Create from Screen Capture

Starting make a screen capture project.

There are two different recording modes.

This recording mode only takes a screen capture whenever you press a PrintScreen button or other designated keyboard button. It does not insert an auto caption, a mouse click highlight or a mouse movement. This mode is useful if you need to take screenshot(s) that does not require you to show the mouse or the keyboard operation.

This recording mode automatically takes a screenshot, insert an auto caption, a mouse click highlight and a mouse movement depending on the keyboard and the mouse activities. You still can do a manual screenshot by pressing the PrintScreen button or other designated keyboard button.

The mode is very useful to speed up the creation of a software demonstration that requires you to show the mouse clicking, the mouse movement, etc. You can customize the automatic mode to enable/disable the auto caption, the mouse click highlight, etc by clicking the Edit button next to the automatic capturing style or you can simply select the three provided presets:

When choosing this preset, a mouse movement, an auto caption and a mouse click highlight will be added. This preset is suitable for making a demonstration of a software operation.

A training mode automatically adds a click box with the failure/success and the hint captions. When you choose this preset, a hint caption will be appeared for each mouse click activity asking the viewer to click on the same mouse location. When a user makes a mistake, a failure caption will be appeared and he/she needs to redo the operation until it gets right. The success caption will be appeared and the presentation continues. This preset is very useful to conduct an e-learning to teach how to operate a software.

An assessment mode automatically adds a click box with the failure/success but without the hint caption and the mouse movement. When you choose this preset, for each mouse click activity, the viewer is expected to click on the same location without any hint caption. When a user makes a mistake or a correct answer, a failure/success caption will be appeared and the presentation continues. This preset is useful to conduct an e-learning examination to assess someone's knowledge on how to operate a software.

You can further customize each of the three presets above by clicking the Edit button next to the combo box.

Click OK to start.

A capture window will be appeared. Here, you need to specify the screen area that you want to capture. You can select a running application window by manually clicking the Select and application to capture button, resize and drag the red capture window or by dragging the smart snap cursor into any windows (the main application window or a child window within an application).

Click the Start Capturing button to start.

A window where you can select a project dimension will show up. Most of the time you will use the same project dimension as the capture area. In this case, simply click OK to close the window. However when you are capturing a full screen area and you want to publish it on the website, you may want to resize the capture result to a user friendly size such as not bigger than 640x480.

Go here to know more about this window.

You can end the capturing session by clicking the icon at the bottom right corner of your desktop as shown below or by pressing the Ctrl + End button.

One unique feature of the Flash Demo Builder is the ability to do a full motion capture. When a full motion capture is used, the Flash Demo Builder will automatically capture a series of screenshot per time interval, allowing the operations such as drag and drop, scroll bar dragging, drawing, resizing to be captured smoothly. The size of the capture can be big, depending on the duration of the capture and the capture dimension, so please use it wisely. When capturing with the automatic mode, the Flash Demo Builder decides when to do a full motion capture based on the mouse and the keyboard activity. For example: based on the activity of click and drag a mouse button or the type on the keyboard activity. Press F9 to manually start a full motion capture and F10 to stop. The capture icon as shown above will flash when the full motion capture is being used.

Note that capturing a large screen area is a very CPU intensive process. It is recommended to apply a slight delay (0.1 second) between several mouse clicks or keyboard presses. If you experience some mouse clicks/keyboard presses are skipped during the automatic capture, please try again with a longer delay.

You can always do another screen capture and add the result into the existing presentation.

Next - A quick introduction to the Flash Demo Builder user interface