Best Practices: Desktop Lecture Capture

Here are some best practices and tips for creating recordings.

Best practices

• Screencasts will produce one slide every 30 seconds regardless of the content. As a result, slide detection is not recommended for Screencasts. If you want to use slide detection, choose audio + slides.
• When you are using multiple monitors, most software will only capture the primary monitor. So it is important to organize the desktop so that the area you want to record is on the primary monitor.
• When recording a screencast, use large fonts for text. Keep in mind that viewers may be watching the recording at a reduced resolution.
• If your software control panel is in the capture area during your recording session, it will appear in the final recording. To avoid this, if you are recording the entire desktop, make sure to hide the control panel. If you are recording a certain region of the desktop, simply make sure the control panel is not within the capture region's boundaries.
• You can edit your recordings later.  If you make a mistake, you don't need to start over from the beginning. You can just pause or continue recording and start over from where you made the mistake.

Tips for reducing dropped video frames 
The process of encoding video can be computationally intensive, especially for HD resolutions. When the computer cannot keep up with the demand of video encoding, your recording software may be forced to drop video frames, which leads to choppy playback.

• Select a smaller region of the screen for recording.

• If you need to capture the entire desktop, reduce your monitor resolution.
  1280 X 720 or less is preferable.

• When recording video, choose a smaller camera resolution.

• Rather than recording slides and video, consider recording slides and audio.

• Consider using a more powerful computer for desktop recording.