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How to video capture your desktop (FRAPS video)

As you know I was really disappointed with Camtasia, so I went in search of an alternative for video capturing your desktop.

I found a great program called FRAPS.  I've known of fraps for some time, but always thought it was designed to capture video games only (it's basically the default utility that all the gamers use to record their in-game play). I discovered that it also can capture your desktop.

This program rocks. It's super simple to use and it creates high resolution video captures that seem to work perfectly with PowerDirector (a video editing utility).

The pross:
  • super simple to use
  • excellent video quality
  • video codecs that let you port video in to additional video editing software
  • captures audio very well (better than Camtasia I think)
  • high quality video outputs are easily compressed to 1/20th their size after editing in PowerDirector
  • low CPU usage (pretty much guaranteed not to crash your computer, unless your computer is really bad).
The cons:
  • lacks advanced features (not a big deal if you just want capture video)
  • output files are large (15 minutes of recording will produce approximately four, five-gigabyte files).
Anyway, Fraps is my go to program for caputuring my desktop video now. I did a quick demo for those that want to see how it works.

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