desktop recorder ScreenToaster, Jing, Debut video capturing software and Camtasia Studio.

This might be useful for several purposes including documentation and verification. The graphical user interface displays all elements on one screen. The user can select a single or multiple websites at the top and define the file output format. This requires some explanation as time and date variables have to be added to avoid overwriting previous screenshots. Both date and time variables can be combined in the filename directly. All parameters are explained on the programs homepage, here are two examples for a better understanding:

• c:\%date:MMyyyy%\ghacks.pg – creates a month and year folder and saves the screenshot there.
• c:\%time:HHmm%ghacks.jpg – creates a filename in the format hourminuteghacks.jpg

The better part of the interface is occupied with several options. The program allows to define the width and height of the web browser and whether scrollbars, JavaScript or Flash should be disabled. The size of the (simulated) web browser can be automatically extended if the website turns out to be larger than the size defined in the interface.

Finally part of the screenshot can be cut of automatically as well. A click on the start button will take one screenshot of the website and save it in the selected folder. Enabling the “Take a screenshot of this web page every” allows to capture the screen every x seconds, minutes or hours.

The command line parameters come in handy for usage in batch scripts, file launchers or in situations where no graphical user interface can be loaded.

You can invoke the tool by pressing the print screen button (you can bind it to anywhere else), and the tool will pop up. It has a great mechanism because you can draw on your desktop before you create the “snip”, so depending on what you draw you might decide you need a bigger area. You can then use a box or a freehand tool to select the area you need and snip it.

Once that is done the snipped image will sort of hover on your desktop in a very cool way, you really have to see it to appreciate it, take a look on the website above or at youtube directly. You can save it to the clipboard, edit it with Paint or your can save it to your hard drive. My only problem was that the edit option opens up Paint and apparently there is nothing you can do about this. Since you can send to clipboard it’s not that bad, you can open it up in Gimp or Photoshop by simply pasting, but since you can choose saving format, timer option and so much, to me the inclusion of this feature would have been obvious. Great looking app though, give it a go!

Greenshot, a screen capturing tool for the Windows operating system, does not only offer to take a screenshot of the desktop but also of a selected window or custom rectangle. The results can be send to the default image editor, saved as a jpg file to the computer, printed on a connected printer or added to the clipboard. One of the interesting aspects of Greenshot is that several of the processing ways can be selected. A user could copy the screenshot to the clipboard, save it in a selected image format and print it at the same time.

The print screen key will be utilized as the main hotkey for the screen capturing process. Pressing the print key will make it possible to take a screenshot of a rectangle that the user can draw on the computer screen. Pressing Alt and the print key will activate windowed mode which allows the user to take a screenshot of a window and CTRL plus the print key will take a screenshot of the full screen.

Greenshot’s options contain various settings that can be used to customize the output. The user can select the image format, the filename pattern, storage location and image quality of the screenshots. There are also several print options like shrinking or enlarging screenshots automatically to fit the paper size.

Greenshot comes with its own image editor that can be used to add shapes and text to the screenshot before saving a final version to the computer system.

The screen capturing tool will remain in the system tray all the time. The only drawback is its computer memory usage of around 35 Megabytes. The previously mentioned MWSnap uses less than six Megabytes of computer memory.

While Firefox users might not even consider reading on as their browser features several add-ons that make it possible to capture complete webpages (for example the excellent Screen Grab) other users might be interested. The user selects the output directory and image format of the screenshots in the main interface. Watermarks can be enabled optionally in the program interface.

A core browser engine will be displayed once the initial settings have been made. It is basically a very down to the core browser with options to load urls and to navigate on those websites. The browser window features a big Take Screenshot button that can be used to instantly take a screenshot of the current website.

Simple Webpage Capture might be a solution for users who want to quickly take screenshots of webpages but do not have Firefox or a browser with full screen capture capabilities installed. Combining the default web browser with screen capture possibilities is however the more natural way.

It requires the creation or existence of a (free) WeGame account but that is the only nuisance in the process. The videos and screenshots that can be produced with the screen capture software are stored on the local hard drive and only uploaded to the WeGame portal if the user selects to do so. (Automatic screenshot upload can be disabled in the options).

Two hotkeys are defined for the video recording and screenshot creation. The quality of the video recording can be changed from web recording to high quality recording if the computer meets the requirements.

A green square in the left corner indicates that the screen capture software is ready to record. The hotkey will start the video recording or screenshot creation. Pressing the hotkey again will stop the video recording.

The high definition videos were recorded as avi files in a resolution of 1024×768, a bitrate of 12290 Kbps and an audio stream bitrate of 1411 Kbps. WeGame will automatically convert the video into that format even if the game resolution is larger than that. 30 seconds of recording take up about 70 Megabytes of hard drive space. There was no visual impact on game performance while recording the game videos.

The use of Java ensures that the screen recording service works on most operating systems that Java can be installed on including Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux. The recording works surprisingly well and is completely keyboard driven. Pressing [ALT S] will start the desktop recorder which will capture the entire screen. Pressing the hotkey combination again will stop the recording and display a preview of the video on the ScreenToaster website.

