Computer screen recording to HDV project

I have an interesting project coming up, and since many of you are high-end broadcast video people, I'm hoping someone has an answer for me.

Project overview in a nutshell: Training employees to use certain custom in-company software. To be edited in HDV and produced on DVD. Also to be produced for iPod Touch.

The trick is to be able to record off the screen at a high enough resolution that I can zoom into certain parts of the screen so the text would be more readable...especially on an iPod Touch.

The big problem: this particular software is on a PC only. The only high-end screen recording software I know of for the PC is Camtasia Studio. However, I am having trouble getting the resolution high enough to look relatively good zoomed in when in HDV. The iPod Touch...I haven't tackled that yet either.

I'm wondering if Camtasia is indeed the best software to use, or if anyone knows of something even higher-end.

I'm also wondering if anyone has any experience with this type of thing who can help me out with some of these technical issues.

I heard that Snapz Pro is really good, but for Mac only.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!
Casey

Blowing up a screen recording is always going to be problematic. There just isn't any more information in the recording. And it's not like film footage or good-quality video footage where you can get away with a 10-percent blowup without anybody really noticing. Screen recordings are all hard-edged, so interpolated enlargements fall apart, like, immediately.

It sounds like you're in one of those situations where you're beating your head against the laws of physics. Have you considered not doing any screen recording at all, and instead generating the necessary shots entirely synthetically using After Effects? You'll have total control over the end product, and it'll look much nicer. It's more work, though. That's your trade-off.

Would it help if I had super large HD monitor connected to the PC?

No, because the physical size of the screen doesn't matter. The resolution of a screen recording is fixed. You can't blow it up without doing an interpolated enlargement.

The trick is to record with Camtasia not in HDV, but in a high end codec like Animation or even EnSharpen from Techsmith. Also, record in as high of resolution as you can on your monitor, at least 1920x1200.

Also, if you're not delivering HD, why edit HD? downres your footage first to DV50 or some other highend SD codec and edit there. Then your HD sized screencapture will have plenty of room to move around, with out as much scaling.

Also, in general, if you're doing anything other than straight video in HDV, titles, compositing, etc, it's just not gonna look all that great. HDV is all about getting large frame sizes to fit on DV tape, not quality. Make sure for your final project, you export from FCP using Compressor to some high quality codec like ProRes or DV50 before you make your DVD or web versions. All the quality up front in the world goes to waste if you don't compress properly. Here's a write up i did to show you what i mean

The hope is to go BluRay someday...this is a high end company who doesn't want to redo this in the near future.

Jeff writes-
[The resolution of a screen recording is fixed. You can't blow it up without doing an interpolated enlargement.]

Not quite correct. Monitor rez is one thing, recording rez another. I record in PhotoJPEG 800X600, for eventual H264 vodcast delivery. I can bring that into a DV25 timeline with plenty of resolution to zoom in 2X after recording if I don't want to do it "live." I do the recording in SnapzProX2.

You should be able to frame the area of interest, record, then save (transcode) to any SD or HD codec-- assuming you have fast media storage to handle the bandwidth.

The one annoyance with SnapzProX2 is that you have a default Movie Recording folder established in your Movies directory on your system drive, which is BDD- brain dead design. The workaround is simple, though-- alias a "Movie Recording" folder from any fast media drive (or striped array) right into your Movies directory. Works a treat.


But I'm describing Mac workflow; I don't know PC programs that well.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Toggle Dynamic Trim with Command-Shift-D!

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Except no. If you record, as you say, 800x600, then you can only scale down to fit in the NTSC raster, not up. You cannot make the image larger than what appeared on the computer screen without it falling apart.

> The one annoyance with SnapzProX2 is that you have a default Movie Recording folder
> established in your Movies directory on your system drive

?
Don't know if I'm missing something here, but when I complete a SnapzPro capture, it always appears on the desktop, as I've set in the preferences, with the name I assigned it. I've never had to dig into the system to find the capture.


www.derekmok.com

I agree with that; I'm making some assumptions here. He's describing a project to be edited (and I assume shot) in HDV, a 1440 X 1080 flavor of HD which hopefully he'll FIRST transcode to something like a nice interframe codec like ProRes422 HD before editing, which will do no further harm to the image, but in any event-- he's at full raster: he actually has some "wiggle room" before the image falls apart and actually, if he doubles the frame size on those areas requiring closeup-- you can specify ANY custom frame recording size in SnapzProX2-- he should be okay with a 2X enlargement. That's my thinking here.

But of course, test, test.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Toggle Dynamic Trim with Command-Shift-D!

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Well you're first post was accurate, you can't scale up without doing an interpolated enlargement. You can however make the image larger than what appeared on the screen without falling apart. The trick is you have record to Animation, ProRes, TechSmith, or some other lossless codec.

