Free Screen Capture software

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Administrator Since: Apr 03, 2002

Well, my youngest daughter wants to make Minecraft videos to post on YouTube...I admire the creativity but really have no knowledge of that area of software...does anyone know free or cheap software to grab screen captures and make them into AVIs or some such format?

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Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007


Sep 16, 2012 01:08 pm

Dat Game = Addictifying. :P

I think FRAPS has a demo version, but for free video capturing....I'll need to check some forums I'm on where I'm pretty sure some decent software was mentioned, and post back.

Edit: Okay, so fraps demo only records 30seconds at a time. :P Plus its format can be tricky to make any edits post-recording...and tends to lower the frames per second in the game by a significant amount. :P

Some others were mentioned: Bandicam demo, which has a 10min limit and inserts a watermark.

ffmpeg is free, but CLI only. No GUI, and records a specific screen area that has to be specified....might need a bit of post-editing. But it's free, and pretty good quality....you know, once you get around the complexity of throwing all the info in a single command. :P

Someone also mentioned MSI Afterburner, but I couldn't see that as anything other than graphics card tweaking. Supposedly they include the Predator screen/video capturing, but said it was bundled with MSI branded cards. So, I dunno. :P

I tend to play a lot with the minecraft "snapshot" releases to see what the new features going in are like. (still need to get the latest one) but it plays hell with the texture pack I use sometimes. :P (Texture Pack I use is SphaxBDCraft 128x which requires MCPatcher for high-res texture use.)

Also, here is one of my current Works-In-Progress:

http://i.imgur.com/IHAVg.png




Edit2: Aaaand Done!


http://i.imgur.com/ZgO5l.png


Administrator
Since: Apr 03, 2002


Sep 17, 2012 10:22 pm

OK, those screen shots crack me up, my girls are nuts about the game.

I did find CamStudio, seems to be easy and useful, and I made some decent screen captures of basic movements on the screen, but for some reason when she does the game it only records a short clip...maybe I need to dig through the options a bit more.

I have used ffmpeg but only on command line for dot net video creation...

They could stand a decent video card on their PC, perhaps I should upgrade that and see if anyone has a bundled capture app with it.

Byte-Mixer
Member
Since: Dec 04, 2007


Sep 17, 2012 11:46 pm

Yeah. My card is getting a tad dated now. I'm using a Geforce 9800GTX+ and the current cards are those 3-digit models now. :P

Like what, the 500 series now? 600 even? It was pretty middle of the road when I built this machine, but I didn't want to pay for the bleeding edge stuff. :P

sloppy dice, drinks twice
Member
Since: Aug 05, 2003


Sep 19, 2012 12:37 pm

For free video screen capture try Free Video Screen Capture by Topviewsoft Video Software. www.Topviewsoft.com

If I recall correctly, when I first ran it I was filling up my allotted office network drive space pretty quickly. The settings to lower video quality/size are very accessible and are saved for future use. I have never tried recording a game though, mostly my captures have been just introducing business apps with an audio narrative.

For stills, I tend to use Screenshot Captor freeware, there is a donationcoder.com link and a download.com link as the the first 2 hits it you Google "screenshot captor".

I write some technical product manuals and tech support documentation and have been satisfied using these tools so far.

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