It’s hard to draw the line as to when a screen recording product becomes lecture capture software. The purpose for which you use the software should not dictate into which category it falls (after all, you can create spreadsheets in Microsoft Word, but is Microsoft Word a spreadsheet software?) There’s countless screen recording tools out there. Some are free. I personally use Recordit for quick and easy screen captures. And Screencastify exists as a simple to operate Google Chrome plugin. PowerPoint can natively record your presentations. And Quicktime has built-in recording functionality for both MacOS and Windows. Other tools aren’t necessarily intended to act as screen recorders but can nonetheless record your screen (Zoom and WebEx, for instance).
The list below is inevitably going to be incomplete. It’s a survey of just a few screen recording tools available out there, most of which correlate to vendors who focus on the EDU market in some way.
Tegrity
Manufacturer: McGraw Hill
Supported transfer: Local Drive
Comments: In addition to screen recording capabilities, McGraw Hill’s Tegrity product also provides remote proctoring functionality.
Relay Recorder
Manufacturer: TechSmith
Supported transfer: Relay
Comments: One of a myraid of screen recording solutions from TechSmith, the Relay Recorder is part of a suite of tools from TechSmith aimed at the educational market and integrates with their Relay video platform.
Snagit
Manufacturer: TechSmith
Supported transfer: Local Drive, FTP, Screencast.com, Camtasia, Relay, YouTube, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive for Business
Comments: TechSmith’s Snagit has a heavier emphasis on graphic design than their Camtasia suite, leaving out a number of the powerful video editing tools you find in Camtasia. For that reason, you can export your Snagit recordings directly into Camtasia. Following TechSmith’s recent strategic alliance with Panopto, Snagit will soon have an option to upload directly into the Panopto platform.
Camtasia Recorder
Manufacturer: TechSmith
Supported transfer: Local Drive, TechSmith Video Review, Screencast.com, Vimeo, YouTube, Google Drive
Comments: “Camtasia” was once synonymous with screen recording. The Camtasia Recorder remains one of the most powerful screen recording solutions available, acting as just one part of a full featured video editing suite. Camtasia users can upload their recordings to TechSmith’s Screencast.com platform, YouTube, Google Drive, or save their recordings locally. Recordings can also be uploaded to TechSmith’s Video Review, a kind of collaborative project portal with some elements of an Online Video Platform. Following TechSmith’s recent strategic alliance with Panopto, Camtasia will soon have an option to upload directly into the Panopto platform.
Kaltura Classroom
Manufacturer: Kaltura
Supported transfer: Kaltura
Comments: Designed for deployment on computers installed in the classroom, Kaltura Classroom acts as a replacement for traditional lecture capture hardware. Kaltura Classroom supports the Open Capture standard which means that multiple video sources can be muxed together on the playback, empowering the user to select the video source which best suits their needs. As computers in the classroom become supplanted by BYOD usage, Kaltura Classroom finds itself as a sort of DIY hardware solution that installs on a Windows-based micro form factor PC. A Kaltura dashboard that allows you to monitor your entire fleet of Kaltura Classroom computers is an added bonus.
Kaltura Personal Capture
Manufacturer: Kaltura
Supported transfer: Kaltura
Comments: Kaltura’s Personal Capture software is similar to their Classroom Capture tool, but with an emphasis on an individual user’s desktop recording needs. As with Kaltura Classroom, Personal Capture supports the Open Video Capture standard, allowing a user to record multiple sources concurrently (such as screen and webcam).
Panopto
Manufacturer: Panopto
Supported transfer: Panopto
Comments: Panopto has made great inroads into the lecture capture market by focusing heavily on their lecture capture recording software. The software has found its way onto classroom computers and personal computers at numerous institutions.
VidGrid
Manufacturer: VidGrid
Supported transfer: VidGrid
Last updated: March 25, 2021
