Kerkia

Desktop Recording

Background

Desktop recording software allows you to record the image of your desktop, and to optionally add voice to your records.

Recommendation

BB Flashbak Express is our best pick. While very complete in its free version (and even more so in its non-free version), this tool remains quite easy to use. It includes many useless features too (in our view at least) and you need to upgrade for many useful features like annotations, but the output quality is very good and can be saved in the convenient Flash or AVI formats.

CamStudio was our previous recommendation and remains a strong tool and our recommendations if you are looking for simplicity and only basic features. It is very simple to use yet has most if not all the features you will need. Its weakness in our view is the quality of the recording, which is ok but not great, though will be sufficient for most use. The .swf and .avi formats are supported, with our without sound.

Note to answer the many comments about Jing not being part of this review: the reason is that the free version of Jing limits the video recording to 5 minutes, which in our view is a very serious limit.