Screen recording without third-party software on Windows 7?

Question

Is there a way to do screen recording on Windows 7 without installing third-party software? (Doing it with Microsoft software would be okay.)

Specifically, I'd like to be able to run a program and generate a video file (for example, .avi) of the session. These would be short 30 second or so clips.

Answer 1

The closest thing I can think of is Problem Steps Recorder.

You can access it by clicking the Start button and typing "psr.exe" and hitting enter.

This tool will record each mouse-click and save it as an image, then compile everything into HTML (more specifically, a Microsoft MHT file). However this is not a video capture tool. As far as I know, there isn't one built-in to Windows.

You may look into downloading the free VLC player. With VLC, you can use your desktop as a capture device:

1. Click Media
2. Click Open Capture Device
3. Choose Capture Mode: Desktop (at this point, you may want to set a higher FPS)

..and then stream it to a file:

4. Click the arrow icon to the right of play, and click "Stream"
5. Leave the default "Source: screen://" and click "Next"
6. Select "File" in the dropdown and click "Add"
7. Choose a filename then click "Next"
8. Choose your encoding and then click "Next"
9. Click "Stream"

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Well.

You asked for "without third party software". I suggest you Microsoft´s Expression Encoder 4. There´s a limited free version that captures the screen for 10 minutes.

Answer 3

You can use "Screenrecorder" which is a utility from Microsoft, based on Windows Media Encoder.

It's not included by default in Windows, but can be downloaded from this Microsoft Technet page.

Answer 4

I've used CamStudio in the past. You could install it elsewhere, copy to a USB drive, and use it portably from there?

Answer 5

If the problem is specifically installing third-party software, you can use Remote Desktop Connection to connect to your Windows 7 box from another PC that does have recording software installed, and record just the Remote Desktop Connection window.