What is Easy Screen Capture Video?

Easy Screen Capture Video is a tool used for recording screen activity into standard AVI video files. If you move the cursor, launch a new program, type some text, click a few buttons, or select some menus -- anything that you see on your screen -- Easy Screen Capture Video will be able to record all these and allow you to play them back later on.

You can use Easy Screen Capture Video to develop videos to demonstrate features of a new software, for creating movies used in user training, for tracking the progress of a program that executes for a long time, or for recording the sequence of steps that cause the occurrence of bugs in faulty software.

Table of Contents

- Getting Started
- System Requirements
- Introduction
- Uses of Easy Screen Capture Video
- Recording a screen movie
- Video basics
- Setting video options
- Setting regions
- Setting cursor options
- Enable autopan
- Program options
- Some notes on the quality and performance of the recording
- Website

Getting Started

To start recording, click the red button. A rectangle will appear for you to select the area you want to record.

When you want to stop recording, click the blue stop button. A dialog will appear for you to name and save the file.

System Requirements

- Microsoft Windows 98, Me, NT 4.0, 2000, XP or 2003
- 400 MHz processor
- 64 MB or more recommended
- 2 MB of hard-disk space for program installation

Introduction

Moving images impact our lives heavily nowadays. A changing image speaks much more than a stationary snapshot. Any one who has watched a movie understands how the power of animation can immensely enhance the process of communication. By capturing the moving action faithfully on your computer screen, Easy Screen Capture Video is essentially putting this power right onto your computer desktop.

The video files created by Easy Screen Capture Video are saved in the standard AVI (Audio Video Interleave) format, which is used pervasively in many Windows applications that support video, including MS Office. (You can effectively paste an AVI file into an Office application just like pasting text.)

This ensures maximum compatibility with other software, and you can easily edit the output of Easy Screen Capture Video with a third party video editor.

Uses of Easy Screen Capture Video

- You can create demonstrations of programs by recording the movement of the cursor, the selection of menus, the entering of text or the display of messages. These demonstrations, when shown to users, can illustrate features and usage of the program in a short period time with maximum clarity.
- The recorded movies can be added to the accompanying help files of commercial software to make them more professional.
- The recorded videos, if converted to a stream-able format, can also be posted to your websites to enliven them. With broadband becoming more affordable, including multimedia to your site is not only practical but also quite necessary.

Recording a screen movie

To start recording, click the red record button or choose File:Record from the menu.

When you want to stop recording, click the blue stop button or choose File:Stop from the menu. A dialog will appear for you to name and save the file.

Halfway into the recording, you can cancel the capture operation by pressing the Escape key.

Video basics

When you record a movie using Easy Screen Capture Video, you are actually saving a sequence of bitmaps (known as frames), that, when displayed in rapid succession, exhibit motion.

If more frames are recorded per second, the resultant animation will also be smoother. However, this will also cause the file size of the movie to be much larger.

In the process of recording, Easy Screen Capture Video allows you to specify two video rates: the input rate and output rate. The input rate tells your computer how many frames to record per second. The output rate tells your computer how fast to play them back. Usually, these two rates are equal, so that the time of playback is equal to the time used in the recording.

However, these two rates can also be different. Normally, you do this only if you want to create a time-lapse movie. For example, you can capture a frame once every hour and play the frames back at 20 frames per second.

The default value is set at 20 frames per second for the output (playback) rate and 20 frames per second (corresponding to 50 milliseconds sleep time) for the input capture rate.

There is also a third rate: known as the keyframe rate. When a frame is saved in an AVI file, they can either be saved as a full frame, or only as a difference to the previous frame. This keyframe rate specifies how often full frames are written to the AVI file. A high value means you can fast forward/rewind to a particular frame in your movie much faster. But it also means a higher file size.

Setting video options

(From the main menu, choose Options->Video Options)

Setting the video options allows you to optimize your video recordings by choosing between the file size, quality and frame rates of your video files.

Compressor

The Compressor select-box allows you to select the encoder for your AVI file. An encoder compresses your AVI files to make them smaller in size and cause them to play faster. The default setting is the MS Video 1 compressor.

Quality

The quality setting determines how nicely your picture is saved. A lower value means a lower picture quality but also a smaller file size. Only some compressors use this value.

