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ActivePresenter: most powerful Screen Recording free solution

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xbeta:
I used ActivePresenter for several years, and I think it's the best free screen recording solution. But comparing its high quality, there're only so few people know it. So I'd like to write something  for it.

For those who have researched a lot in free screen recording solutions, these are some candidates:
- WebEx recorder: small, easy to use, good for long time recording. hard to edit and publish.
- Camstudio: classic, open source, large video size, not updated for a few years.
- Wink: it's good for flash (.swf), but not for now days "video". not updated for a few years
- FlashBack Express: most people think it's the winner  -- until they get to know ActivePresenter  :)

ActivePresenter is  a recorder, so it can:
- capture area, window, full screen, fixed size(some predefined size)
+ use predifined and DIY profile: mouse, click, input, video, fps, audio , hotkey...
+ change screen resolution in AP

But it's more than a recorder, you can even use it as an audio video edtiro:
- add recordings into project
- also import image\ video\ office documents into project
- split/ cut video
- add annotation: shape, text, highlight, spotlight. and for each element, you can set the fore and background color, fonts, size, time span, fade in/out ...
- recording while edit
- automatic audio via Text to Speech engine

For publish, AP can export to:
- Video (MP4, FLV, AVI, WMV, WebM, MKV)
- Images (PNG, JPEG)
- pro versions can also export to HTML, interactive Flash and HTML5 simulation, or other document formats (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX).

visit http://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/free-edition/ for more information
If someone are interested in the Pro version -- I think the free edition is enough -- I can help to get discount  :up:

ActivePresenter: most powerful Screen Recording free solution

4wd:
I'll add a +1 for the free edition, it works flawlessly for me but I do think the Export to MP4 video is among the slowest conversion I have ever seen.

Since the video is captured in MPEG4-AVC in a MKV container and the audio is captured as a PCM WAV file, it should just be a matter of encoding the WAV to AAC and remuxing into an MP4 container which would only take a few minutes.

But they seem to re-encode the whole video stream again which can take hours, (6+ hours for a 3.5 hour capture).

ActivePresenter: most powerful Screen Recording free solution

xbeta:
……
But they seem to re-encode the whole video stream again which can take hours, (6+ hours for a 3.5 hour capture).
-4wd (April 20, 2016, 01:59 AM)
--- End quote ---

I have no experience in editing such a long video.
But you case brings me more confidence for the quality of AP -- maybe slow, but reliable, not like some other apps which will crash for large file or long time capture.

Deozaan:
Can you customize what your mouse cursor looks like in the presentations? For example can you make it so it looks like a hand with a pointer finger (like hovering over links in a browser) or something similar?

I've been using OBS for the past few years whenever I need to record my screen, but this looks very interesting! Thanks for sharing!

4wd:
……
But they seem to re-encode the whole video stream again which can take hours, (6+ hours for a 3.5 hour capture).
-4wd (April 20, 2016, 01:59 AM)
--- End quote ---

I have no experience in editing such a long video.
But you case brings me more confidence for the quality of AP -- maybe slow, but reliable, not like some other apps which will crash for large file or long time capture.
-xbeta (April 21, 2016, 12:13 AM)
--- End quote ---

There was no editing, it was a direct export of captured video - I prefer to do editing in Sony Movie Studio.

Also, the quality of the export is less than the captured video because they re-encode to a lower bitrate when they don't have to.

If you are not doing any editing within AP and want to use the capture as-is, it is better to not use the Export to Video function of AP and do it yourself using ffmpeg:


--- Code: Text ---ffmpeg -i K:\10000_Video_001.1.mkv -i K:\10001_Audio_002.wav -c:v copy -c:a libvo_aacenc output.mp4
This will encode the audio stream to AAC and copy the video stream into an MP4 container file - and it will do it in a few minutes.

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