Video capturing made easy

Jun 25, 2011 - Ankit Fadia

Quaint technology has changed the way we live our personal, professional and college lives. It is now possible to add cool elements to spice up our mundane daily lives using very simple technology. Have you ever, for instance, wanted to record something that you can see on your computer screens and even include it in your college

assignments or projects? Or have you ever wanted to explain something to your friends about a particular website, software or video and don’t know how to go about it? Alternatively, have you ever wanted to record something and use it as a birthday or anniversary gift? Capturing what is displayed on your screen in the form of a screenshot picture is quite easy to do; just press the Print Screen key on your keyboard and then pasting the captured screenshot in any application of your choice. However, a picture can’t always say what a video can.
Cam Studio 2.0 is a free application that allows you to capture everything from your computer screen in the form of an AVI or SWF Flash file and do funky things to it! There are several built-in features in Cam Studio that allows users to play around with the look and feel of the video recording and also customise it to suit their preferences.
It is possible to highlight the mouse cursor, automatically record the sound, add comments, timestamps to videos and do many more such funky things. Cam Studio also allows users to choose whether to record the complete screen or only certain parts of the screen. Depending upon which platform you want to create the video for, it’s possible to customise the format and quality as well.
The only problem with Cam Studio is that it could have done a better job in terms of its ability to trim, splice or customise video lengths and transitions. This is where another free video editing tool, Microsoft Live Movie Maker 2011, comes into the picture. It allows users to completely customise their videos by adding text, transitions, special effects and many other cool stuff. It is possible to split videos into different independent units, mix and match them around and edit certain portions out as well. Movie Maker also gives complete control to users over customizing the background audio volume, effects and transitions as well.
Movie Maker and Cam Studio, when used together, can be really useful to create an impressive video that can impact people both in your personal and professional lives.
The writer is a 25-year-old ethical hacking expert, a TV show host and the author of 14 best selling books. He can be contacted at ankit@deccanmail.com

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