Desktop Recorder – Find the Right Screen Recording Tool
To describe a technical task like how to use a Web application or creating an Outlook Express account, sometimes only words are not enough. With the help of desktop recording or screencasting, it can demonstrate a software product or Web service in a more effective way. Besides, visual desktop recording can be distributed fast and widely as anyone can embed the video to any website.
From expensive and feature-rich software like Captivate to free tool like Camstudio, there are hundreds of applications to do the screen recording. What should be the right desktop recorder that can satisfy your needs? It depends. Users may have different needs and uses. Here we will take a look at DemoCreator and some major factors which can be considered in selection of desktop recorders:
System Requirements:
What desktop application you can take is according the platform you are using. There are desktop recorders for Windows (XP, Vista, or Window 7), Mac OS X (10.4 and 10.5), or Linux which you can choose from. Browser-based desktop recording tools like ScreenToaster can work on almost all the system platforms,
For DemoCreator:
* OS: Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista with DirectX 9.0 or above
* Player: Flash Player 8.0 (or 9.0) or Windows Media Player
* CPU: Pentium III / Athlon 1 GHz or above
* RAM: 128MB RAM (256MB Recommended)
* Available Disk Space: 10MB (for installation)
DemoCreator will not take up much resource in recording, especially you are using the Take screen shot recording mode. And it can even run on computers with poor performance.
Usability:
Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ an application in order to achieve a particular goal. A good desktop recorder should be usable, useful, and accessible for users even they are newbies. Most feature-rich desktop recorders tend to be difficult to learn, often giving too many setting options and overwhelming displays in the application interface. More user-friendly elements should be concerned in designing a desktop recorder. A smart application should make our work easier but not harder.
DemoCreator is mean to help you to do the desktop recording job with ease. 3 steps to get your desktop recording done: Record easily, Edit powerfully, and Share freely.
Flexibility:
What kind of options does the tool have for recording and editing? Pause in recording process is required if something unexpected happened or if you need to prepare some necessary items. Additional desktop recording can be added to the current recording, and multiple recordings can be integrated as one in some desktop recorders. Also editing feature is important. It enables users to do further editing after recording, so it is possible to add callouts to explain the demos better.
For flexibility, DemoCreator owns all the features mentioned above. Besides, there are some interactive objects that users can set in the recording. For example, the clickable buttons work when your publish your recording as Flash movie.
Audio:
Most desktop recorders allow audio to be recorded simultaneously with the screen capture, but only a few of them provide the audio editing and audio rerecording features. User may make some mistakes in the narration recording, so an audio editor can be good for them to edit and modify the recorded audio. And they can preserve the video recording and just record the audio again.
There is a simple audio editor in DemoCreator. What is more, this screen recorder provides 3 ways to add the audio to the screen recordings: record sound at capture time, record sound at preview time, and import audio file to the screen recording with audio editor. Recording voice-over narration with microphone can significantly enhance the impact of your presentation. The audio recording option of Stereo Mix enables you to record what you hear from your computer.
Video:
Almost all desktop recorders allow users to save their files in multiple compression formats. How the video is compressed greatly affects video quality and size. AVI, WMV, EXE, and SWF are the popular formats in desktop recording.
DemoCreator is a Flash-based desktop recorder, but now it is going to do more in video generation. As a great tool for training, there is a Scorm pack publishing option for LMS.
File Size:
Besides the compress method, the recording frame rate and image quality also impact the File size of the recording. And publishing the recording as Flash movie makes it a smaller file.
With DemoCreator, users can publish the recording as Flash movie with Html page to upload to Web sites.
As we can see, DemoCreator is a good desktop recorder for multiple major areas. Anyway, the one which fits your needs is what you want. So try to figure out your needs and get what you want.