Unregistered Hypercam 2

[Octaviano Collars]

UnregisteredHyperCam 2 is a watermark displayed in the upper-left corner of footage recorded with free versions of the HyperCam 2 screen capture software developed by Hyperionics, Inc. The software was widely used as a screen recording software to make YouTube videos during the site's early years, frequently in instructional and tutorial videos.

In the early 2000s, Hyperionics released the second version of their HyperCam screencasting software, which displayed the digital watermark "Unregistered Hypercam 2" in the upper left-hand corner of videos recorded with free versions of the program. On August 6th, 2008, YouTuber Kyle Morse uploaded a video titled "How to get on top of the night club in club penguin with out hacking," which featured the HyperCam watermark displayed over footage of Windows Notepad window and the 2001 song "Bodies" by Drowning Pool playing in the background (shown below).

In June 2010, Hyperionics released HyperCam 3, which contained a similar watermark for unregistered version. On June 7th, Minecraft Forums[6] member shawnachu submitted a post titled "No more Unregistered Hypercam 2" announcing the release. On May 28th, 2012, YouTuber ObscureNForeign uploaded a video containing a close-up of the watermark (shown below).

On April 24th, 2015, Redditor BySumbergsStache submitted a post asking "What is unregistered hypercam 2?" to /r/OutOfTheLoop,[1] to which Redditor Pseudolus_Festivus replied that the software was widely used to record Runescape videos. On March 30th, 2015, Redditor Norty_Adam submitted a "roses are red" ending with the line "unregistered HyperCam 2" (shown below). Prior to being archived, the post gained over 3,600 points (93% upvoted) and 80 comments on /r/2007scape.[4]

On September 16th, Redditor Tanskiie submitted a post asking about the link between "'Unregistered Hypercam 2', 'Notepad' and 'Let the bodies hit the floor'" to /r/OutOfTheLoop.[2] On April 2nd, 2017, Redditor Psycho9182 submitted a post asking to place a pixel art representation of the "Unregistered HyperCam 2" watermark at the top left corner of the /r/place[5] canvas, which gained over 18,100 points (88% upvoted) within 48 hours. That day, the watermark was successfully added to the canvas (shown below).

HyperCam is a screencasting program made and created by Hyperionics and Solveig Multimedia.[2] It captures the action from a Microsoft Windows screen and saves it to an AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) or WMV (Windows Media Video) or ASF (Advanced Systems Format) movie file. HyperCam will also record all sound output, and sound from the system microphone can also be recorded.

HyperCam is primarily intended for creating software presentations, tutorials, demonstrations, walkthroughs, and other various tasks the user wants to demonstrate. The latest versions also capture overlay video and can re-record movies and video clips (e.g. recording videos playing in Windows Media Player, RealVideo, QuickTime, etc.). Beginning with version 3.0, HyperCam also includes a built-in editor for trimming and merging captured AVI, WMV, ASF files.[2]

The unregistered versions of HyperCam 1, HyperCam 2 and HyperCam 3 apply a digital watermark to the upper-left corner of each recorded file and will ask the user to register on every startup. Base registration, which costs $39.95, will eliminate this watermark.

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