A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, typically carrying audio narration. Screencasting software takes a series of screenshots of a running application, recording the user’s actions, and creating a video file. The movies can be output in a variety of different formats. This type of software was brought into prominence by the commercial Windows application Lotus ScreenCam in 1994, followed by TechSmith Camtasia and Adobe Captivate.

Screencasts have a wide variety of uses. This type of software is also often used to demonstrate operating systems, software actions, website features, troubleshooting, and evaluating technical skills.

We have written about open source screencasting software in the past, including: ‘Screencasting Software’, and Plain Text Screencasting Software which highlighted our favourite screencasting software for the desktop and command line. Things have moved on since these articles were written. The purpose of this article is to identify high quality open source screencasting software that makes it a breeze to create screencasts. Thanks to this software, anyone can make their own videos.

If you are running Gnome Shell you already have an environment framework to record your desktop. Simply press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R to start recording a screencast. Gnome’s screencasting works well, using little resources, and is effortless to use.

Another solution worth considering is RecordScreen.py which is, as its name suggests, a Python script. It uses ffmpeg to perform the recording and encoding of the screencast.

To provide an insight into the quality of software that is available, we have compiled a list of 4 slick Linux screencasting tools. All of these tools are released under a freely distributable license.

Screencasting tools Kazam Well designed and easy to use interface vokoscreen Easy to use screencast creator SimpleScreenRecorder Easy to use screencast creator FFmpeg Cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video

Return to our complete collection of recommended free and open source software including our latest additions.

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