Briefcast is a free, open-source desktop app for recording, editing and explaining your work. It records your screen, webcam and microphone, gives you a video editor with offline captions, and keeps docs, whiteboards, mindmaps, image boards and annotated PDFs next to the recordings they explain. Everything stays on your computer.
Start here
- Getting started: install Briefcast, get around the window, and make your first recording.
- Keyboard shortcuts: every shortcut in one place.
Recording
- Recording your screen, camera and audio: what to record, devices, webcam overlays, system audio, countdown, pause and stop.
- Using your phone as a camera: pair a phone by scanning a QR code, nothing to install.
- Screenshots: capture an area, a window or a whole screen.
- Live display and on-screen annotation: show cameras on a second screen, and draw on top of anything while you present.
Your files
- The library: folders, importing, renaming, moving, Trash, file info and format conversion.
- Watching and listening: the video and audio player, captions, chapters and playback speed.
Editing and creating
- Video editor: trim, split, overlays, picture-in-picture, audio clean-up, silence trimming, auto zoom and export.
- Image editor: mark up, blur, crop and adjust photos and screenshots.
- PDF annotator: pen, highlighter, notes and images on PDFs, and annotated PDF export.
- Docs: a page-based word processor with templates, equations, citations, headers, footers and page numbers, watermarks, comments, version history and voice typing. Opens Word, Markdown, text and PDF files, and emails or shares documents in one step.
- Writing a two-column paper: set a journal-style paper from a blank page, with typeset equations, ruled tables, captions and live references.
- Whiteboard: diagrams, charts, equations and scientific shapes on an infinite canvas.
- Mindmap: build learning roadmaps with topics, resources and progress tracking.
- Board: compose several images into one layout and export it as a single picture.
Reference
- Settings: every option, section by section.
- Privacy: what stays on your computer, and the optional anonymous statistics.
- Troubleshooting: fixes for the problems people run into most.
Briefcast runs on Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). The source code is at github.com/oyewodayo/screencast.
