Is there a way to do screen recording on Windows 7 without installing third-party software? (Doing it with Microsoft software would be okay.)
Specifically, I'd like to be able to run a program and generate a video file (for example, .avi) of the session. These would be short 30 second or so clips.
5 Answers
The closest thing I can think of is Problem Steps Recorder.
You can access it by clicking the Start button and typing "psr.exe" and hitting enter.
This tool will record each mouse-click and save it as an image, then compile everything into HTML (more specifically, a Microsoft MHT file). However this is not a video capture tool. As far as I know, there isn't one built-in to Windows.
You may look into downloading the free VLC player. With VLC, you can use your desktop as a capture device:
- Click Media
- Click Open Capture Device
- Choose Capture Mode: Desktop (at this point, you may want to set a higher FPS)
..and then stream it to a file:
- Click the arrow icon to the right of play, and click "Stream"
- Leave the default "Source: screen://" and click "Next"
- Select "File" in the dropdown and click "Add"
- Choose a filename then click "Next"
- Choose your encoding and then click "Next"
- Click "Stream"
Hope this helps.
4Well.
You asked for "without third party software". I suggest you Microsoft´s Expression Encoder 4. There´s a limited free version that captures the screen for 10 minutes.
4You can use "Screenrecorder" which is a utility from Microsoft, based on Windows Media Encoder.
It's not included by default in Windows, but can be downloaded from this Microsoft Technet page.
1I've used CamStudio in the past. You could install it elsewhere, copy to a USB drive, and use it portably from there?
1If the problem is specifically installing third-party software, you can use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to your Windows 7 box from another PC that does have recording software installed, and record just the Remote Desktop Connection window.