You are most def interpolating the image when you scale but this isn't video, it's screen capture. It's got pretty clear defined edges and will scale fairly well, in comparison to live action video. I've scaled screencap to 150% with it still looking pretty damn good because i record and edit and export in Animation. Codecs play a huge issue with this type of material.

Anyway, another issue to mention is that if you are trying to conform screencap to HD is the fact that most widescreen monitors are in fact 16x10, not 16x9. So you have to keep that in mind when you are recording with the program your making the training for

Derek writes-
[Don't know if I'm missing something here, but when I complete a SnapzPro capture, it always appears on the desktop, as I've set in the preferences, with the name I assigned it. I've never had to dig into the system to find the capture.]

Yes, and although it's not coming up at the moment, the diretory PopUp DID list my Movie Recordings folder... I know it did-- there's stuff in there. Have to remember how I got it to list. Do you know?

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Toggle Dynamic Trim with Command-Shift-D!

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Another nice thing about Snap-ProX2 is the ability to "prescale" your screen capture up to 400%. Then , depending on what codec you choose to save out as, you have some flexibility with zooms.

- Loren
Today's FCP keytip:

Toggle Dynamic Trim with Command-Shift-D!

Final Cut Studio 2 KeyGuide? Power Pack.
Now available at KeyGuide Central.
www.neotrondesign.com

Oh man, I wish this could be done on a Mac!

I don't know if Camtasia has these same "prescale" features.

We may also be limited by the screen size that the customer has. I don't want to disclose the client, but a similar example would be training employees on the cash register computers at a big box store. We're subject to they're system and they're hardware...I'm pretty sure...I don't know if it is possible to install a cash-register-like software on our computer for this capturing process. Maybe there's a Mac version, but I doubt it.

The screen I'm using is a 20" PC CRT monitor...would it make any difference if I had a 23" HD monitor (like an Apple Cinema Display, for instance...can that be done?)

Would it be possible in the display settings to trick the monitor into having a higher screen size or am I stuck with potentially a 10" monitor that our customer is using? I like Jeff's idea of doing this artificially in After Effects...or Motion in my case. I have not seen the customer's screen yet, so I'm not sure how easy or difficult that would be, but then I have complete control over the quality.


I will be shooting in HDV with the Sony Z1 camera and mixing in this screen capture. I hadn't thought about using ProRes for this, but now that you've mentioned it, I think it's a good idea. Loren - do you recommend capturing it as a ProRes clip or capturing it as HDV and then doing the transcode through Compressor?

Thanks!!!!!!!
Casey

If this client is really committed to doing this right, then they shouldn't have a problem springing for the time and the budget to do all the shots as motion graphics, like I think I suggested before. That way you'll have total control over what each shot does, and you won't have to beat your head against stupid technology limitations to do it.

I would NOT underscore NOT recommend trying to do those shots in Motion, however. I've done shots like that with both, and Motion just doesn't have the tools. This is definitely a job for After Effects.

Trouble there is, I don't have, nor know After Effects. And unfortunately, this project has already been quoted, approved and budgeted, so I'm not sure how much they would be up for adding to it...that's not my department anyway, I'm just the editor.

Can it be done decently in Motion...the biggest thing is readability over anything else...especially since this is also meant to be played on an iPod Touch.

I haven't actually seen the screens yet, so I'm not sure if it is the kind of thing that would be easy to duplicate or not, and I don't know if total accuracy on the look of the screen is a high priority.


Thanks!
Casey

Ah yes. If I had a nickel for every time I've said "I'm just the editor!" and got handed a camera and told "Shut up and film," I wouldn't have to work for a living any more.

It sounds like this might be a case where you just have to take what you're given and do the best you can with it. That's part of the editor's life.

I wouldn't recommend trying to do any of those shots in Motion, though. I speak only from my personal experience, but I found Motion completely unsatisfactory for doing shots like that. Maybe somebody else's opinion would be different. After all, I did come from After Effects first before ever putting my hands on Motion, so I could just have all the wrong habits and assumptions for that program.

LOL!

Fortunately and unfortunately for me, I haven't used Motion enough to even know how to do keyframing. I do have the VAAST DVDs, but haven't watched them in a few years. I was hoping this would be a positive learning experience for me, but I might just have to settle for it just being a learning experience!

Likewise, I couldn't tell you how many people have come to me and shown me a 20 second After Effects animation that must have taken at LEAST 30 hours to create, and want me to do something similar in about 30 minutes! Or how many people have seen something I spent 30 hours on and thought I could do the same thing in 1 hour.

Apparently this project is much more graphics intensive than I originally thought. I just found out that there are several more screens that will be used, so we'll see. We need to see the actual screens and find out just how hard this would be to duplicate.


Casey

Okay, recreating the screens is pretty much out of the question at this point, so I'm back to having to get a high quality screen recording of this software.