Record a video of what happens onscreen with Camstudio

Recording an image of what's on your monitor is a great way of explaining how software works or for showing what is going wrong when looking for help.

Camstudio is a free tool for recording either the whole screen or just a portion and then exporting the video in a variety of different formats.

The software also records audio, so a narration track can be added to the video, or there is the option to add captions.

Even more ambitious is the option to add a picture-in-picture. Special codecs are available that are designed specifically for these kind of videos and offer better quality.

Videos can be saved as high-quality AVI files or SWF files, which are much smaller and better for sharing over the internet

Both Camstudio and the codecs are released under the GPL, so they are open source and without cost.