u/CalvinBuild

I’m building a small set of native Windows tools for creator/video workflows, and I’m trying to figure out which ones are actually useful to people outside my own workflow.

Disclosure: I’m the developer. Some tools are early releases, and some have or will have paid Pro options.

Current lineup:

• FastCast: simple recording and streaming
• FastPlay: lightweight video playback
• FastClip: pull short clips and highlights
• FastCompress: compress video files
• FastShorts: short-form video workflow tooling

The goal is not one huge “creator suite” with a giant setup flow. I’m trying to make focused Windows tools that each solve one practical problem without account-first friction or bloated UI.

Fast Series page: https://www.calvinsturm.com/fast-series

I’m looking for blunt feedback from software users:

• Which of these sounds most useful?
• Which one sounds unnecessary?
• Would you rather see this as separate apps, or one connected suite?
• What would make you instantly not trust/download a small Windows utility like this?

I’ve been building a small suite of native Windows tools for creators and power users.

The idea is to avoid one giant bloated app and instead make focused tools that each solve one practical workflow problem.

Current lineup:

FastCast: simple recording and streaming FastPlay: lightweight video playback FastClip: pull short clips and highlights FastCompress: compress video files FastShorts: short-form video workflow tooling

The positioning is basically: practical Windows software for creators who want useful tools without account-first friction, huge setup flows, or 40-tab interfaces.

Fast Series page: https://www.calvinsturm.com/fast-series

I’m trying to decide if this is better positioned as:

1. One branded suite
2. Separate standalone products
3. One flagship product first, with the others secondary

Blunt feedback welcome. Does the suite idea make the products feel more credible, or does it make the whole thing feel scattered?

I built FastCast, a native Windows screen recorder and simple live streaming app, and I’m looking for beta testers.

It’s for people who want a cleaner, simpler workflow than OBS for basic creator use cases like tutorials, demos, lessons, coaching videos, and casual streaming.

Current features:

• Local MP4 screen recording
• Monitor/window capture
• Desktop audio + microphone capture
• Webcam picture-in-picture
• RTMP/RTMPS streaming with stream keys
• Portable ZIP, no installer
• No telemetry, no accounts, no auto-update

It’s not trying to replace OBS for advanced scenes, plugins, chroma key, or full broadcast production. The goal is a focused single-scene recorder/streamer that feels easier to set up.

Windows 10/11 x64 only right now. Free during beta.

Download / beta page:
https://www.calvinsturm.com/fastcast

Public release repo:
https://github.com/CalvinSturm/FastCast-releases

The most useful feedback would be:

1. Did recording work on your machine?
2. Did desktop audio, mic, and webcam behave correctly?
3. Was anything confusing?
4. Did Windows SmartScreen or the portable ZIP setup feel sketchy?
5. What would make this useful enough to keep installed?

If something breaks, FastCast has a local support bundle option that redacts sensitive info before saving the ZIP.

I’m mainly looking for practical feedback from real Windows setups.

I’ve been building FastPlay, a small native Windows video player written in Rust.

The goal is not to replace VLC or MPC-HC. Those are mature players with much broader scope. FastPlay is intentionally narrower: open a local file quickly, reach the first frame fast, scrub without friction, resume where you left off, and keep the UI minimal.

Repo: https://github.com/CalvinSturm/FastPlay

Current stack:

• FFmpeg for demux/decode
• D3D11/DXGI for video presentation
• WASAPI for audio
• Rust for the app/playback architecture

One of the more interesting bugs so far was an A/V desync after backward seeks. A partial pre-seek audio batch was surviving the seek and stamping post-seek audio with the old PTS, which made audio lead video by several seconds after scrubbing backward. Resetting the audio batcher during seek fixed it.

Recent v0.3.0 work included:

• Resume playback position
• Recent files overlay with Ctrl+Shift+O
• Better repeated seek/scrub reliability
• Local benchmark harness for open/seek/pause/resume metrics
• Refactoring a large playback coordinator into smaller tested modules

It is still early, Windows-only, and unsigned, so SmartScreen warnings are expected for now.

I’d appreciate feedback from people who have worked on Windows desktop apps, media playback, FFmpeg/D3D11 interop, Rust FFI, or native app architecture.

Specific feedback that would help:

• Does the architecture look sane?
• Are there obvious Rust/Windows interop mistakes?
• Any advice on measuring seek/scrub latency more accurately?
• Any playback files/codecs that would be useful test cases?

Edit: based on feedback in this thread, I released v0.4.0, which adds lightweight queue/folder playback.

It still avoids full playlist/library behavior, but now you can drop multiple files or a folder, use PageUp / PageDown for previous/next, and FastPlay auto-advances at natural end-of-file.

Release:
https://github.com/CalvinSturm/FastPlay/releases/tag/v0.4.0