Video recordings are widely used for brand building, marketing and training purposes, regardless of the industry. They help us create better tutorials, record real-time videos and even serve as social proof.

The good news is: you don’t require high-ticket software to record videos. Instead, you can find free video recording software that’s reliable and robust too. Ideally, such software should let you streamline your video recording, marketing and collaboration efforts.

Let’s look at the best free video recording software on the market.

12 Best Free Video Recording Software

1. Wave.video’s Free Online Screen and Video Recorder

Wave.video is an all-in-one solution to create videos, record and even edit them. You can use Wave.video’s free online screen and video recorder to record your screen, webcam or do both simultaneously. It also lets you invite guests, manage scenes, customize layouts, and do more to engage your audience more effectively.

Being a completely web-based video recorder, Wave.video eliminates the need to download and install clunky software on your device. Just open your browser and enjoy the many features offered by our awesome tool.

Plus, it’s easy to use. So, if you want to record professional-looking video recordings no matter your skill level, Wave.video is the best free video recording software for you. You can also host your videos, live stream and create compelling thumbnails – all inside one platform.

Reasons to Use:

• Remote Recording
  Need to record videos with guests? Wave.video lets you invite guests and make them a part of your video recordings.
• Studio-Grade Quality
  You can prepare scenes, manage them, create backgrounds, layouts, or add sound effects to ensure your recordings are nothing short of blockbuster hits.
• Integrated Video Hosting and Editing
  Your video recordings are saved and hosted on Wave.video. You can make edits and polish them before sharing them with your audience.
• Multistreaming
  Besides video recording, hosting and editing, Wave.video also offers multistreaming to ceaselessly provide live video masterpieces across platforms.

Reasons to Avoid:

• Audience insights for video recordings are not available yet

2. CamStudio

Looking for a desktop video capture software for Windows? CamStudio can be your aide. Although an open-source tool, this one allows you to create customized recordings, add annotations and even include watermarks or text into the recordings.

There’s also an autopan feature that lets you record your screen as you move the cursor. You can control the video output and save your recording in formats like MP4, AVI and SWF.

Reasons to Use:

• Captioning
  CamStudio lets you add high-quality, anti-aliased screen captions to your recordings.
• Video Annotation
  Customize your videos with annotation options and engage your audience better.
• Simple Interface
  Its intuitive interface helps to create video recordings effortlessly.

Reasons to Avoid:

• No editing features are available

3. Loom

Loom excels at creating hassle-free video recordings on any device. Like Wave.video, this one also comes with a built-in editing app. So, you can easily trim content, shorten recordings or join multiple clips to make your video recordings engaging without relying on third-party video editors.

Loom’s compatible platforms include macOS, Windows, iOS, Android, and Chrome Extension.

Reasons to Use:

• Interactive Features
  Viewers can provide feedback by leaving emoji reactions, time-stamped comments and other interactive features on the video.
• Easy Sharing
  Sharing your video recordings is easy with Loom. Just paste a link to your video and your recipients can watch it without creating an account or logging into it.

• Multiple Platform Compatibility
  Loom works with multiple devices, helping users get quick access to the platform, irrespective of the device they are using it on.

Reasons to Avoid:

• 5 minutes video cap for free users

4. OBS Studio

Another famous open-source software for video recording, OBS Studio can help with real-time video capturing and mixing. You can easily create scenes from multiple sources and choose from many customizable transitions for switching between scenes. There’s also an option to add your own stinger video clips.

With a customizable and powerful API, it is one of the best video recording software for macOS, Windows, and Linux.

Reasons to Use:

• Intuitive Audio Mixer
  OBS Studio’s audio mixer features per-source filters like noise gate, noise suppression, and gain.

• Powerful Configuration
  It offers powerful configuration options. Users can add new sources, duplicate current sources, and adjust properties without any hassles.
• Hotkeys
  You can set hotkeys for almost every action and easily switch between scenes, start and stop recordings, mute audio sources, and more.

Reasons to Avoid:

• OBS Studio has a steep learning curve which can be overwhelming for some users

5. QuickTime Player

Although incapable of recording with remote guests, QuickTime is a good option for those looking for video recording software for macOS. This app is inbuilt into all Apple devices and lets you record your screen and capture video using your device’s camera.

If you’re a Mac user and don’t need frills like annotations, filters, editing, etc., then QuickTime is a reliable option.

Reasons to Use:

• Simple Process
  Using QuickTime for creating video recordings is quite easy and doesn’t require special skills.
• Multiple Video Formats
  It supports multiple video formats including AVI (Motion JPEG only), QuickTime Movie (.mov), 3GPP, 3GPP2, MPEG-4 (.mp4, .m4v), MPEG-2 (OS X Lion or later), MPEG-1, etc.
• High-quality Video Recordings
  QuickTime comes with advanced video compression technology called H.264 that offers brilliant, high-quality HD video without taking too much storage space.

Reasons to Avoid:

• Only available for macOS users
• Can’t record remote guests

6. VLC Media Player

VLC is an intelligent cross-platform framework with a bunch of video editing features. It’s also a commonly used video recording app for PC that works on Windows, Linux, macOS, Unix, iOS, Android, and more.

