I’d Rather Be Writing – Tom Johnson

I’ve been looking for some screencast software that is either open source or inexpensive. I’ve arrived at the following two applications: Wink and BB Flashback Express. Wink is open source and in version 2 they finally support audio (previous versions did not); however, the audio recording is full of static and cuts out. Additionally, the file size seemed to be a little bulky.

BB Flashback Express has clear voice and seems to compress more, but it costs $39. However, if you donate a buck to Donationcoder.com, you can get BB Flashback Express for $20.

I am often lured by open source software, but the extra time I spend trying to fiddle with it may cause it to be more expensive in the end anyway.

My thoughts are that if it’s free, more people will be using it, and more tutorials will exist out there. Others will be more apt to experiment with it.

I plan to do more screencasts, so I may just spend $21 to get BB Flashback Express.

Update: After doing some sample tests with each, I found that BB Flashback Express sounds much clearer than Wink.

Note: I also experimented with Camstudio, but when I realized that it did not play in Firefox, this killed the appeal for me.