The Good
* Is made up of two separate programs, PCHand Screen Capture and PCHand Screen Recorder.
* PCHand Screen Capture:
o Straightforward and easy to use.
o Allows users to use multiple different methods to take screenshots: Rectangle freehand, freehand, window, active window, scrolling window, full screen, and "fixed rectangle".
o Screenshots can be sent to a built-in image editor, Windows clipboard, e-mail, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, be saved on computer (directly, with no edits), or be saved automatically.
o Can automatically apply edge effects and add a watermark to all screenshots.
o Has the ability to apply captions to all screenshots.
o Allows users to save screenshots as BMP, JPG, PNG, GIF, or TIFF formats.
o Users can save custom screen capturing settings as custom profiles which can easily be reused at any time.
o Built-in editor can be used to edit any images, not just screenshots taken with PCHand Screen Capture.
o Supports hotkeys.
* PCHand Screen Recorder:
o Straightforward and easy to use.
o Allows users to save recorded videos as AVI, WMV, MP4, MPG, FLV, or SWF formats.
o Allows users to record whole screen, a specific window, or a custom region.
o Can record audio from microphone and (supposedly) speakers.
o Allows users to select if they want to include the mouse cursor in videos or not, and is able to highlight mouse cursors and clicks.
o Videos can be saved manually, or automatically.
o Supports hotkeys.

The Bad
* PCHand Screen Capture:
o Does not use automatic naming scheme when manually saving screenshots or editing screenshots and then saving them. (Only uses automatic naming scheme for auto-saved screenshots.)
o Needs better ways to control output image quality/compression.
o Needs "global profile settings" feature so users don't have to manually change all the profiles' settings when they want them all to be the same.
o Needs an option to automatically apply a user-defined caption to all screenshots, instead of prompting the user every time for every screenshot to input the caption they want to add.
* PCHand Screen Recorder:
o AVI videos are discolored. (At least they are for me - all other formats work fine.)
o Claims to be able to record audio from speakers, but needs a better/more direct way to do this. (I couldn't get recording audio from speakers feature to work, even after following the directions in the Help file.)
o Doesn't give users any sort of countdown between when the start recording button is hit and the actual recording happens.
o No video editing/modification features.

Free Alternatives
[Screenshot Tool] FastStone Capture (v5.3)
[Video Recorder] BB Flashback Express
[Screenshot tool and video recorder] Ashampoo Snap 3.50

For final verdict and recommendations please click here.

Ashraf  –  13 years ago  –  ¿Te ha parecido útil este comentario? si | no (+208)

Traducir

This was one of those giveaways that I wanted to like. However, when I tried it the last time it was given away, February 25, 2010, it was a disaster (see my comment #55, as well as other people's comments). Their website lists the most recent version as 1.8 from December 19, 2009. Even if this version is different, I have no confidence in their coding abilities.

I've found that the only thing that successfully captures all screen video on my Win7x64 PC (1920x1200, latest nVidia drivers), is Microsoft Expression Encoder 4 (the free version, Screen Capture tool). On my PC, the frame capture rate tends to top out at 15-20 FPS, which is lower than I would like (30 would be acceptable). I tried the latest version of Fraps, it's junk and couldn't capture anything. Unlike Fraps, the ZD Soft Screen Recorder was written by a programmer, but it couldn't capture anything, either. As I stated previously, MEE4 will edit but doesn't do annotations. You can add captions, but WMP will scale down the video to make room for the captions, which are displayed below the video. You can convert to WMV and do some editing, annotations, and effects in Windows Live Movie Maker, but you're limited on output formats, and it recodes (MEE4 Free lets you set all relevant output VC-1 WMV properties).

See my comment #55 from last time for still-image captures. (I don't care if people thumbs-down my comment because they're too lazy to read earlier comments, I don't waste time on endless reruns).

Fubar  –  13 years ago  –  ¿Te ha parecido útil este comentario? si | no (+97)

Traducir

Not at all impressed with the PCHand Screen Recorder - the recorded video of my desktop - icons, taskbar and the PCHand Screen Recorder interface weren't even "almost close" to the actual colors.

HW Config is nothing weird - nVidia 8800GTS - 260.99 WHQL Drivers - Win7 32bit.

BuBBy  –  13 years ago  –  ¿Te ha parecido útil este comentario? si | no (+32)

Traducir

Screen Capture and Screen Recorder are simple to use and have an intuitive user interface. They make creating a screen capture a simple task. An editor is available for still captures, but nothing for video which is a shame.

There are a variety of ways that you can perform a capture, region, full screen, scrolling window etc.

There are some missing items that would be useful such as text capture or web page capture but this does not detract from the feature set that already exists.

The recorder would benefit from editing tools as #1 Ashraf states. The ablity to append to captures or combine them with transitions and text overlays would be very nice. Also it would be useful if it could capture the audio stream if a video is playing in your capture area (although most other offerings I have tested don't have this ability either).

Screen capture/recording software is not in short supply both in commercial and freeware versions but this suite is definitely worth the download at today's price of FREE :-)

Colin Wiffen  –  13 years ago  –  ¿Te ha parecido útil este comentario? si | no (+28)

Traducir

Install went cleanly in Vista Business.

Please add indication that software is registered, ie in HELP ABOUT.

I've been using FastStone Capture 5.3 for years, so that is my yardstick for comparison...

The selection window is really large and "clunky" compared to FastStone.

I would like to be able to change the "effects" in the editor that are preselected in the selection window.

Please add an option, to turn on text labels for buttons. I am not a long dead Egyptian who can read hieroglyphics...

The "Balloon" stamps, I could not add text to them even though there is an edit text option in the right click context menu ... ?

I like the filters, but I would like to be able to add the various filters to selected areas only, ie inside an "added shape" to obscure personal text in the capture. Apply the filter only to the whole capture is too limited.

In the "Effects", the selection fields for "Torn Effect" and "Wave Effect" should not be check boxes, they are a pair of radio buttons. Only one or the other may be selected.

When I added the "Wave" edge effect, the wave is applied to a straight edged white background on the upper and left sides, and grey one on the other 2 sides. Sorta undoes the wave effect

Overall, not bad, no major problems, a couple of effects that make it worth keeping.

I look forward to what they do with it in the future.

ron  –  13 years ago  –  ¿Te ha parecido útil este comentario? si | no (+27)

Traducir