AviTools

AviTools is a straightforward piece of software that permits you to capture desktop activity and save it to AVI format, as well as to put together AVI clips from BMP images.

It consists of two separate apps: AVI Recorder and AVI Builder. You can use these to create tutorials for YouTube uploads, or home videos from a collection of personal photographs, for example. Its output video options are customizable.

The installation procedure is a fast and easy job that shouldn't give you any trouble. Both tools are wrapped up in a user-friendly interface that gives you the possibility to easily figure out its options.

AVI Recorder enables you to capture the whole screen, active window or fixed rectangle. It's possible to configure the frame time (in milliseconds) for both recording and playback, set the background color, include or exclude the cursor, as well as to indicate the output directory and file name of the new captured AVI clip.

When it comes to AVI Builder, you can get started by populating the task list with the images you want to transform. Just keep in mind that BMP is the only supported photo file type. It's possible to add as many images as you want and to specify the output directory and file name of the new AVI video.

Regarding the output settings, you can either use the parameters from a reference file or customize the video width and height (in pixels), bitmap type, background color, frame time (in milliseconds) and image format (e.g. center, smooth, best fit, stretch/shrink). Once the video is created, you can launch it in the default media player to test results without leaving AviTools' interface.

We haven't come across any stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that the apps didn't freeze, crash or prompt error messages. They carried out tasks swiftly while remaining light on system resources consumption.

On the other hand, AviTools lacks many features that would have made it easier to handle. For example, it doesn't implement an option for previewing the video files before generating them (in order to fix any mistakes on the spot), nor does it integrate transitions or image effects. Nevertheless, it's free for personal use and fairly intuitive.