BB FlashBack Standard

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on February 01, 2010

BB FlashBack Standard Edition is an incredibly easy-to-use program that allows you to create video recordings of on-screen activities. The program's cool features and intuitive design make it a great choice for presentations, tutorials, and more.

The program's interface is quite well-designed, and getting started with the recording features is easy. A small (but optional) toolbar appears next to the your system tray, with buttons for Record, Stop, and Play, as well as access to a more detailed menu. When you're ready to record, just click the button, and a brief wizard appears that allows you to customize settings for display, sound, Webcam, and more. You can have the program record the full screen, a particular region of the screen, or just one window. We thought it was especially cool that you can run the Webcam at the same time you're recording in full-screen mode; the Webcam recording then appears inset within the full-screen view and can be moved and resized as needed. Anyone who finds themselves using the same settings over and over again can make use of the Quick Record feature, which remembers the settings from the previous recording session. The program's editing tools allow you to crop videos and add markers, text, images, sounds, and more. Overall, we were quite impressed with BB FlashBack Standard's versatile features, and we think it's the best program of this type that we've seen.

BB FlashBack Standard Edition has a 30-day trial period. The program installs and uninstalls without issues. We highly recommend this program to all users.

Publisher's Description

From Blueberry Software:

BB FlashBack Standard is a new screen recording application for creating tutorials, demonstrations or training material. BB FlashBack Standard Version includes one-click uploading of movies to YouTube, Blip.tv and Revver, the ability to record and play webcam footage as picture-in-picture video. BB FlashBack Standard is ideal for the majority of screen recorder users requiring more functionality than available in the budget version, but not the full suite of features available in BB FlashBack Professional. New in BB FlashBack 4: Fade Transitions - Now you can add transition effects to join clips when creating your movie. Add them during editing, or let the software add them automatically when inserting a FlashBack movie or video file. Gallery - Simplify the editing workflow by creating a gallery of in-movie annotations like textboxes, images, highlights etc. You can just drag objects in and out of the gallery to save them and add them to a movie. The gallery includes a range of annotations to get you started. Blur Tool - Blur out sensitive details in a movie - great for creating movies that feature sensitive or personal data. Record-time Notes - Make notes during recording and see them as textboxes in the movie. Just move the cursor to the top of the screen and start typing into the popup Notes window. Recording will auto-pause and restart when you have finished. Export to GIF format - For easy embedding into Web pages. Other features include: Record screen, microphone, PC sounds and webcam, Record the full screen, a window or region, Record and display keystrokes, Record continuously and limit the final file size, Choice of recording modes to suit older or newer PCs, Records Vista's Aero mode, Upload to Youtube, Blip.tv, Revver, Export to Flash - SWF and FLV (Flash video), Export to AVI, Export to Windows Media Video (WMV), Export to QuickTime (H264), Add textboxes, Add sound files or record a new commentary, Add images, Highlight areas of the screen.