Capture And Share what’s on your screen
Sometimes, rather than trying to explain how something works, it’s easier to show someone. Here we reveal how to record, save and share anything you do on your PC.
Grab and annotate screenshots
If you need to capture a single screen shot, Windows 7 and 8 offer a built-in Snipping Tool. This lets you grab what’s on-screen and add simple annotations, then either save the resulting image as a PNG, GIF or JPEG file, copy it to the clipboard or attach it to an email. To launch Snipping Tool in Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise editions), go to Start, type snipping and press Enter. In Windows 8.1, type Snipping Tool into the Search box, then click or tap Apps. To capture more sophisticated screen grabs, including pictures with fixed frame sizes (useful for creating tiled wallpaper) that you can rotate and add frames to, check out the tiny free program MWSnap. It’s old, but it works with any version of WIndows and lets you set up timed captures. Alternatively, try PicPic (www.nteworks.com/picpick), which is free for home and personal use, and has some useful extras, such as the ability to capture whole web pages in scrolling browser windows.
Capture and share your Chrome tabs
The excellent Chrome extension Screencastify lets you record anything you do in the currently active browser tab. Just click the film-strip icon on the toolbar, set the video quality and choose whether to capture the sound from the tabbed window or your own voice via the microphone (you can’t do both). Click Start Recording, then Pause or Stop when you’re done. Screencastify records every mouse movement, opening of a menu, button click, playing of videos and music, and more. Once you’ve finished recording you can save or share the finished video with a friend – support for direct upload to Google Drive and YouTube is built in. The resulting files, which are saved in WEBM format, play fine in video software such as VLC Media Player and although a touch jerky, are adequate for demonstrating tricky web tasks to less tech-savvy friends and family members.
Record and share your own screencasts
If you want to capture and share something other than a browser window, there are various options for creating a ‘screencast’. Normally, we’d recommend the simple free online tool Screenr (www.screenr.com) but, at the moment, we and some other users are experiencing Java-related problems getting it to work. ScreencastOMatic (www.screencast-o-matic.com) is more or less a direct replacement, with a more generous 15-minute recording limit (Screenr allows only five) and the option to save your screencasts directly to YouTube or as Flash, MP4 or AVI files. It’s also worth trying Jing (www.techsmith.com/jing.html), which lets you draw a window around whatever you want to capture (or you can grab your entire Desktop) and record a voiceover to describe what’s happening. Recordings are limited to five minutes and saved as Flash files, but since these can be played back via any browser this isn’t much of a limitation, though you can’t edit them. Jing pushes you towards its own Screencast-sharing service (you get 2GB of space for free) and although it does support mainstream services including Twitter and Facebook, setting these up is a bit DIY for our liking. Still, it’s free and finished videos are smooth and the sound is good.
Record and share your PC problems
Windows 7 and 8 have a clever built-in feature called Problem Steps Recorder (just Steps Recorder in Windows 8), which you can use to get help with technical difficulties you’re experiencing. To access the tool, press the Windows key+R, type psr and press Enter. When the program window opens, click Start Record. Go through the steps to recreate the problem you’re experiencing, clicking Pause if necessary and Stop when you’re done. If a particular part of the process needs more explanation, click the Add Comment button, use the cursor to highlight the relevant area of the screen, then type an explanation into the box that appears. Click OK to close and continue. Your finished recordings are saved as a series of screen shots and compressed to a zip file to save space. They can be emailed to anyone who has offered to help you solve the problem.
Create photo-based how-to guides
Sometimes the thing you want to share isn’t on your PC’s screen at all; for example, you might want to connect an external USB headset or set up an audio hardware interface. If that’s the case, try Snapguide (www.snapguide.com), an iOS app and web service.This makes it a doddle to create a series of still photographs, annotate them with text and then share them via the Snapguide website. The guides can also be embedded in a blog or website, or shared on social-media sites. Snapguide is slick, simple and completely free.