Try it if you are looking for a video recorder with a sleek interface and that offers complete control of the playback with playback icons and hotkeys.

Reasons to Use:

• Advanced Features
  VLC offers advanced features like video, subtitle synchronization, video and audio filters, and more. 

• Hardware Decoding
  Apart from video recording, VLC also offers hardware decoding on most platforms.

Reasons to Avoid:

• Doesn’t offer video editing features
• You can’t customize the capture area on your screen
• There’s no option to record audio using the mic

7. Riverside

By offering features like local recording with up to 4K video resolution and uncompressed 48kHz WAV crystal clear audio for each participant, Riverside deserves a spot on this list.

Besides video recordings, you can use it to record studio-quality podcasts too. The tool also uploads everyone’s audio and video during recordings straight to the cloud for easy downloads. You can enjoy all this and more from your browser or mobile app.

Reasons to Use:

• Automatic File Saving & Uploading
  Riverside offers continuous audio and video uploads during the recordings and saves them automatically.
• Instant Transcriptions
  This tool also transcribes your audio and video recordings with its AI-powered technology.
• Text-based Editor
  You can use its text-based audio and video editor to make changes to your recordings.

Reasons to Avoid:

• The free plan delivers watermarked videos on export

8. Zight

Formerly CloudApp, Zight is home to some amazing video recording features like screen recording preferences, multiple output options and audio/mic preferences.

You can even annotate your screen and take and store screenshots, as well as label them for later. It’s available for Windows, Chrome, macOS, and iOS.

Reasons to Use:

• Easy Sharing
  The recordings are shareable via autogenerated links and you can drag and drop items into chat apps or emails for quicker communication.
• Multiple Integration Options
  Zight integrates directly with multiple apps including Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and more.

Reasons to Avoid:

• The free plan comes with a video length cap of up to 90 seconds

9. Screencastify

Anyone can make stunning video recordings with Screencastify’s easy-to-use Chrome extension. It lets you annotate your recordings to help your audience focus on what matters the most.

Include interactive questions in the videos and get real-time responses. The tool also makes it easier to decide who gets access to your videos for better security.

Reasons to Use:

• Watch Page
  You can track who has viewed your video recording with the Screencastify Watch Page and add checks for better comprehension.
• Google Drive Integration
  It automatically saves all video recordings in your Google Drive for easy access.
• On-screen Annotations
  Screencastify lets you use real-time tools like the pen tool to annotate screens and engage viewers.

Reasons to Avoid:

• There’s a 10GB video storage cap on free videos

10. FlexClip

FlexClip is a fantastic video recording software that also lets you edit your videos. You can add annotations, subtitles, overlays, etc. to your video recordings.

This in-browser screen recorder comes with cloud sync storage and one-click share to platforms like Dropbox, YouTube and Google Drive. There’s also a desktop app for Windows users, which makes it a good video recording software Windows 10.

Reasons to Use:

• Separate Screen and Camera Recordings
  FlexClip records your screen and camera separately. So, you can edit and reposition different clips for better, more professional-looking videos.

• Intuitive Interface
  The interface is intuitive and doesn’t require technical skills to operate.

Reasons to Avoid:

• The video length is capped at 1-minute on the free plan

 

11. ScreenRec

ScreenRec is an intuitive tool with one-click screen capture. You need to simply press a button to start or stop recording.

Available for Windows, Linux, and macOS, it lets you add comments and highlight the crucial aspects of your screenshots. You can even tag recorded files and add them to collections for easy retrieval.

Reasons to Use:

• Enhanced Privacy
  ScreenRec offers complete privacy with encrypted content. You also get to control who has access to the recordings.
• Powerful Analytics
  You can see who watched your videos, at what time and for how long.

• Easy-to-use
  With its famous 1-click capture, ScreenRec is one of the most straightforward tools for screen recordings.

Reasons to Avoid:

• No built-in video editor

12. Bandicam

Finally on the list is Bandicam, a free video capture software for Windows that lets you record everything on your computer screen in HD resolution. You can create real-time drawings and add a mouse pointer effect using Bandicam. There’s also a feature to stop recordings automatically based on the file size or recording time.

In addition, it supports a hardware-accelerated H.264 encoder (NVIDIA, Intel, AMD) to obtain a high compression ratio for professional-quality recordings.

Reasons to Use:

• All-in-one Recorder
  Bandicam is an all-in-one screen recorder that can help you record webcam with audio, computer screen, and even DirectX/OpenGL/Vulkan games.
• Professional-grade video recordings
  This tool offers plenty of settings to choose from. You can play with the video format, FPS, size, codec, bitrate and quality to create professional-grade video recordings.
• Scheduled Recording
  Bandicam lets you start recording automatically at a specific time, daily or weekly.

Reasons to Avoid:

• Only available for Windows

Create Impactful Video Recordings

The best video recording software free can help you streamline your video recording tasks, improve productivity, and gives your organization a competitive advantage with high-quality video captures.

We hope this list helps you find the right tool for your video recording requirements. And if you’re looking for the best free tools for screen recordings, here’s a list worth checking out: 14 Best Free Screen Recorders For 2023.