Free Streaming Video Software

What is it?

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using it's built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

Here are just a few ways you can use this software:

• You can use it to create demonstration videos for any software program
• Or how about creating a set of videos answering your most frequently asked questions?
• You can create video tutorials for school or college class
• You can use it to record a recurring problem with your computer so you can show technical support people
• You can use it to create video-based information products you can sell
• You can even use it to record new tricks and techniques you discover on your favourite software program, before you forget them

Don't like the sound of your voice? No problem.

CamStudio can also add high-quality, anti-aliased (no jagged edges) screen captions to your recordings in seconds and with the unique Video Annotation feature you can even personalise your videos by including a webcam movie of yourself "picture-in-picture" over your desktop.

And if all that wasn't enough, CamStudio also comes with it's own Lossless Codec that produces crystal clear results with a much smaller filesize compared with other more popular codecs, like Microsoft Video 1.

You have total control over the output of your video: you can choose to use custom cursors, to record the whole screen or just a section of it and can reduce or increase the quality of the recording depending on if you want smaller videos (for emailing to people, for instance) or you can have "best quality" ones for burning onto CD/DVD.

But all of these features would be worthless if CamStudio wasn't easy to use ... fortunately that's not the case. CamStudio can be learned in a matter of minutes and comes with a comprehensive built-in helpfile, so if you do manage to get stuck, you can simply hit "Help" and get the answers you need.

So where can I get it and how much does it cost?

You can download and use it completely free - yep - completely 100% free for your personal and commercial projects as CamStudio and the Codec are released under the GPL (for more details on this license, click here.)

There are no royalties or any monies to pay - although if you do use it for a commercial product, I wouldn't say no to a copy of whatever you produce

Here is the project page on SourceForge where you can download the files:

CamStudio on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/camstudio/

Not sure how to download CamStudio from Sourceforge? Click here to watch a video or you can download the video from here.

Close the new window to return to this page.

You'll always find the latest version of the CamStudio program, the Lossless codec and the source code on SourceForge. If for some reason the above link isn't working use the links below to download the executables:

Only Use These Links if SourceForge Is Down

CamStudio: http://www.camstudio.org/CamStudio20.exe

Lossless Codec: http://www.camstudio.org/CamStudioCodec10.zip

CamStudio's History

Over the last few months, quite a people have asked me about CamStudio's history and the confusion with the V2.1 that's around, so I thought I'd explain what the situation is, as I understand it ...

CamStudio was originally released by a company called RenderSoft who were subsequently bought by a company called eHelp who used some of the technology in their program, RoboDemo ...

Some time later, eHelp was bought by Macromedia who wanted RoboDemo (which was to become Captivate) ...

Knowing that CamStudio did some of the stuff RoboDemo did for free (mainly export to streaming Flash), it looks like they released a newer version of CamStudio (2.1) which fixed some bugs but most importantly, removed certain features, mainly the ability to create SWFs and you were required to register to use it ... lovely - and over time, links to the various webpages that had CamStudio and it's source code were became broken.

However, I've managed to find the earlier version 2.0 complete with the related CamStudio video codec (comparable to Techsmith's excellent TSCC), the source code for both and just put the website up so people can download them ...

Issues

A number of people have mentioned having trouble viewing SWF videos generated by CamStudio. It turns out there's a bug which means you can't see anything if you try watching them with Netscape or Firefox (Internet Explorer works fine) ...

The next update (2.2) will fix this but until then, here's a temporary workaround:

I seem to be getting a lot of questions about a registration code ... the version of CamStudio available from this site (v2.0) doesn't require registration AND has more features, so uninstall v2.1 from your system, download and install v2.0 from here and you're good to go!

News

Just wanted to let you know, I've released another tool called Podcast Autocue, which you can download free of charge as well from here:

Podcast Software

CamStudio Update List

If you'd like to be notified when I have some news related to CamStudio, signup using the form below and you'll be "in the loop" ...

Obviously, I won't be spamming you and your details won't be sold, given, traded or hired to any other third party under any circumstances.

Spread The Word ...

I'd love to get CamStudio into the Top 10 Most Popular downloads at SourceForge ... for no other reason than ... um ... I'd like to, so tell as many people as possible ...

If you'd like to link back to this site, here's some example code you can use:

<a href="http://www.camstudio.org" target="_blank">
CamStudio - Free Streaming Video Desktop Recording Software</a>

I've got big plans for CamStudio and want to continously improve it and the Codec as well ... but I'm not a programmer ...

So if there are any Visual C++ programmers out there that have Flash, video encoding and codec experience who'd like a challenge, would you please let me know ... you can reach me on nickthegeek@gmail.com ...

So, at some point in the near future I'd like to start accepting donations so any coders that work on this project will get some kind of financial reward in addition to the warm, fuzzy feeling they get from helping to resurrect this cracking piece of software ... so if you're feeling generous, please get in touch at the email address above and let me know ...

I'd also love to get your feedback on CamStudio ... what you liked, what you thought sucked and what you think is missing ...

The features I'm hoping to have added are:

• MP3 audio to be used in output SWF
  (currently only PCM and ADPCM at the mo)

• Redirect SWF to another URL after finished playing

Got some more ...? Tell me then!!!

Email: nickthegeek@gmail.com