Capture from a smartphone screen
Apple deliberately makes it difficult to record what’s happening on iOS devices. Individual screen captures are easy enough – hold down the Home key and press the power button – but capturing a sequence requires some serious hoop-jumping. If you must, try installing Apple’s free XCode developer suite (developer.apple.com/xcode), which includes an iOS simulator you can use to record from your Mac’s screen. Alternatively, UX Recorder (www.uxrecorder.com) lets you record 30-second videos from mobile websites (but not apps) for free. Android users are more fortunate, thanks to an app called Recordable, which lets you create MP4 videos directly from the device to share with friends. The free version is limited to 4fps (frames per second) and also displays the author’s logo, but the full version is only 99p, and you don’t have to ‘root’ your phone or tablet to use either one. To capture single screen grabs, just press the volume-down and power buttons at the same time on your phone or tablet.
Record your Skype video calls
If someone at home is going to miss an important overseas call from one of the family, you can use DVDVideoSoft’s Free Video Call Recorder for Skype to record both sides of the conversation so they can enjoy it later. The program has simple record, pause and stop controls, and saves videos as MP4 files to your Videos folder. Playback isn’t particularly smooth but the program works fine – just be careful to choose the Custom option when you’re installing it to decline any unwanted extras. Bear in mind, too, that it’s illegal to share Skype calls (whether phone or video), unless you have the other person’s consent.
Make a video with system sound and a voiceover
If you want to show someone how to use a music program or anything that requires sound, check out Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder, which can simultaneously record both system audio (so you can hear music and dialogue) and a voiceover (so you can describe what’s happening). Make sure you download the free version (the Pro one costs around £24) and, once it’s loaded, open the Audio Input drop-down menu and select ‘System sound and microphone’ to record both the PC audio and what you’re saying. Finished videos are saved as WMV (Windows Media Video) files.
Grab and annotate screenshots
If you need to capture a single screen shot, Windows 7 and 8 offer a built-in Snipping Tool. This lets you grab what’s on-screen and add simple annotations, then either save the resulting image as a PNG, GIF or JPEG file, copy it to the clipboard or attach it to an email. To launch Snipping Tool in Windows 7 (Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate and Enterprise editions), go to Start, type snipping and press Enter. In Windows 8.1, type Snipping Tool into the Search box, then click or tap Apps. To capture more sophisticated screen grabs, including pictures with fixed frame sizes (useful for creating tiled wallpaper) that you can rotate and add frames to, check out the tiny free program MWSnap. It’s old, but it works with any version of WIndows and lets you set up timed captures. Alternatively, try PicPic (www.nteworks.com/picpick), which is free for home and personal use, and has some useful extras, such as the ability to capture whole web pages in scrolling browser windows.
Capture and share your Chrome tabs
The excellent Chrome extension Screencastify lets you record anything you do in the currently active browser tab. Just click the film-strip icon on the toolbar, set the video quality and choose whether to capture the sound from the tabbed window or your own voice via the microphone (you can’t do both). Click Start Recording, then Pause or Stop when you’re done. Screencastify records every mouse movement, opening of a menu, button click, playing of videos and music, and more. Once you’ve finished recording you can save or share the finished video with a friend – support for direct upload to Google Drive and YouTube is built in. The resulting files, which are saved in WEBM format, play fine in video software such as VLC Media Player and although a touch jerky, are adequate for demonstrating tricky web tasks to less tech-savvy friends and family members.
Record and share your own screencasts
If you want to capture and share something other than a browser window, there are various options for creating a ‘screencast’. Normally, we’d recommend the simple free online tool Screenr (www.screenr.com) but, at the moment, we and some other users are experiencing Java-related problems getting it to work. ScreencastOMatic (www.screencast-o-matic.com) is more or less a direct replacement, with a more generous 15-minute recording limit (Screenr allows only five) and the option to save your screencasts directly to YouTube or as Flash, MP4 or AVI files. It’s also worth trying Jing (www.techsmith.com/jing.html), which lets you draw a window around whatever you want to capture (or you can grab your entire Desktop) and record a voiceover to describe what’s happening. Recordings are limited to five minutes and saved as Flash files, but since these can be played back via any browser this isn’t much of a limitation, though you can’t edit them. Jing pushes you towards its own Screencast-sharing service (you get 2GB of space for free) and although it does support mainstream services including Twitter and Facebook, setting these up is a bit DIY for our liking. Still, it’s free and finished videos are smooth and the sound is good.
