Captura desktop recording program for Windows

Captura is a free open source desktop recording program for Microsoft Windows that comes with quite a few extra features on top of the core functionality.

There is really no shortage when it comes to desktop recorders for Windows. Windows users can pick from a wide range of free and commercial applications. 

Screen recorders are used for a variety of usage scenarios: from creating demos and instructional videos to recording chats or webcam sessions.

Captura

Catpure 5.0, the version that we had at our disposal for this review,  does not have to hide behind commercial applications.

You may use it to record video and audio, but also to take screenshots. The program requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.6.1 but that is the only requirement. If you use Chocolatey, you can install the application with the command choco install captura -y to speed things up.

The application displays most configuration options in two tabs in the program interface. The first tab, main, lists video, audio and screenshot parameters for the most part.

• Video: Select what to record (screen, window, region, only audio), add a webcam to the recording, select output formats (mp4, gif, avi), and frame rate and quality of the recorded video.
• Screenshot: select the save location (Clipboard, Disk, Imgur) and image format.
• Audio: Select sound and microphone, and set the audio quality.
• Other: Set the output folder, and whether you want the mouse cursor, mouse clicks and keyboard strokes to be included in the video.

You may customize how mouse clicks and keystrokes are highlighted in the recording if you enable the functionality.

The configure tab is the second tab with preferences. It may be a bit overwhelming at first, as it lists five groups of preferences when you open it.

Among the many options are preferences to set up and change hotkeys, configure delays or a capture duration, or set up the program to resize screenshots automatically that you capture.

The actual recording and capturing is straightforward. You may use the buttons at the top to take a screenshot or capture video, or use keyboard shortcuts instead. Captura maps PrintScreen to capturing screenshots, the starting and stopping of recordings to Alt-F9, and the pausing and resuming to Shift-F9.

You may hide most of the program interface with a click on the up arrow button so that only the recording bar is displayed.

Verdict

Captura is a powerful desktop recording program for Windows. It is open source, comes without advertisement and other unwanted offers, and supports screenshot, video and audio recordings.

Its extra features, such as the ability to add a webcam view to a recording, set it apart from many other programs of its kind.

Now You: Which desktop recording software do you use, and why?