Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Recording Lectures for Later Playback

Campus Technology reports that "Lecture Recording System Draws Devotees at Temple." Caputuring handwriting is addressed in this story and I think that is essential. I have been playing with a free trial download of ZD Soft Screen Recorder (Free for 5 minute recordings and $39 for the unrestricted version). This allows for the recording of everything that shows on my screen including handriting and allows a simultaneous audio recording. Sizes of the files are very small and can then be sent to a streaming server or made available from download.


There are lots of available options for codecs including their own format ZD Soft Screen Video, "which is designed for generic screen recording purpose. ZD Soft Screen Video provides lossless image quality in extremely small file size. This package is used to make those videos playable in various kinds of media players, such as Windows Media Player, Real Player and etc. The FOURCC code of ZD Soft Screen Video is 'ZDSV'.... Download it here. (from the zdsoft website)."


More later ...

4 comments:

  1. Steve,

    I am collaborating with members of the WIPTE community (www.purdue.edu/wipte) to collect and describe titles of software that would be useful to faculty who are using Tablet PCs (see http://h20325.www2.hp.com/blogs/highered/archive/2007/02/23/2544.html)

    One category of software is "recording lectures", so I am curious about your posting. How is ZDSoft similar/different than something like Camtasia from Techsmith? http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

    - Jim Vanides
    www.hp.com/go/hied-blog

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  2. Jim,

    I have seen camtasia in action, but other than a demo years ago, I haven't used it. ZDSoft has the advanctage of being free for 5 minutes and only $39 for the full version.

    Camtasia is $299.

    Steve

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  3. I teach technology at a private high school in Ohio and I frequently ask myself if there is a better way to show the students how to do certain things. ZDSoft should really do wonders. Thank you for bringing it to our attention!

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  4. There is another screen recorder called DemoCreator. It is an easy-to-use screen recording tool. It can record your activity on your screen to make software training tutorials. This software enables users to add comments to the recording to explain it more clearly.

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