Icecream Screen Recorder 5.98
Recording your gameplay for web sharing, your Skype meetings and conversations for future reference, a tutorial of the tool you’re best at, or simply taking a screenshot of a specific window or area of your desktop are activities that are becoming more and more common every day. Icecream Screen Recorder meets all these needs and whatever other screen recording tasks you’d need to carry out, and all of them for free.
Following the attractive interface and the intuitive approach present in all Icecream products, this screen-recording tool opens in a cream-colored main screen with all the main tools within easy reach. From here, you can review the program’s settings or go directly to capture video, capture your gameplay, take a screenshot, or capture any audio input.
Capture Video will record any activity taking place on your screen or any feed coming in through your webcam. You can define a specific area of your desktop, select the active window, or record the entire screen. You can choose to trace your mouse pointer, include or not the audio stream in the video file, and even paint or highlight specific areas using the brushes and the color palette provided. Besides, in the Game Capture Mode, you can define the level of quality, your preferred FPS, and the video file type. Taking a screenshot works in a similar fashion. You can capture the entire desktop, a specific window, or an area of your choice. Likewise, you can use the pencil provided to make annotations or marks on the part of the screen you wish to capture.
The program’s built-in audio recorder is a nice addition to its extensive functionality. This simple recording tool will allow you to record your Skype conversations, a voiceover track for your tutorials, any streaming audio, or any other sound coming in via your computer’s soundcard.
Many of the program’s functions and features can be activated using specific key combinations or hotkeys to make it even more efficient and easy to use. Note also that, as a free tool, it suffers from some limitations that you can get rid of by upgrading to the Pro version. Thus, the recordings are limited to a duration of 5 minutes and the media codecs supported are WebM for video and VP8 for audio. The Pro version not only lifts these limitations but also adds some extra functionality, such as video conversion, additional audio and video codecs, watermarking, etc. Surely, downloading and trying out the free version of Icecream Screen Recorder is the best way of evaluating its usability and the convenience or not of purchasing a Pro license.
Videos and screenshots
Review summary
Pros
- Offers hotkeys and key combinations for many features
- Includes an audio recording tool
- Comes with special settings for gameplay recording
Cons
- The free version comes with too many limitations
- Supports very few output media formats
