HyperCam 3 – Low cost Screencasting & Editing on Windows!

Way back in the mists of time (sometime early in 2006 I think) I recorded a how-to screencast for ShowMeDo to teach the viewer how to use the original HyperCam to make their own ShowMeDo tutorial screencasts on Windows.  That screencast is well out of date but possibly the configuration notes might still be useful.

HyperCam is about to have a major update – the upcoming September release adds a major new feature, read below for details on HyperCam v3.

I liked HyperCam back in 2006 – it ‘did the job’ as a simple screencast recorder, it never crashed, it worked on Win 2k and XP (and later Vista – see their changelog) and seemed to be a very nice solution.

There were however two problems:

• the software required purchase
• it had no editor

For ‘purchase problem’ was only a problem because we were promoting the creation of screencasts in ShowMeDo for Free and Open Source Software.  Our audience would be amateur screencasters and we didn’t want anyone to have to buy software as that might stop potential authors from trying to screencast.  (Note – I bought it and I own several other screencasting tools – I have no problem with paying for software if I’ve not been clear above!)

The second problem was the lack of an editor.  This is still a major problem on Windows – we have no free (or low-cost) editing solution.  The closest two are BBFlashBack and CamTasia (at roughly £100 and £200 respectively).

Good news everybody – the new HyperCam 3 has an editor!  This means that Windows users will have a low-cost recording and editing solution, see below for a mock-up screen.  It looks as though the editor will include trimming and merging – trimming by itself is superb as it lets you delete minor errors without requiring a re-record.

HC3 hasn’t been released yet (it is expected this month).  Dmitry was kind enough to send me a short list of the upcoming features and point at their forum.  The expected price of HyperCam 3 is $40 USD (approximately 30 Euros):

• new skinned user friendly interface
• an ability to grab video in overlay mode
• an ability to edit the captured video file with the HyperCam Media Editor (fast and lossless AVI trimming and merging)
• an ability encode a captured sound
• an ability to use DirectShow, VCM and DMO codecs installed on PC

Tags: Audience, Changelog, Configuration Notes, Hypercam, Interface, Job, Mists Of Time, New Feature, Open Source Software, Overlay Mode, Tools, Tutorial Windows, Video File, Win 2k, Windows Users