You could use OBS, Open Broadcaster Software, which is open source that has features geared toward streaming, but could ultimately prove more valuable than "simple" screencasting software. For instance, want to show your code always even when you're googling answers? That is very easy in OBS.
Blender can be used to edit your video, add small effects, overlay text, add audio, subs. See my old answer here <a href="https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-editor-for-windows-that-can-insert-images-or-audio-at-arbitrary-points/2009#2009" rel="nofollow">https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/175/video-e...</a>
On OS X, Quicktime player can also record the screen, or part of the screen. File > New Screen Recording.<p>AFAIK by default, it will only record the mic and not the audio card output. I don't know of a free option to do that (does ffmpeg?), but I've found Rogue Ameoba's Loopback[1] to be invaluable to capture output from the soundcard and add it as an audio track in the Screencast<p>[1] <a href="https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rogueamoeba.com/loopback/</a>
If you're using Linux only like me, Kazam is unbeatable to capture your screen. I got similar results with ffmpeg, but Kazam is just dead easy to use.<p>After that, in case you need some editing, I recommend Blender. It has a steep learning curve, but as long as you don't want to do really complex editing and your hardware is not too old, it is perfect and the results are great.
I used to use a ffmpeg approach to make my screencasts [1], but now I use OBS. Great piece of software. I wrote some notes about it some time back <a href="http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/" rel="nofollow">http://dabase.com/blog/Screencasting_from_Archlinux_gotchas/</a> and I think they've addressed all my issues.<p>I publish my screencasts upon <a href="http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/kaihendry</a><p>[1]<a href="https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/kaihendry/recordmydesktop2.0</a>
I personally prefer SimpleScreenRecorder: <a href="http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/" rel="nofollow">http://www.maartenbaert.be/simplescreenrecorder/</a><p>...Because it lets me record audio using the Opus codec.<p>I also edit the videos using kdenlive: <a href="https://kdenlive.org" rel="nofollow">https://kdenlive.org</a><p>It all works pretty well. You can see examples of the end result in my YouTube channel:<p><a href="https://YouTube.com/riskable" rel="nofollow">https://YouTube.com/riskable</a><p>(mostly videos of modded Minecraft tips and HOWTOs; all totally harmless and no foul language)
On Linux, the audio recording and video recording can be accomplished with a single command:<p><pre><code> ffmpeg -f x11grab -video_size [w]x[h] -r [framerate] -i $DISPLAY -f alsa -i default ...
</code></pre>
Like the author, I've found that the x264 codec with the ultrafast preset does the best job of avoiding framedrops (which from what I've observed can be caused by either the CPU spending too long encoding or the disk spending too long writing data).
I just press Alt+Ctrl+Shift R ;-)<p>"screencast tool<p>Gnome3 has already a screen recording functionality. Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R recording will start. There should be a red icon on the message tray in the right-bottom corner of your screen. If the message tray is hidden, Super+M will activate it. Pressing the red icon will stop the recording. The video is saved in the Video directory on your home directory on webm format."
I just use ShareX and enable sound recording in Task Settings -> Capture -> Screen recorder -> Screen recording options. Seems easier than downloading three separate pieces of software and recording each track individually then joining them...
This might be a bit out of date (2013), but it's what worked for me at the time using a not particularly high-powered computer running Ubuntu: <a href="http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencastsInLinux.html" rel="nofollow">http://thinkinghard.com/blog/HowToMakeHighQualityScreencasts...</a> (recommended software SimpleScreenRecorder).
You can also use <a href="https://jumpshare.com" rel="nofollow">https://jumpshare.com</a>, which uses FFMPEG for screen recording. We built this app to help everyone be more productive. You can capture and annotate screenshots, record screencasts and audio clips, compose notes (in text, markdown, and code), and more.
For me, the cost of having to go through all those steps and learn all those tools is significantly higher than the $300 or so cost of buying Camtasia. For me, it's not just the time cost, but the energy and cognitive resources consumed by not paying for the easy solution.<p>...just offering an opposing perspective, I respect your approach.
For some reason that OS X recording command line (pasted in directly) won't work for me. I'm using ffmpeg 3.0, the latest from Homebrew. It seems to be OK until I try to open it in QuickTime and it says the file is broken. I wonder if OS X 10.11 is the problem -- what version are you on?
Screenr.com used to be an amazing and awesome tool for cheap user testing/screen recording. I would embed their widget and then go to Mechancial Turk and pay each tester $1 to go through various steps they recorded using the Screenr widget. It worked like a charm and was inexpensive compared to say $50 a pop at usertesting.com.<p>Does anyone know of any Screenr.com alternatives?