Set Key Frames Every

This setting specifies the keyframe rate. When a frame is saved in an AVI file, they can either be saved as a full frame, or only partially as a difference to the previous frame. The keyframe rate specifies how often full frames are written to the AVI file. A high value means you can fast forward/rewind to a particular frame in your movie much faster. But it also means a higher file size.

Capture Frames Every

This field determines the input frame rate. It dictates how long the program will ‘sleep’ after capturing each frame. One millisecond is 1/1000 of a second.

If you set this to a large value (for example 1 hour, or 3,600,000 milliseconds), you practically create a time-lapse movie. Easy Screen Capture Video will actually ‘sit and watch’ for activities on the screen that takes a long time to occur and take a snapshot (say, only once every hour).

Playback Rate

This field determines the output frame rate. It specifies how many frames are played back per second. A higher value means a smoother playback. Typical values of 20 – 30 frames per seconds are adequate for most purposes.

Setting regions

(From the main menu, choose Regions->Region or Fixed Region or Full Screen)

You should set the Input Region before recording. This allows you to define the area and type of video capture. From the main menu, choose Region
There are 3 types of regions you can choose:

Region

Before recording starts, you can define an arbitrary rectangular region with the mouse. The cursor turns into a pen on cross-hairs, which you use to define a rectangular region on your screen by click-dragging the left mouse button.

To cancel recording, you can press the Escape key.

Fixed Region...

You can capture a fixed-size rectangular region. A dialog allows you to define the size of the region in pixels. Before recording starts, you can move the fixed-size region around the screen to determine where you want the recording area to be.

To cancel recording, you can click the right mouse button or press the Escape key.

Screen

The entire computer screen is captured.

Setting cursor options

(From the main menu, choose Options->Cursor Options)

Setting cursor options can help illustrate the action you are recording by drawing attention to the area where the action happens. The following cursor effects can be selected:

Hide Cursor

The cursor will be hidden during screen capture
Show Cursor

- Use Actual Cursor – The actual shape and position of the cursor will be recorded during screen capture.
- Use Custom Cursor – Replace the recorded cursor with a customized one.
- Use Cursor From File - Replace the recorded cursor with a cursor that is loaded from file.

Highlight Cursor

When this option is selected, the recorded cursor will have a highlight area around it. This helps in calling attention to the movements of the cursor. You can set the shape, size and color of the highlight area.

Enable autopan

(From the main menu, choose Options->Enable Autopan)

If this option is selected, the capture area will follow the cursor to wherever it goes during recording. This has the effect of making the screen capture to occur at the region with the most action.

Autopan speed

(From the main menu, choose Options->Autopan Speed)

Use this to control the maximum speed at which the capture area follows the mouse. The value is measured in screen pixels.

Program options

(From the main menu, choose Options->Program Options)

Use the program options to customize the way the program behave when it starts/stops recording. A tick beside the menu items indicates that option is enabled.

- Minimize program on start recording
- Hide flashing rectangle during recording
- Play AVI file when recording stops

Some notes on the quality and performance of the recording

Easy Screen Capture Video creates a movie by sampling the screen on fixed-time intervals. If this sampling frequency is too slow, it may not be able to pick up some cursor movements if the mouse moves too fast. The result of this will be that the cursor will appear to jump, become jerky or even cannot be seen in the recorded movie. It is thus advisable to slow down your mouse movements during recording.

This sampling problem can also happen when you are recording a fast animation. If Easy Screen Capture Video cannot record much faster than the changes in the animation, it will miss out on some important data and the playback will not be smooth.

Frame Rates

The speed of your computer will directly affect the performance of the program. A slow CPU will unquestionably mean slower frame rates. For the best performance, use the fastest computer available for recording.

Apart from CPU speed, the following factors will also affect the performance of the recording:

- Recording a movie that covers a large area.
- Recording pictures that contain many colors in.
- Running other applications during recording sessions.

File Size

An AVI file usually has a very large file size, especially for those lengthy and detailed videos. This is due to the fact that a video file has to pack hundreds and thousands of images into a single file. It is thus very common to have size exceeding one megabyte.

To reduce the size of the AVI file, you can do the following:

- Limiting the area of the region being captured.
- Limiting the (input) rate of which video frames are captured. This can be set in the Capture Frames Every field of Video Options.
- Changing the compressor and compression quality. By changing the compression quality, you are essentially making a tradeoff between picture quality and the file size.

Website

You can find Easy Screen Capture Video on our webpage, http://www.easyscreencapturevideo.com.

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