Best Free Screen Session Recorder [1]
Introduction
First, a word about words: Snapshot, Screenshot, Screen Capture, Screencast, Screen Recording and Screen Session Recording. Whew! All these words or phrases refer to the capture of one (still) or many consecutive (moving) images of your computer's screen.
So just to be clear: Snapshots and Screenshots refer to one-off still captures of your screen and Gizmo's has a great review of the Best Free Screen Capture Tool [3]. This review covers the rest: Screencasts, Screen Recordings and Screen Session Recordings software. We'll stick with the term 'Screen Session Recordings' for this review.
The uses for this class of software is wide: tutorials, demos, recordings for technical support playback and review, training and more. If you want a simple product just to take a quick screen recording, with no editing and no 'knobs to twiddle,' we've got that in our roundup. If you want a substantial product that gives you control over a wide array of settings including audio and video quality, lets you edit the project after the screen recording has happened, lets you add icons and information bubbles, and can churn out the results in several different formats, we have that, too.
Rated Products

ActivePresenter [5] [6]
Record the screen with capture profiles, save sessions as projects and publish them to desired output

Platforms/Download: Windows (Desktop) [7] | [8]
Version reviewed: n/a
Gizmos Freeware [9]
Our Rating: 5/5 |
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Read more... [6]

FlashBack Express [10] [11]
Gives you the ability to record full screen on one or more monitors
Platforms/Download: Windows (Desktop) [12] | [8]
Version reviewed: n/a
Gizmos Freeware [9]
Our Rating: 4/5 |
Read more... [11]

Icecream Screen Recorder [13] [14]
An extremely simple and easy to use screen recorder to capture screen or record video
Platforms/Download: Windows (Desktop) [15] | [8]
Version reviewed: n/a
Gizmos Freeware [9]
Our Rating: 4/5 |
Read more... [14]

Jing [16] [17]
Simplicity and speed are what Jing delivers for recording any window or region you select
Platforms/Download: Mac OS [18] | Windows (Desktop) [18] | [8]
Version reviewed: n/a
Gizmos Freeware [9]
Our Rating: 3.5/5 |
Read more... [17]
Other Screen Session Recorders
These are other free screen session recorders not rated in this review but included here for reference.
- CamStudio [19], a freeware application for Windows that allows a user to capture video, sound, or both. It can save videos in both AVI and FLV format.
- Istanbul [20], a lightweight application for Linux, only records videos in .ogg format.
- Fraps [21], a Windows application for you to record games, take screenshots and run recording benchmarks but you can't record your destop session with it.
- Wink [22], available in Windows and Linux, allows you to capture video and layer it with audio, and annotate with captions to create something like what you would see on an e-learning site.
Related Products and Links
You might want to check out these articles too:
Editor
This software review is copy-edited by Ian Richards [24]. Please help edit and improve this article by clicking here [25].
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