As you know an Image is more worthy than a thousand words. Then what will be the video worth of? Simple! Multiplies by the number of frames in a video 
. Okay this is going quite mathematical so we will not go into the deep, rather what I am going to show you is the list of 5 best of the best video capturing softwares.
Video capturing software is useful in many ways. Suppose, you and your overseas friend are chatting, suddenly he gets a problem in his PC and you have to help him. What would be the more convenient option?
1-Briefing him through text in instant messenger? Boo 
2-Over phone call? Then wait for the bill mate 
3-Via screenshots? naaa :S
4-With a brief video tutorial explaining every thing as if you both were in the same room? Yay! 
So as you have seen, the most convenient method of explaining anything is video. No doubt that’s why online video sites like Youtube are that much popular.
That’s just one example, the list is long, so we should skip the benefits and carry on towards the list:
1-Cam Studio
CamStudio is a good video capturing tool to create video screencasts of lossless quality. The video output will be of AVI format, however, you can shrink its size by converting it to SWF without compromise in quality. And further more, you can: choose whether to record a section or the whole screen, increase or decrease quality of the recorded video etc.
Download Link
2-Jing Project
Another excellent program from TechSmith which quickly became famous like their previous products {Snagit and Camtasia}. What makes Jing Project stand out from the crowd is the sharing facilities it got. See the video rather than reading my explanation.
File Size: 8MB
Download Link
3-Debut
Another one in the line, is the Debut Video Recording Software. It does more or less the same things as above tools, but its specialty lies in a range of formats it can provide the output in, including 3GP, AVI, ASF, FLV, MOV, MP4, MPG, WMV etc. A detailed review of this awesome tool can be found here.
Download Link
4-TipCam
In addition to record what is going on the screen, TipCam has also some unique features. It can trim the unwanted and no-no slides from the video and adjust the narration to get in sync with the video. Meaning, if you want to record a video separately, then want to attach audio file separately, TipCam does it for you.
Download Link
5-Free Video Capture Factory
The last one is the software from Small Video Soft named Freez Screen Video Capture. You can start, pause and stop recording with shortcut keys. It also supports different output codecs (like Microsoft Video 1, MPEG-4, DivX etc.). Some other video related freeware are also available at the websites’ home page.
Download Link
Although all of the tools mentioned above are good and can do the work for which they are built. But I suggest you to try all of these and choose from them, which suits your needs best. Start Recording!
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Wow, I love your writing style. The beginning is interesting. I used to use TipCam and Camstudio to make some screen recording. Now I turn to screen recorder like DemoCreator and Captive. Because I get to make some software tutorials, especially for Learning Management system. Anyhow, the above five are awesome software.
Your links are going directly to the programs, it would be better to point to the download site or main site. At least Cam Studio have the version number in the filename, so when a new version comes out, the link will point an old version.
I would like to recommend vlc for screen capture. You can save to file and/or let your friend see at your desktop live. Vlc is for all platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux, and a few more). It's a bit more technical, but it's very useful for others to see your desktop drecly, they need vlc too, however.
This is how you do: download vlc (from http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ ) and open vlc. From the file menu choose open capture device. Select Desktop on the drop down-menu. Click the arrow and choose stream. If you want to save to a file, check the file checkbox and choose where to save it. If you want to let a friend watch your desktop, check the HTTP checkbox and select a port. (You can use any of the other (MMSH, RTP, etc) but I haven't tested them yet.) Choose OGG / Theora in the drop-down. Then click Stream.
Make sure that your firewall accepts connections to the port you selected.
You need to know your IP, check that by going to http://www.whatismyip.com.
Now tell your friend to open vlc and open file menu and choose open network. Select HTTP in the drop-down and enter: <IP-address>:<port>, for example: 1.2.3.4:8080 if your IP is 1.2.3.4 and the port you selected was 8080.
Oh, my! My comment became longer that I expected!
Good list, btw.
Thanks for liking my writing style…..and the freewares given above as well….hope to see you soon in the comments again
VLC is mainly a media player application….although one can also get the capturing work done through it….and what you wrote in the comment, could become a full blog post
… your style of leading through a technical process is quite good!….btw I have corrected the links to downloading pages…..thanks for pointing that out 
well, oke, but how to send him this video? mail or IM would take ages^^ anyways, thanks for this article
what a silly question you made, your internet speed must be slow and that's why you asked it.
With a screen capture software you don't need a camera to shoot tutorials, you get it from the site and it's a great way to attract more visitors on your site.
upload the file in youtube and give the link to your friend, he will be benefited along with thousands of other users who are searching it. Add your website link on the video and see how you get more tarffic.
this was the thing I was looking for this morning and found your site, thanks Nasir. I'm downloading Debut and will tell you how it was
i can refrain no longer. HOW i wish these were indeed five awesome video capture programs. it is rather incredible at this point in the evolution and huge sprawl of available freewares that there are not at least 2 or 3 viable, simple, functional, straightforward video stream capture programs among them. so far, judging by the growing pile of corpses littering my uninstall boneyard, there is still not even one.
i will grant that there are really two main functions people are looking for in such programs. and for those who are simply looking for a way to capture a moving screenshot, there certainly do seem to be a few that work. and the ones that are specifically for youtube do, indeed seem to work just fine- for youtube.
but there is another category of potential user, and i guess that's the one i fall into. i have found it useful in my field (healthcare) to be able to record short informational videos, and even occasionally compile them onto dvds to be shared among colleagues and other facilities. many of these are not available for sale, so it is not strictly a matter of me trying to cheap out. i'm also a musician, and enjoy collecting old archival footage of selected performers, and, again, compiling them onto dvds. again, this material is often not available for sale, at least not in the form i would choose to use.
so what's my problem? in a word, “AUDIO”.
cam studio- i have downloaded it at least three times in hopes its audio issue would be resolved- that it was maybe something i was doing wrong. it ain't. it's great at capturing what is on the screen, and it does offer the choice at some point of capturing line (as opposed to microphone) audio (there is a little checkbox for the purpose). but you can check that box until you've worn a hole right through your keyboard- the audio function totally ignores your request. kinda useless for music recording, and pretty lame for any purpose other than on-the-fly personal use.
