Having looked into a number of free video / audio capture software options in order to create our instructional videos, including WINK and CAM STUDIO (two popular free options) we ran into a number of issues
- Lack of MPEG or AVI video export options – too often only SWF (Flash), which is not compatible with Youtube (WINK) – note that YOUTUBE does not support flash video (we also tried a number of YOUTUBE like services which supported SWF video, however in the end we were not happy with the quality of rendering these offered)
- Limited recording time for free versions (MANY OF THE NON FREE VERSIONS APPLY THIS TO DEMOS)
- Poor quality rendering (CAM STUDIO)
We settled on a payed product called Jing which provided just the functionality we needed with a slick interface at a yearly subscription fee of $15US which we found reasonable (SNAGIT was a close contender however it was unable to support video capture on the MAC version!). Please let us know if you come across any useful alternatives!
Find below a tutorial video we captured using jing and uploaded to Youtube