How to zoom in while screencasting?
One way to proceed would be to use Compiz and its Zoom Desktop plugin.
The Zoom Desktop plugin offers the ability to zoom in for an enlarged view of the screen. [..] Zoom Desktop works by causing the entire screen to zoom in, effectively giving you a more readable view of a portion of the screen.
Thus you can use compiz as a WM to zoom into portion of the screen while you're recording the screencast.
See also:
- How to zoom in & zoom out
You can achieve that with compizconfig-settings-manager and compiz-plugins-main :
sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins-main
Then, open CCSM (Compiz Config Settings Manager) and enable the Enhanced Zoom Desktop
You'll be able to zoom in and out like in this video. Zoom at 0:34
In that video, they used Camtasia studio, the best recorder I have ever used. I spent so much time trying to find recorders that are close to that recorder. Here's a discussion on how to install it on wine.
Anyway, I did not spend hour just to give that answer :)
You can use a web app, which looks great, Screencast Matic, I have java installed this way, I don't have Icedtead plugin, I do not know if it will work on OpenJDK. Just click record my desktop, it will start a Java app and follow your cursor.
There's also Simplescreenrecorder, which you can install like so
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder
# if you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system:
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386
You can choose to let the app follow the cursor. That app uses the codecs that you already have on your system, so you have to install the Codecs that you like.
In the picture above, Camtasia automatically zoom to where the cursor is, the other recorders do not do that, they follow your cursor, but you have to zoom, if you want to zoom you have to hold Ctrl + + or Ctrl + the middle cursor and they will zoom to where the cursor is. But at least, unlike Camtasia, they are free.
- RecordItNow has everything that you need, it's a KDE app, the reviews on the software center are bad. I have not tried it, but here's a demo
Here's a Sreencast O Matic demo, I hold the
ctrl key+ middle cursor, but you can also usectrl++Here's SimpleScreenRecorder demo (please download the video and play it in VLC, just to make sure that it will work) I zoomed the same way mentioned above.