The following guidelines walk you through the steps of recording your screen to video.
Launch Total Screen Recorder from "Start > Programs > Total Screen Recorder".
Click the "Record Options" button from toolbar, or select "View > Options..." from menu bar. Click "Restore Default Settings" button to set all values to default, and click "OK" button to save and return.
Press "CTRL+F4" to start recording, or click "Start Recording" button from toolbar, or select "Recorder > Start" from menu bar. The cursor turns into a pen on cross-hairs, which you use to define a rectangular region on your screen by click-dragging the left mouse button. Release mouse button to confirm the selection and there will be a border frame outside of the recording area indicating that recorder is working.
Press "CTRL+F4" again to stop recording, or click "Stop Recording" button from toolbar, or select "Recorder > Stop" from menu.
Click "Play Recorded Video" button from toolbar to play the recorded video in default video player, or select "Recorder > Play Recorded Video" from menu bar.
Click "Open Output Folder" button from toolbar to open the folder where the video file is saved, or select "Recorder > Open Output Folder" from menu bar. The video file name is displayed in Summary Window.
If you select "Auto Save Recordings" in Options Dialog, the video streaming will be recorded to the Default Output Folder without asking, and the file will be named with current date time automatically.
For example, if current date time is 2006-2-10 20:05:42, and the output type is AVI, then the file name will be "2006_02_10_20_05_42.avi".
If you didn't select "Auto Save Recordings" in Options Dialog, Total Screen Recorder will automatically pop up a window to ask you to save the video file before record.
Click "Play Recorded Video" button from toolbar to play the recorded video in default video player, or select "Recorder > Play Recorded Video" from menu bar.
Click "Open Output Folder" button from toolbar to open the folder where the video file is saved, or select "Recorder > Open Output Folder" from menu bar. The file name is displayed in Summary Window.
There are 5 types of region you can choose, you can select an appropriate one from the Recorder page of Options Dialog.
Define Region Before Record
If you select "Define Region Before Record", Total Screen Recorder will ask you to define the region each time before record. You can define an arbitrary rectangular region with the mouse. The cursor turns into a pen on cross-hairs, which you use to define a rectangular region on your screen by click-dragging the left mouse button. The snapshot of dragging process is listed below:
Select Window Before Record
If you choose "Select Window Before Record", Total Screen Recorder will ask you to specify a window to capture. You should click on the window finder icon and drag it onto the destination window, and the destination window will be highlighted by a border frame. Release mouse button to confirm the window selection.
Full Screen
If you choose "Full Screen", Total Screen Recorder will record whole screen.
Fixed Size
If you choose "Fixed Size", Total Screen Recorder will ask you to move the fixed-size region around the screen to determine where you want the capture area to be.
Fixed Region
If you choose "Fixed Region", Total Screen Recorder will record the region specified by the Left, Top, Width and Height values in the Options Dialog.
Note:
You can cancel selection any time by pressing ESC.
You can change video/audio settings in the Encoder page of Options Dialog.
For Standard and Gold version, Total Screen Recorder will record screen activities into AVI file by default, using video and audio compressors. There may be many video/audio codec installed in your computer, but not all of them are suitable for screen capture compression. You need to do some test work to make sure that selected compressor can work well with Total Screen Recorder. It's highly recommended to use video compressor, which can make the AVI files smaller in size and cause them to play faster. You can also save video in WMV format, which can be smaller in size than AVI format in most situation.
For Flash version, Total Screen Recorder will record screen to SWF file by default.
Note:
If you change encoder options when recorder is working, the modifications won't be applied until recording is stopped.
At any time, even the main window of Total Screen Recorder is not active or visible, you can press the hotkey to start or stop recording. The default hotkey is "CTRL+F4". but the system hotkey may be used by other program, and you will see an error message when hot key conflict with other programs. Then you can set up your own hotkey to that hasn't been used.
To set your own hotkey, choose "View > Options..." from menu bar, then set focus to the hotkey edit box (this means to click on the edit box and show the cursor in it), and press down the keys you want to set as hotkey.
Click "OK" button to enable the setting. If you still see an error message on registering hotkey, you can set it again until the error doesn't appear.
Default Output Folder is the directory to save recorded video files automatically when "Auto Save Recordings" is checked in Options Dialog. By default, the folder is created under "My Documents", with the name of "My Recorded Videos".
To change the Default Output Folder, select "View > Options...", click the "Browse" button to change the folder, and click "OK" to apply.
To let Total Screen Recorder start or stop recording automatically, you should choose "Recorder > Set Timers", or click the "Set Timers" button from toolbar. In "Set Timers" dialog, check and set start or stop time you want, Total Screen Recorder will start record when the auto-start timer triggered, and stop the recording at the stop time you set.
To disable timers, just select "Recorder > Set Timers", or click the "Set Timers" button from toolbar, and uncheck start or stop timers.
Note:
When auto-start timer triggered, Total Screen Recorder will check the capture region. If the capture region is not set to a fixed region, Total Screen Recorder will capture the full screen.
Total Screen Recorder will check product web site for updates every 7 days. When new version found, a message box will pop up to tell you the information about the updates, and can guide you go to the download page on product web site.
To check for updates manually, select "Help > Check for Updates" from menu bar.
To check the version and and registration information of Video Screen Recorder, select "Help > About" from the menu bar. In About dialog, you can see the product version and file version of Total Screen Recorder. Author's info and web site address are also listed in the dialog.
If your are using Total Screen Recorder in trial mode, there will be a message telling you that it's still not registered, and you can click "Buy Now" to order online.
If you have got the registration code, you can click "Enter Registration Code" to register.
If your Total Screen Recorder is registered, the registered user name will be displayed in the dialog.
Uninstall from your Windows Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs.
Uninstall from the Total Screen Recorder program menu.
