Screen Captures of a Virtual network
Sep 12, 2012
Hi Everybody,
This is something that has been a problem for awhile but didn't bother me enough to try fix it - until now.
At the moment I am working from a local environment but having to do screen captures of a virtual environment (clients). This means I click record screen on stoyline, position it over the virtual desktop (using two monitors) and press record. Then I have to click the screen to change the cursor from a hand pointing to a cursor (which means I am interacting in the virtual desktop) and do all the stuff I want to record - then to end the recording I have to move the mouse back onto the local environment, click on the screen and then tell articulate to stop recording.
I can't use any shotcut keys because once I am doing stuff in the virtual environment all shotcut keys relate to the virtual environment.
The annoying part of this process, besides the extra clicking around, is that I then have to edit every video capture (start and finish) to get rid of the extra mouse movements.
This leads me to believe I am not doing this in the most effective way possible - Is anyone in the same situation and doing it a different way?
4 Replies
Good Afternoon, James.
If your virtual environment is VMware, the CTRL+G key combination will direct input to your Virtual Environment, and the CTRL+ALT key combination will direct input back to your Host Environment, thereby allowing you to execute additional shortcut keys on the host. I would imagine that other virtual environments might have similar shortcuts, although I haven't tested any of them recently.
Please let us know if you need anything else. Thanks!
Thanks Justin,
Te client does use VMware so this sort of works. If I am in the virtual and press Ctrl+Alt it puts me back to the home/local environment and I can press Esc to stop the recording. The cursor does change from an arrow to a hand after you press Ctrl+Alt but editing that out will be a much smaller edit than what I am currently doing... actually if I overlap the screen captures on the slide I can probably just hide that little change.
Unfortunately I am getting no luck from the Ctrl+G combination. When I press it there appears to be no change even if i have all applications minimized or am in screen capture mode in storyline. Perhaps it is set up for a different combination so I will get onto IT and see what I can find out.
I think I have a working solution thanks to Justin's input.
While in Storyline you can't shortcut to VMware (or any virtual I guess) but when you press record you get three seconds before it starts. While the recording window is doing the countdown you can't click on the area you want to record to make the virtual environment active and clicking anywhere else on the screen will make the virtual active but the screen you want to record inactive. To get around this (which causes the cursor to appear wrong) I click on the taskbar. This makes the virtual active and keeps the program you want to record active.
It does get rid of the countdown but i am sure we can all count down from three, so you can just guestimate when the recording starts.
When you have finished recording press Ctrl+Alt as Justin suggested. This makes the local active again but doesn't show up Storyline's recording screen, but if you press Esc it will stop the recording and go to the recording preview.The good news here is the cursor stays as an arrow.
This should remove any need for editing and I'm pretty happy about that!
Love it, James. Nice work!
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