I knew that there were
free screencasting tools available, but I did not know about the
Microsoft Office Labs Community Clips until I
read about it on Channel 10. Community Clips provides a little app that on installing integrates into Office applications. It lets you record a clip or a tutorial in Office and then share it with others online on SoapBox. As the SoapBox service will terminate soon, uploading the WMV file of the screencast is currently disabled.
I hope they bring out a new avatar of SoapBox that uses Silverlight instead of Flash to run the videos while also
supporting subtitles.
Update(22-Aug-09): Community Clips works not just for Office applications but also any application that is currently open. Once Community Clips is invoked, it sits in the system tray.
It can be managed with these hot keys -
- To start recording: Windows key + Alt + R
- To stop recording: Windows key + Alt + T
- To pause recording: Windows key + Alt + P
This screencasting tool can also be put to good use for error reporting. It is not uncommon for developers to receive complaints on their application although it has been aggressively tested & found to work great on the developer machine. In addition to programmatic error logging, certain issues arising due to a browser toolbar or other environmental settings on the end-user's computer which are hard to replicate on other computers can be better captured with a video recording using the screencasting tool.
