Screen Capture | Glenn Ward

Using Camtasia to Screen Capture / Record Video Tutorials

Despite pushing for Adobe Captivate we have installed Camtasia on the edit suites at work for screen capture and tutorial recording. I’m not disappointed though it does the job!

Firstly, the majority of recording the company will need to shoot will be on PC based software so we have bought the PC version and installed VMWare on the Macs. This should improve the workflow from recording to edit. The software is easy to set up and get started with, like most programs.

Load up Camtasia Studio and you will first be faced with an option screen. Choose screen recording.

A small window in the bottom right hand corner of the page will load. In this window you have options for Camera, Audio and Select Area.

Once you hit the record button the window is minimized to the tray and everything you do on screen or within your assigned area is recorded.

When you are done hit the Esc key or go down to the icon in the tray and click to reveal the stop option.

The recording is now in a ‘cache’ state and you now need to decide how you will save the file down.

Click the Save button in the bottom right corner of the window.

Save the files down as an AVI as we will not be editing the video in Camtasia Studio. Organise your clips well so you can quickly identify them and their order later.

Shortcut Keys to Screen Grab / Print Screen on the iPhone

Really quick post, yesterday I was looking for apps to generate a picture of whatever was on my iPhone screen and I came across a shortcut.

Hold down the Home Button,

Press the On / Off button on the top of the phone,

The screen will flash white for a moment as it takes the picture.

Check the Photos folder on you phone and your images will be there! Very handy for blog posts, presentations, demos etc.

Speed up your blog posts with quick screen grabs using Mac OSX shortcut keys

You could always use Grab, Apple Macs built in screen capture software but I will tell you how to print screen in seconds, even capture screen images ready to go straight into you blog or powerpoint presentation, already cropped and re sized without the need to use a program such as Adobe Photoshop.

Ok, first method. Hold SHIFT + COMMAND + 3 to print the entire screen, this will automatically place a high .png file on your desktop with a generic name.

Second method, SHIFT + COMMAND + 4 provides you with a set of cross hairs to select your desired workspace. Click and hold at the top left of the part of the screen you wish to capture and then drag diagonally down until all of the area is highlighted, release the mouse and the image will be generated and saved to your desktop. If you change your mind press escape to remove the cross hairs.