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Freeware lets you make Windows screen-cast movies

Opinion
May 07, 20082 mins
Enterprise Applications

Can you recommend a low-cost or open source screen-capture program that will let me make screen-cast movies of what happens on my Windows computer screen?

There are a number of them out there, but the one I really like is called Wink from DebugMode. Wink is a Windows application distributed as freeware; the source does not seem to be available, and the author asks that if you redistribute the program that you get permission first. Wink is a “Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials…”. Wink comes in a Zip file containing a Windows installer package. After unpacking the Zip file and installing the program you can use it to capture what happens on your screen two different ways. You can have Wink capture screen shots automatically every few seconds, or you can have Wink capture screen shots in response to mouse and keyboard input. You can start and stop the capture and switch to the other method all inside one capture session, and when you are done the program produces a flash movie and an index Web page to load the presentation. The presentation created can be viewed in a Web browser on the desktop or it can be loaded to your favorite Web server. One of the nicest features is that you can also choose to create a PDF version of the presentation suitable for printing.