Are you looking for a great screen recorder for your Windows 7 system? Well, I’ve found a great one for you. BSR Screen Recorder is actually a very decent free screen recording software. When comparing BSR Screen Recorder software against CamStudio, I actually like BSR Screen Recorder better! For some strange reasons, CamStudio isn’t working correctly on my Windows 7 system, so you can see why I like BSR Screen Recorder better.
Apparently, BSR Screen Recorder has a commercial version also. Nonetheless, the difference between the free version and the commercial version of BSR Screen Recorder is that the free version will post unobtrusive watermark logo on the bottom corners of your video. The watermark logo is unobtrusive enough that I think the free version of BSR Screen Recorder is actually just as great as the commercial version of BSR Screen Recorder. Here is why, the free version of BSR Screen Recorder has all the features that the commercial version of BSR Screen Recorder has.
I’ve found out BSR Screen Recorder is very intuitive to use that I don’t even have to use the wizard. Nonetheless, BSR Screen Recorder does come with a wizard to guide you through the processes of recording a video, edit/produce video in movie lab, play a video file, work with movie studio tasks, and use a converter to convert videos into different video formats. You can always close the wizard and just manually edit the settings for the video, audio, file, hotkeys, options, and screen by going to Options at the top menu.
When you first install BSR Screen Recorder, it will use Windows 7′s default video codec. The Windows 7′s default video codec would be bad for recording videos, because the video quality would be bad. I suggest you to go to xvid.org and download Xvid codec for Windows 7 (x86 and x64). You need to install Xvid codec and then go back into BSR Screen Recorder’s Video setting under Options to change the video codec to Xvid MPEG-4 Codec. Remember to save the codec so whenever you record a video in the future, it will automatically use the Xvid MPEG-4 Codec. By the way, BSR Screen Recorder will encode and record the video for you at the same time. This means you don’t have to re-encode the video afterward unless you want to rencode the video to another video format. I’ve found Windows Media Player plays Xvid MPEG-4 Codec just fine.
You can download BSR Screen Recorder by going to Cnet, click on the Download link on Cnet website, and then type in BSR inside the Find Software search box to find BSR Screen Recorder software. Click on the download button next to the BSR Screen Recorder link on Cnet’s specific download page to download BSR Screen Recorder software. Don’t you worry about malware and virus, because I’d scanned BSR Screen Recorder with Norton 2012 Antivirus and found zero malware and zero virus. Also, Cnet Download is a reputable software download online destination, therefore there is little chance for you to download something on Cnet Download that might be harmful to your computer system.
OK, let me recap the good things about BSR Screen Recorder, then I’ll go into the bad things of BSR Screen Recorder. The good things are it’s easy to use, recording high quality videos if using the right video codecs, fast, allowing the encoding and recording of a video to carry out at the same time, and free to download and use the full version with one catch (i.e., unobtrusive watermark logo appears on the bottom corners of the videos).
The first bad thing about BSR Screen Recorder is that you cannot use it to record computer video games. This means you cannot use BSR Screen Recorder to record a video session of a computer game’s gameplay. The second bad thing about BSR Screen Recorder is that it does not work well with USB headphones. I’ve found out that I cannot record the loud enough sound level of the sounds that pass through the earpieces of a USB headphone. Nonetheless, BSR Screen Recorder does record crystal clear sounds from the microphone of a USB headphone. To clarify, this only happens if you want to record both the sounds from the earpieces and the microphone of a headphone. You can always record crystal clear sounds from the earpieces of a USB headphone if you do not allow Windows 7 to record the sounds from the microphone of a USB headphone.
In summary, BSR Screen Recorder is surprisingly easy to use and useful. It has all the trademark features that can be found in many great screen recording software. The best part is that you can use BSR Screen Recorder for free. BSR Screen Recorder is now my favorite screen recording software on Windows. For your information, I don’t know how well BSR Screen Recorder will work on other versions of Windows other than Windows 7. I know that BSR Screen Recorder is working rather well on Windows 7. BSR Screen Recorder is currently supporting Windows Vista, 7, 2008, 2003, XP, Me, NT, and 2000. The system requirements are Pentium CPU processor minimum, 512 MB memory minimum, and 20 MB free hard drive space for installing. Nonetheless, I think you need a lot more than the minimum requirements to really reap the benefits of many features that BSR Screen Recorder has to offer.
Vinh Nguyen
