Applying Effects to your Recordings
You can make your screen recordings more illustrative and interesting by applying various effects. Click Tools >> Settings >> Effects.
Changing the Mouse Pointer Appearance
To change the appearance of the mouse pointer in your recording, click Effects >> Mouse Pointer. Change the system mouse pointer or choose a mouse pointer from the provided dropdown list. You can opt to use a custom pointer of your choice by specifying the path of the cursor file.
Highlighting Mouse Movements and Mouse Clicks
Highlighting your mouse cursor makes it easier for your audience to draw attention when pointing at certain elements in the screen recording. It is an effective way of making sure that your cursor never gets lost in the background.
To highlight the position of the mouse in your recordings, select the option Enable highlighting mouse movements.
Choose a shape to highlight the mouse position from the Mouse highlight shape dropdown list. You can change the size and color of the selected shape. You can set the transparency value of the color using the slider.
Emphasizing mouse clicks can be helpful when you are demonstrating in your recordings. You can choose to highlight the left mouse click, the right mouse click or both. To distinguish the left from the right mouse click, you can set different colors and sizes for each click. You can use the test area to test and confirm the effects' settings.
User can select and deselect effects when the screen recording is going on. Assume that you are working with a mouse pointer with the highlights turned on. Later, if you do not want the cursor to be highlighted, you can pause your recording, de-select the effect, and resume your recording. On resuming, you see the cursor highlighted for some duration and appears normal for the rest of the time. You can enable and disable the mouse highlights by clicking the Effects menu and selecting or deselecting the mouse highlight options.
Stamping your recordings
Stamping means marking your screen recordings with some captions. You may want to include some information in the screen recording. For example, you can add the company name in the recorded video as a text caption.
You can add the time of recording, elapsed duration, and a text caption in your screen recordings by clicking the options Display System Date and Time, Display Elapsed Time, and Display Text Caption.
Stamping your screen recordings with system date and time helps when you need to know the time of occurrence of an event.
You can choose to show Elapsed time which specifies the time that has passed since the capture began. If at any point, the recording is paused, the time the elapsed time pauses. With this option you can figure out how long it takes to perform a specific action.
With the option Display Text Caption, you can display any information about the screen recording during its playback.
Fig 1. The Text and Caption window.
To create a text caption, click the New button on the Annotations window and type it in the text area. You can set the Font, Style, Alignment, Color, and Position of the text. You can choose to show the caption for entire duration or for the specified duration.
Once you have selected any effect during the recording, the configured Settings are applied. If you haven't, then default settings are applied.
Note: To avoid recording the application menus and yourself turning effects on or off, you can use the keyboard shortcut to pause recording (by default, F8), then start recording again after you have changed the settings.
Screen Draw
With the Screen Draw, you can use your mouse to mark and emphasize any text or diagram on your PC screen. This makes your demonstration and interpretation even more clear. You can use different colors and widths for your drawing. There are certain keyboard shortcuts that allow you to start the Screen Draw when recording is in progress. These shortcut keys allow you to work with this tools for drawing, erasing, changing the tool tip size, selecting pen or the highlighter, and much more.
Click Tools >> Settings >> Effects >> Screen Draw.
You are provided with two tools- pen and a highlighter. You can use the pen for drawing or writing on the screen. When recording your screen for example, a presentation, you may want to give stress on certain points. With the highlighter tool, you can easily mark the points to get the viewer's attention. You can set the thickness of both, the highlighter as well as the pen with the help of the slider. When you choose a pen, in addition to its thickness, you can also set its transparency level. There is a small preview window where you can see the thickness and the transparency level that you have chosen. When using screen draw during recording, if you want the mouse effects also to be displayed uncheck the option Disable mouse effects during Screen Draw.
Instead of using the Screen Draw feature directly during the recording, My Screen Recorder Pro allows you to first test it and practice it. Click the Test Screen Draw button.
You can see the keyboard shortcuts that must be memorized and used to implement each functionality of Screen Draw during the screen recording. When you start the screen recording, at any point you can start the Screen Draw by pressing the F6 function key. To select Pen for drawing press the key P and to start highlighting text in your recording press H. An eraser is provided when you press the key E so that you can wipe out the undesired part. If you want to start all over again with your screen drawing, you can press Ctrl + E to erase the entire drawing that you have already done. To erase the last drawn part, undo it with Ctrl + Z. You can choose to open a sketch pad by pressing S to start making a nice drawing and when you are finished using it, press Esc. If you want to change the tool tip size of pen or highlighter in the middle of your screen recording, scroll your mouse wheel. Pressing the Alt key when scrolling will change the transparency level of your pen tool.
The colors that you can use are Red (key R), Green (G), Blue (B), Yellow (Y), Magenta (M) and Black (K). You can again press F6 function key to stop the screen draw during the recording.
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