How to Capture Streaming Video

Video capturing software allows you to record any video playing on your computer. It's like making a screen capture, but with video. Some of the programs available can produce duplications of near identical quality to the original, however, that usually puts a strain on your computer (memory, processing power, etc).

Video capturing has many Fair Use applications. Government or other public agencies post video of meetings and other educational materials, but often, this content is only available to the public in a non-downloadble, streaming format. Capturing video that is available for public use is within your Fair Use rights. See our Fair Use guide for an in-depth discussion.

There are also many uses of video capturing that are not legal, none of which are encouraged or endorsed by New Media Rights. See our discussion of Not Quite Legal Uses and Flat Out Illegal Uses.

Windows/PC

CamStudio - CamStudio is a free, open-source video capturing tool. CamStudio can create AVIs or SWFs and has an easy to use interface. There are a couple of options for capturing audio simultaneously, but the function does not work on all systems (hopefully this will be fixed in version 2.5, which is currently in beta). If you need audio, try using one of the dedicated audio capturing tools and synching the audio and video later (the dedicated audio tools usually get better quality anyway)
Download CamStudio 2.0

Mac

Snapz Pro X - Snapz is shareware, it is not free. After the 30 day trial period the software costs $29. There are currently no free, open-source video capturing tools for the Mac...so if you are a developer....Anyway, the good news is that Snapz is a slick and powerful tool. The captured video is of much higher quality than what's offered on the PC-side and the audio capture function works as intended.
Download Snapz Pro X