Quality of recorded Storyline screen capture

Apr 23, 2013

Bruce Graham
By Bruce Graham

Hi,

I need to have a short screen capture in one course, and need to get a 3rd party to do it as they have access to the system.

They created this using Storyline, and I want to Zoom at some point.

Below is an image - you will see the issue - the Zoom image quality is crappy.

As there's no (?) way to set the quality if the screen capture can I only assume this problem is cased by the quality of the system?

Puzzled by this - and need a solution of some sort.

They tell me the capture screen size was 718x516 utilising the player size of 720x540. Is there a more sensible thing to do that will enable this to look sharper?

Thanks

Bruce

6 Replies
Christine Hendrickson
11 years ago04/23/13 at 1:29 pm (UTC)

Hi Bruce,

Wow - that's..not too great.

Looks like it's already a PNG, so format shouldn't be an issue. It could be their system, but no real way for me to confirm that, obviously. 

If they're doing this in Storyline, can they take a screenshot of how it appears in one of their slides? If the quality is really bad, that may be an indication of whether or not the quality issue is originating on their side. 

If they take a screenshot of the screen capture and paste it somewhere else, say Paint or maybe even Word, is the quality any better? 

Also, how are they sharing the capture with you? Are they sharing it in a Storyline file? Sounds like it, but just curious if they're only sending the image. 

Brett Rockwood
11 years ago04/23/13 at 6:01 pm (UTC)

Hey Bruce. Your image looks like a highly compressed JPG rather than a lossless PNG. Not sure how they are doing the screen captures but PNGs don't generally get the compression artifacts that appear in your image and are typical of JPGs. I'd check to make sure they're using PNGs. Personally I've had better success using Snagit for static screen shots rather than SL screen capture function.

Bruce Graham
almost 11 years ago04/24/13 at 1:05 am (UTC)

Thanks Christine/Brett...

Not sure that I have explained myself clearly here.

The 3rd party have created a ScreenCam of a login process, using SL "Record Screen" functionality.

It works fine, but I want to use the "Zoom" function as they only use about 20% of the screen, just trying to make it all easier to see.

The image above was taken by me, using SnagIt - because it illustrates the quality of what the Zoomed SL ScreenCam looks like - it loses all of the definition.

They have sent this to me as an .mp4.

I am going to get them to send me the original .story file with the screen capture embedded in it, and see if that makes a difference.

Thanks - I will let you know what happens.

Bruce

Zdravko Gunjevic
over 10 years ago11/18/13 at 9:04 am (UTC)

I'm having the same issue as Bruce with screen recordings. It seems that Storyline compresses the video and it looks "crappy".

What I have done as a work-around is ensure the screen recording is at the same aspect ratio as the story itself (i.e. 720x540), then used zoom regions to zoom in and out of the recording as a whole as well as areas that I want zoomed in closer.

Not the greatest, but it clears up the look of the recording.

Thanks,

...Z

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