When starting a new game I always find that my favourite manner to learn initially is watching a video.

It also happens to be an easy way to make tutorials with the unfortunate side effect that people will conjure up a visual image of you based on your voice.

I find this really useful tool for doing this here:-

 http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ 

 I thought I would post this as it is also really useful for doing AARs when you really need to show more than a screenshot, or for showing folks your incredible tactic for winning in a game.

As an experiment I made this video of getting to this thread. The program is free and runs in a browser (need Java), also you can size the capture if you wanted to concentrate on one aspect. Something the bloggers could use for their game reviews. Here is the test video of this site and I turned sound off since in real life I am a dead ringer for a young Brad Pitt but sound like a old man on the video recording.

Now does this work if I was playing a game, say Crysis or Panzer Corps? Or does it record just what is within the browser?

EDIT: It does! Thanks a lot for pointing to this site, I think I may have found a solution to some games that don't play nice with FRAPS!

Another great tool is Faststone...available for relatively cheap.

This is another tool which seems to be popular with the geek crowd. I have not used it but I noticed it can be replayed on iPhones so I assume it can be played on any smartphone with a decent webkit browser.

We all love AARs and some time in the near future people will start to post videos of how their game went. I have tried doing the screen print which is great especially if it has explanatory edits added but its a lot of work - well it was for me anyway.

Maybe instead of dreaming and talking about it I'll actually just become a Nike advert and just do it.

http://www.screenr.com/