The alternate hotkey to record only part of the computer screen is [ALT Shift S] which lets the user draw a rectangular shape which contents will be recorded. It is possible to quit at this point which would delete the video or assign a title and description to it to store it on the ScreenToaster servers.

Links will be automatically created that can be used to open the recorded video directly in a web browser or embed it on a website. The service is currently in beta and has a few limitations. Sound for instance will not be recorded at all. There is also no way of saving the video on the computer or deleting a video that has been created before.

The developers will surely offer those features in a later build of the software. There was also no information available about maximum recording time, space per user and other limits that might be in place.

ScreenToaster is a desktop recording service which is currently in private beta. Beta keys are usually handed out quite frequently. It took no longer than two days to receive one.

Update: The Screen Toaster website has been returning an error for quite some time. The project appears dead and the link has therefor been removed from the article. A free alternative is Camtasia Studio.

Screenshot Captor by Donation Coder Mouser is another screen capture software and it feels like comparing Wordpad with Microsoft Office Word. Screenshot Captor was recently released in a new version and it provides functions that many users will find attractive and useful.

It obviously supports capturing various parts of the computer screen like program windows, selected regions, fixed sized regions, the entire screen but also scrolling windows and objects which is one of the additions in the new version.

The screen capture software can be managed from the program’s interface or by using hotkeys – which can be changed to preferred key combinations – to speed up the screen capturing process. The process of capturing a screenshot is not slower than capturing a screenshot with MWSnap.

Screenshot Captor shines when it comes to processing a captured screen. MWSnap was only able to save it in various formats while Mouser’s software can add elements to the screen before saving it. It is nevertheless possible to simply save it and use it that way. Users who like to add text, images or objects to screenshots on the other hand will find all the tools they need to do just that.

By default Screenshot Captor displays a small dialog after taking a screenshot that can be used to print or save the image, copy it to the clipboard or create a thumbnail of it plus various other possibilities. That dialog can be disabled in the program’s options but it is quite useful for those users who want to take a screenshot and save it right away with processing it further.

Captured screenshots can be shown in the main program interface where they can be processed. The image can be resized, text can be added, sections of the screen can be highlighted and objects added.

Previous screenshots are shown in the capturing history which provides a fast way of accessing them from the program’s interface. Another interesting option is the support for third party tools. It is easy to integrate them in Screenshot Captor and use them to process the images further.

The homepage links to a few additional tools that can be integrated like a color chooser to discover the exact color of a pixel of the screenshot.

The screen capture software should be the right application for anyone who takes screenshots regularly. Users who process their screenshots afterwards will find all the tools they need to do just that without the need to install an image editor to do so.

Update: Screenshot Captor 3 has been released. I suggest you check out the review linked above to find out what’s new. Among the new features are automatic screenshot uploading options, Windows 7 window transparency support and the best scrolling window capturing options that you find in a screen capturing software.

While the normal options to record the screen or webcam are top notch Debut comes with a feature that I have not seen in any other video capturing software yet. Debut can start with Windows and start the recording process immediately. A maximum recording time can be specified with the option to start a new recording immediately afterwards or to stop the recording.

This is useful in combination with the next feature of Debut. A completed recording can be processed in a number of ways. The recording can be send as an email attachment, uploaded to an ftp server, mirrored on a local or network drive or sent to another executable that can be specified by the user.

Debut is compatible to several Microsoft operating systems including Windows 98, 2000, XP and Windows Vista.

Jing lets the user capture part of the screen by dragging a rectangle around the part of the screen that he wants to capture. This rectangle can be moved around and some parts of the screen are recognized as units which can be captured without drawing the rectangle around them. The rest of the screen is shown in black and white which makes it easier to hit the mark. Once the image has been captured it can be spiced up by adding arrows, a highlighted area, text, and a frame to it to annotate or catch the attention of the viewer.

The so created image or video can be easily uploaded to Screencast, ftp, Flickr or saved as a file locally. This is a great feature for webmasters who create a lot of screenshots that they embed in their website to spice up articles there.

Users have to signup to Screencast during setup of Jing which is an uncomplicated process. They receive 200 Megabytes of free space and 1 Gigabyte transfer limit per month. Don’t worry, you do not have to use this service to use Jing.

What I like about Jing is that it is relatively uncomplicated to use and has some great features like the upload ability that saves me some steps when creating screenshots. The user interface however is experimental and users surely will need some time before they get used to it.

My projection is that Jing will become commercial sooner or later so grab it while it is hot and free. Runs on Windows and Mac computers.

All you need to do is to download the trial version right from the Techsmith servers and register an account at the Techsmith website for a free serial number for Camtasia Studio. This will be send to the email account that you specify during registration.

Some words about Camtasia Studio. This is a great screen recording software that can a region of the screen, a window or the entire screen. Since this is the Camtasia Studio it also offers applications to capture sound, edit the recording and burn it on a disk. Videos can also be saved in various formats once the recording finishes including avi and flash video.