JING- great name. and at first i thought it seemed promising, but there is no point in even downloading it if you are seeking audio, which at least they have the decency to tell you beforehand (as i recall). i think, again, it does have the capacity for mic-source audio. but i mean, how much harder would it be to have a functioning line-sourced audio record function?
the best one i've used is grab++- i'm surprised it never appears on these lists. it is a sub-program to something called orbit downloader. it takes a bit of figuring out, but once you have it working it does everything i am looking for. and the audio is pretty decent quality- quite decent, in fact.
so what's the problem? well, there are several. one is that orbit tries very persistently to take over your download managing function, and it is not nearly as clean or simple as, say, firefox's… so to get the benefit of grab++ you have to endure endless cycles of disabling the orbit, restoring your default.
another problem is that for no clear reason, it usually takes several (or more) tries to get grab++ to actually start recording. persistence is eventually rewarded, which is fine if you have nothing but time on your hands. less than fine if not.
but the worst part is that after awhile, it actually does stop working. i have uninstalled it a few times and managed to get a re-install functioning, but it seems that each re-install craps out sooner than the one before. and for now i have given up….
so- to be fair, i have not yet tried the last three of these five- debut, tipcam, or free video etc. etc. but if you knew how many similarly packaged and slickly named other freewares (and even pay) programs i have tried, you might share my skepticism. quite often they don't even seem to attempt to function- just NOTHIN'.
anyway, i hope i am wrong. i hope tipcam or debut is JUST the thing i have been looking for.
but i also hope if anyone has a better idea for what i am seeking, they will share that info with me.
and by the way, i did try the vlc stream device (as suggested in one of these posts). i've been using vlc for years- i still think it is the best single media player out there (for video, definitely). never occurred to me it might have a recording function. but, well, maybe my version needs updating- but it does not have the drop-down menu described by the poster, the one that offers a destination of “desktop” for recorded streams. and the stuff that does drop down is totally undecipherable to me, and failed to capture anything…
i am far from a newbie at this stuff- so why is it you seem to need a degree to interpret and operate something that really ought to be so basically functional….
again, one thing about grab++, even if english was clearly far from its language of origin, its basic operation was pretty self-evident. aside from the issue of it not working for very long….
okay, end of rant…. hope i've saved someone a little trouble, but selfishly, i also hope someone can turn me on to what it is i am really looking for.
blueswrite
sorry about the double-posting- hope you can fix (as in delete) the second one- it didn't seem to be loading, but when i hit refresh and re-pasted the text, well, there it was already….
okay…
half hour later… installed and quickly uninstalled “debut”. more junk.
although at least its audio actually works.
the first thing it does when you try to run it is tell you that you do not have the proper software for downloading- but it then invites you to select (for purchase) from a list it very conveniently makes available from its home website
i ignored the list, but before i could uninstall, it attempted to run anyway…. . turned my screen into one of those mr. clean bottle effects- a desktop within a desktop within a desktop within a desktop, etc…. talk about vertigo. i should sue for the physical discomfort. totally un-navigable… somewhere in that mess was the video i was attempting to test-record, but… it was just lost in a soup of oversized cursors and nesting black holes of screen space…
somehow i did manage to find an option drop-down that let me specify a download folder… but even after activating (i guess) the “record” function, there was no trace to be found in that folder.
and now, after uninstalling it, winpatrol does not seem to be all that happy- i sure hope there are not some nasty unwanted residues hiding in my hard drive….
gee, i hope tipcam does not live up to its rather threatening name and tip my computer over…. anyway, i guess it is next.
do you guys actually TRY these things?
Great suggestions! Ive always had problems finding good freeware screen capture programs, so forget about finding a video capture prog for free; ill have to try one of these when I get home
Excellent tips on Video capturing softwares that includes useful information about videos.
For mac you can use snapzpro, you can record from your screen, record yourself and record audio. A tip from a mac user!
why would you use them, doesn't your camera come with its own software?
Thanks for the great information! Another useful product that is similar to camtasia is Scate Ignite, a free download alternative which works great to do your screen recording for commercial or personal use. Scate Ignite enables you to record any video or audio activity in your computer screen with ease. It also has a built in SWF Producer which convert AVI to FLV (Flash file). There are so many way to use the software for example you can create a tutorial on how to use a certain software like html editor or image editing tool, demonstration video of a software, information video on a product like computer, kitchen appliances and so on. Download directly from a server for fast download of Scate Ignite at http://www.scateignite.com
Thanks for the great information! Another useful product that is similar to camtasia is Scate Ignite, a free download alternative which works great to do your screen recording for commercial or personal use. Scate Ignite enables you to record any video or audio activity in your computer screen with ease. It also has a built in SWF Producer which convert AVI to FLV (Flash file). There are so many way to use the software for example you can create a tutorial on how to use a certain software like html editor or image editing tool, demonstration video of a software, information video on a product like computer, kitchen appliances and so on. Download directly from a server for fast download of Scate Ignite at http://www.scateignite.com