I’ve always been on the lookout for cheap alternatives to Camtasia Studio to make screen capture tutorials of using software. But most did not include the cool screen-zooming feature.

But I found a work-around called ZoomIt which is a free (onscreen presentation tool) download and works with Windows XP and higher (it worked fine for me with Windows 7 64bit).

This has an easy-to-use zoom feature that you use via the mouse wheel, and has a highlighter pen feature so you can circle around things on the screen. When you go out of the zoom mode, the screen is back to normal.

It’s so easy to use that even I (not good at remembering keyboard shortcuts) managed to master it after a few minutes of practice. This is important, since you want to focus on your presentation, and not be trying to remember how to control software as you record a video.

You can find several screen capture solutions such as people use to showcase game demos. My personal favorite is HyperCam3 which is currently priced at about 21 Euros.

I actually paid about 30 Euros for it (but now they seem to have a special holiday offer on, and you can try the free demo).

This is nice, easy-to use software at a cheap-enough price I think. But I did find a few quirks when using it in combination with ZoomIt.

For example: the red box that encloses the screen capture area is magnified, so you loose your visual reference as to where the screen-capture window is. And I couldn’t pop-up the Hypercam control panel anymore, so needed to use the windows task manager to shut it down.

However, I did get a captured video. So clearly, I need to work out a smooth work-flow when using this technique

So combining ZoomIt with a low-cost or free screen capture utility should provide a cheap alternative to Camtasia Studio for us penny-pinchers I think.