Active Presenter

Title: Make your own video with ActivePresenter

Active Presenter
- Title: Make your own video with ActivePresenter

Duration:

06:16 (MIN:SEC)

Public

Anyone. The installation step is not needed for CERN users as the tool is available from the Windows' environment.

Material

Screen capture at the desktop with voice over. Video made with ActivePresenter.

Description

A step-by-step video tutorial on how to use ActivePresenter, a screen recording tool for Windows and Mac.

This tutorial explains how to install ActivePresenter, how to do a screen recording and edit a video using ActivePresenter and finally how to exports the end product. The installation step is not needed for the CERN users as the product is available, with company agreement, from the CERN winservices. A pdf document on the subject is available as material from the indico event page.

CERN video content owner

Vincent Bippus (for the product availability to CERN users), Maria Dimou (for the dissemination), Pedro de Freitas (for the recording and editing).

More information:

It is better to record the screen captures only with no sound recording. Then, record the voice only. Then edit with one of the tools below, e.g. "Windows Movie Maker" to put them together. In this way the sound of clicks and typing are not audible in the final video.
Another way to configure ActivePresenter not to record the mouse clicks in shown in this short video.
One can 'Pause' the recording from within an ActivePresenter session by pressing on the 'shift' button.

Good commercial products for editing videos are:

"Final Cut Pro" for Mac (about 300$ one-time-charge - 2017 price)
"Adobe Premiere Pro" for Windows(about 20$ per month - 2017 price)

For free alternatives for simple video editing there is "iMovie" for Mac, and "Windows Movie Maker" for Windows. (Info by Alex Manzoni)

Notes by Kyle Richard Dawson

This is Kyle's experience when he first used ActivePresenter

Step 1: Prepare to Record
- In order to create a video, you have to launch ActivePresenter. At CERN you don't need to download, it is available from the CERN winservices.
- If your video tutorials require narration, your computer needs to have a microphone connected, preferably.
- It is better for your recording if you arrange/open/set-up in advance all the required applications so that they are easy to find and open during the recording.
- In terms of making a training video, the more concisely and accurately it appears, the more understandable it is for audiences. So, an attentive and careful script is very important.
Step 2: Record Your Screen
- Choose either Record Software Demonstration or Record Movie/Streaming Video capture profile.
- Select audio input.
- When you are ready, click the Start Recording button and get started.
Steps 3: Edit Captured Videos
- After recording, you will have the recording of what you have carried out on your screen. Now is the time for editing it with plenty of built-in video editing tools that ActivePresenter gives you.
  - ActivePresenter makes it easy to delete parts of the captured videos. To have any range of the video removed, just select it and click the Cut Range or Delete Range icon on the Timeline.
Step 4: Export Final Projects to Videos
- ActivePresenter offers many different types of video formats (MP4, FLV, AVI, WMV, WebM, MKV), choose MP4.

Tips to know before using ActivePresenter:

With ActivePresenter, you are able to change the mouse click sound. This is done by clicking on Record Settings, then on Cursor, and then choosing the sound (or no sound) you want.
Reading off a teleprompter will help you with your timing, e.g not going too fast or too slow.
When deleting parts of the video you do not desire: In order to select more exactly the range that you want to delete, hold Ctrl while scrolling the mouse up and down to zoom in and out the Timeline ruler.