GOM Cam is a Windows screen recorder from GOM Lab that combines video recording, still image capture and basic editing in one program. It is aimed at lectures, meetings and live broadcasts, with tools for drawing on screen while recording. GOM Cam is a paid program available as a free trial, with a permanent single-PC license or a monthly GOM Easy Pass subscription. It needs an internet connection for license verification, so it cannot run offline.
Choosing what to record
Screen recording starts by dragging a rectangle around the part of the screen to record. A recording toolbar then attaches to that area. Other options sit under the menu’s More button. These include full-screen recording (with a monitor choice on multi-monitor setups) and Direct Input for typing exact dimensions. Recently Recorded Area reopens the toolbar over the previous region. The area can be redrawn before recording starts.
Before recording, a Preview pop-up shows the result and lets you check the microphone level or mute sound. It also adds a webcam image, picture or text on top of the screen. Recording can be paused and resumed. Files save automatically and appear in GOM Cam’s file explorer.
Webcam and lecture modes
Webcam recording captures the camera feed itself rather than the desktop. A chroma key option removes the background behind the speaker. Lecture recording opens a PowerPoint, HanShow or PDF file as a full-screen slideshow, with a webcam, microphone and system audio picked beforehand. You can layer the presenter’s camera image over the slides. The drawing tools stay available for marking up each slide as you present it.
Drawing on the recording
The Draw button opens annotation tools that work in screen, full-screen, lecture and fixed-area capture modes. Anything drawn becomes part of the video or screenshot:
- pen and highlighter with adjustable color and thickness
- shapes (squares, circles, lines, arrows) and stamps such as stars or checkmarks
- text typed directly onto the recording area
- eraser, Erase All, undo and redo
Two modes go further. Board mode replaces the recording area with a solid-color board or an imported background image, which works like a blackboard for explanations. Laser Mode makes marks fade after one to five seconds, so a presenter can point at something without clearing the screen afterward.
Recording settings and scheduling
In GOM Cam’s settings you set the frame rate, video size and compression (H.264 encoding on the CPU). You also set the microphone and system audio devices, and video and audio quality. Higher quality means larger files, and a heavily loaded CPU can make the recording stutter. The mouse pointer can be shown with colored left- and right-click indicators.
Automatic shutdown stops a recording after a set time or file size and can then end the recording, close the program or turn off the PC. Split save starts a new file at a chosen interval or size.
Scheduled recording handles sessions nobody is present for. Each schedule has a title, date, start time, recording length and screen area, and it can repeat weekly on a chosen day. Several schedules can be queued, and each one changes from Pending to Complete when it finishes.
Screenshots, scrolling pages and GIFs
Image capture works on a dragged region, a single monitor, all monitors at once, or the last captured area. Fixed-area capture keeps a region on screen for repeated shots. It can take a series of captures automatically at a set interval and count. Scrolling capture scrolls a browser page and stitches the content into one image. It can move top to bottom, left to right or in a zigzag pattern, and a mouse click stops it.
The GIF option records a screen region as an animated GIF with adjustable frame rate and playback speed. A preview window and a simple GIF editor follow the capture.
Captured images open in GOM Cam’s image editor. It offers the same pen, highlight, shape, stamp and text tools. It also offers cropping (free-form, original ratio or square), exact size entry, rotation, mirroring and resizing by pixels or percentage. The product page also lists AI Text Extraction, which reads text in an image and turns it into editable text.
Trimming and exporting video
The built-in video editor is meant for quick fixes rather than full production. It splits clips at the playhead, plays selected clips at double speed and adds markers. It also imports extra audio onto a separate track and adjusts or mutes the volume of each clip or track. Exports go to MP4, with Very Good, Good or Fair quality and 24 to 60 frames per second, or to MP3 for sound only. After export, the program can play a sound or close itself.
Managing recordings
Every video and image GOM Cam produces appears in its file explorer. You can filter files by type and sort them by name, size, creation date or playback time. You can display them as thumbnails or a list. Tags added to files can be searched later. From the explorer, you can rename a video, send it to the editor or play it. You can also share it to YouTube, Google Drive, OneDrive or Vimeo. Its soundtrack can also be extracted to an MP3 in one click.
