HyperSnap is an excellent screen capture software created by Hyperionics which I have been using for nearly 10 years. Other than HyperSnap, they also have another product call HyperCam which is a screen recording software that captures the action from your Windows screen and saves it as a standard, easily edited, AVI (Audio-Video Interleaved) movie file. Both HyperSnap and HyperCam are shareware but recently Hyperionics announced that HyperCam 2 will be permanently available for free worldwide usage. When HyperCam 2 requires license registration, the unregistered version will embed a watermark on the captured video and also nags the user the register each time it is started.
The latest version of HyperCam 2.25.01 installer is only less than 1MB, unlike the popular Camtasia Studio which is currently at 187MB! Obviously Camtasia offers more advanced features but HyperCam is good enough to create regular software presentations, tutorials, demonstrations, walkthroughs, and other various tasks the user wants to demonstrate.
To capture a screen video with HyperCam 2, you will first need to specify the screen are that you want to record. At the Screen Area tab, you can select the region using your mouse, or a specific Window which the software will automatically specify the values for Start X & Y, Width and Height.
It would be very useful to be familiar with the built in hotkeys that allows you to start/stop/pause/resume recording. The hotkeys are hardcoded to HyperCam software and cannot be changed.
F2 = Start/Stop Recording F3: Pause/Resume F4: Single Frame Shot (in Pause mode)
At the Sound tab, you can select whether to record sound from your microphone. Finally the Options lets you choose if you want to record the mouse cursor movements and adding starbursts to the movie when mouse is clicked. The Starburst effect is to allow the viewer to know if the mouse has been left or right clicked. There is a screen notes button for you to annotate your movies with pop-up text boxes while recording. This feature is great when you are recording a video without a voice guidance. It is also possible to re-record a video with HyperCam 2 but you will have to refer to the official FAQ page for more information on how to do that.
HyperCam 2 is free but HyperCam 3 is available as shareware and apparently sold by Solveig Multimedia, not Hyperionics. The major advantages of HyperCam 3 over HyperCam 2 are:
new skinned user-friendly interface able to grab video in overlay mode able to edit captured video with HyperCam Media Editor able to encode captured sound useful, tiny HyperCam tray tool-bar visual managing by recently recorded clips ability to choose audio channel
I would say that the most useful feature in HyperCam 3 is the ability to edit captured video with HyperCam Media Editor, saving you the trouble of having to install another video editor software.
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