screencast with VLC

Screencast with VLC
Capturing the screen goes by various names such as screencast, screen recording or screen session recording. There are quite a few screencast programs around such as BB Flashback Express, Screencast-O-Matic, Jing and the standard – Camtasia which is a bit pricey. Here’s one you probably already have and didn’t realize it could do screencasts – VLC. Yes, VLC is a great media player, but VLC can do much more than just play back media.

I wrote about it last week Convert Video Files With VLC. If you don’t yet have VLC, I recommend it highly as your default video player.

Here’s how to make a screen recording with VLC:

Launch VLC then look at the menus on the top.

1. Go to Media/Open Capture Device
2. Capture Mode dropdown to select Desktop
3. Options/Frame Rate -0 Choose 15 fps for most actions
4. Pulldown “Play” and select “Convert.”
5. In the “Profile” dropdown, choose MP4
6. Use the destination field to choose a name and destination for the video you are about to record.
7. You can change settings such as the codec, bit rate, quality and frame rate by going to the tool box symbol
8. Press start. Everything you see on the screen is being recorded to an MP4 file.
9. To stop it, go to the Playback menu and press stop.

VLC is probably not the best way to record video from your screen, but it is ideal for demonstrating software or instructing viewers on using an application.