Screencast-O-Matic 1.4

If you ever need to show somebody something some amazing feat that's only visible on your desktop, then you wouldn't start recording your monitor with a video camera, or your phone. You would search the web for something quick and easy. Well, before you come to that need, why not arm your computer preemptively with software that can do that?

File not accessible

Screencast-O-Matic (SOM) sounds like something from the next century but actually it is a simple screen recording tool some good features and some visible shortcomings.

It opens up as a recording frame with all the controls underneath it. You can set up sound capturing via the audio driver or by microphone and you can also add in a webcam feed. Resolutions can be selected between the kind of old SVGA types and the more recent HD formats. You can also drag the edges to arrange it at any resolution you wish.

After youțve done a recording then youțll get the option to publish it to Video FIle (that is save it) or publish it to Youtube or to the Screencast-O-Matic website. You get to fill up the details and upload it to your desired account.

That was what's advertised, now here what the problem is. The biggest issue with SOM is that saved files are sometimes unreadable. If the case arises, in order to access the file that you have just saved, you must close SOM, open it again and select that you want to delete the last recording and start another. The file will not be deleted, it's just that SOM will disregard it and return to recording mode. Counter intuitive, I know. The good part is that you can now finally access it.

Features

• Webcam recording
• Upload to Youtube
• Microphone recording

Pros

• It's free and quite okay to film short snippets.

Cons

• File access issues (read above)
• Only 15 minutes per recording
• Could have used with more standard resolutions

Conclusion

It's true that there is a version that is paid by subscription which has quite a lot more going for it, but this free version could really use some updating and bug fixing. Open source doesn't mean that it's fine to release unfinished work.