As we’ve discussed before, working in the education sector does not always bring large budgets for digital tools. Many of us, therefore, turn to poorly performing open source or freemium solutions — or we pay out of pocket for the tools we need to do quality work (at least that’s what I’ve done in the past).
But it does not have to be this way. There are quality tools out there that are open source or otherwise low cost that help us produce quality work. This post’s theme is “Screen Capture”.
There are two major types of screen capture:
- Screenshots and
- Screen Recordings.
Educators primarily use these to show students how to do tasks on the computer that they may not be familiar with. Below is an example:
My Screenshot Tool: ShareX
I cannot tell you how often I use ShareX each day (b/c it is embarrassing). All of the screenshots and their corresponding annotations in this post were taken with ShareX.
Major Features
- Dead-Simple Screen Capture
- Good, Hierarchical Storage of Files by month, program, and date
- Excellent markup tools: highlighting, blurring out personal information, annotation (arrows, text, shapes, etc)
- Uploading to a variety of services (Imgur, Twitter, etc)
- Lightweight
- Screen Capture as video
- Screen Capture as GIF
- Timed Screen Capture: perfect for getting those pesky menu shots
- Post Capture Editing
- Integration into Windows Shell to enable upload of any image on your device to any service
I could go on and on, but you get the idea. No other software comes close to ShareX.
Screen Recording Tool: OBS Studio
Unlike Flashback, my #2 choice, OBS studio allows you to natively save files in lots of file formats.
This is a great time saver, as you can imagine.
Unlike Flashback, the user interface is not nearly as simple and you really need to check out the documentation and to sift through the settings for optimal results.
A Trip to Hell and Back featuring OBS Studio
In fact, after I thought I had set everything up and hit the “Start Record” button, I got this error:
After playing around with the settings, I was able to get the recording to work. I messed around with that basic logic diagram explanation (see the video below) and when I went to review the recording, this is what I got:
Yup. Nothing but sound. My mike picked up all of my audio, but none of the screen. So, back to the settings I go.
Apparently, my problem was that I was not utilizing one of the more powerful features of the program — the ability to add layers to the recording.
There is a little menu at the bottom-middle left that allows you to add various sources to the capture.
Again, higher learning curve, but more powerful. One problem I noticed is that when I went to capture Word, there were problems, as you can see below. This may be a deal-breaker. When I researched the issue, it seems to be a common problem.
The forum suggested I switch to display capture, which I did. But this lead to a black screen, which is another common problem that occurs with laptops.
Turns out that if the program is running on the dedicated GPU and the Desktop is being rendered on the integrated GPU, OBS Studio will only record what’s on the dedicated GPU, which is nothing. The solution to this is to set the program to run on the integrated GPU via the NVIDA control panel (I’m running a surface book, so that’s my setup). Once I did this and switch to software capture and render, everything worked! Word was captured, along with the desktop.
So, while OBS Studio is
- powerful and
- has lots of options and
- outputs your file of choice;
you can easily become stymied, frustrated, and move on to option 2. However, now that I am more familiar with the ins and outs of the program, it is likely I’ll stick with OBS Studio.
Option 2: Flashback
Flashback is dead simple to use, as several reviewers have noted. There are no watermarks or time limits and it allows the insertion of a webcam video to make your screen recordings a bit more personal.
There are some limitations, however. I’m not sure at what resolution the screen is captured at, UPDATE: the captures turned out great. They look grainy in the playback/review screen, but when exported to *.wmv files and uploaded to youtube, they are much sharper.
Secondarily, the file output is *.fbr, a proprietary file type. You can convert the file, but only to a *.wmv file. This isn’t a deal breaker, but it adds additional steps to the process if you are wanting to end up with a much better performing and YouTube-friendly *.mp4 format.
In my sample recording, conversion from *.fbr to *.wmv was slow. So slow that I became frustrated and rage-quit the conversion.
Other Options to Check Out
Screenshot Software
None. I won’t consider anything other than ShareX. If you go with something else, you are wrong and I hate you (although I’m prone to emotional overstatement).
Screen Recording Software
ShareX + Phone Recorder
For my first video on diagramming, I used ShareX’s screen recording function, which is rather limited and my phone’s recorder software to capture both my narration and video. I then edited them together with the free version of Davinci Resolve, my replacement for Premier Pro.
Any of the other options have watermarks, time limits, et cetera, so I wouldn’t consider them.