Record and share your PC problems
Windows 7 and 8 have a clever built-in feature called Problem Steps Recorder (just Steps Recorder in Windows 8), which you can use to get help with technical difficulties you’re experiencing. To access the tool, press the Windows key+R, type psr and press Enter. When the program window opens, click Start Record. Go through the steps to recreate the problem you’re experiencing, clicking Pause if necessary and Stop when you’re done. If a particular part of the process needs more explanation, click the Add Comment button, use the cursor to highlight the relevant area of the screen, then type an explanation into the box that appears. Click OK to close and continue. Your finished recordings are saved as a series of screen shots and compressed to a zip file to save space. They can be emailed to anyone who has offered to help you solve the problem.
Create photo-based how-to guides
Sometimes the thing you want to share isn’t on your PC’s screen at all; for example, you might want to connect an external USB headset or set up an audio hardware interface. If that’s the case, try Snapguide (www.snapguide.com), an iOS app and web service.This makes it a doddle to create a series of still photographs, annotate them with text and then share them via the Snapguide website. The guides can also be embedded in a blog or website, or shared on social-media sites. Snapguide is slick, simple and completely free.
Capture from a smartphone screen
Apple deliberately makes it difficult to record what’s happening on iOS devices. Individual screen captures are easy enough – hold down the Home key and press the power button – but capturing a sequence requires some serious hoop-jumping. If you must, try installing Apple’s free XCode developer suite (developer.apple.com/xcode), which includes an iOS simulator you can use to record from your Mac’s screen. Alternatively, UX Recorder (www.uxrecorder.com) lets you record 30-second videos from mobile websites (but not apps) for free. Android users are more fortunate, thanks to an app called Recordable, which lets you create MP4 videos directly from the device to share with friends. The free version is limited to 4fps (frames per second) and also displays the author’s logo, but the full version is only 99p, and you don’t have to ‘root’ your phone or tablet to use either one. To capture single screen grabs, just press the volume-down and power buttons at the same time on your phone or tablet.
Record your Skype video calls
If someone at home is going to miss an important overseas call from one of the family, you can use DVDVideoSoft’s Free Video Call Recorder for Skype to record both sides of the conversation so they can enjoy it later. The program has simple record, pause and stop controls, and saves videos as MP4 files to your Videos folder. Playback isn’t particularly smooth but the program works fine – just be careful to choose the Custom option when you’re installing it to decline any unwanted extras. Bear in mind, too, that it’s illegal to share Skype calls (whether phone or video), unless you have the other person’s consent.
Make a video with system sound and a voiceover
If you want to show someone how to use a music program or anything that requires sound, check out Apowersoft Free Screen Recorder, which can simultaneously record both system audio (so you can hear music and dialogue) and a voiceover (so you can describe what’s happening). Make sure you download the free version (the Pro one costs around £24) and, once it’s loaded, open the Audio Input drop-down menu and select ‘System sound and microphone’ to record both the PC audio and what you’re saying. Finished videos are saved as WMV (Windows Media Video) files.
1 comments:
My Screen Recorder Pro will work better for you. It is an excellent screencast tool. Records your screen and audio from the speakers or your voice from the microphone - or both simultaneously. The recordings are clear and look great when played back on your PC or uploaded to YouTube. It will record directly to AVI, WMV, MP4, or FLV. Just perfect for creating tutorials, demos, and presentations. Plus, java is not required and there are no limits on recording length. Also, the recordings play back on any device.
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