Download Squad

ScreenCastle is a Java-based tool for recording screencasts from your web browser. If you've got Java installed on your computer all you have to do is visit ScreenCastle and click the big red record button. A window will pop up asking you to select the area of your desktop that you want to record and decide whether you want to capture audio from your microphone.

That's pretty much it for the settings. Click OK and you can start capturing a video of anything happening on your desktop. Scroll your mouse over the red line around the border of your screen to pause or finish the recording.

The image quality is pretty good, but the video frame rate wasn't that impressive in my tests. What is impressive was the number of options that ScreenCastle gives you once your recording is over. The service automatically generates a download link where you can grab an FLV file, a web site where you can watch the screencast online, and HDML or BBCode that you can use to embed the file on various web sites. There are even links to large and small thumbnail previews.

While ScreenCastle isn't going to replace full features screencast software like Camtasia Studio, it definitely gets the job done if you just need to make a simple recording in a hurry.

[via WebWare]