How to Record Screencast Videos on your iPad or iPhone

  Whether you are an app developer building iOS apps and games or a tech blogger who likes to review such apps, what you definitely want is a screencasting tool that will help you easily record video demos, or screencast movies, of your mobile app.

Now there are tons of screencasting apps available for your Windows or Mac desktop but if you wish to capture the screen of your iPad or iPhone, the scene is very disappointing. A search for “screen recorder” or “screencasting” shows zero results in the iTunes app store.

That said, there are ways, or rather workarounds, by which you can capture the screen activity of your iPad or iPhone and convert that into a movie.  Let’s take a look:

Option 1. Create a Screencast Video using Screenshot Images

This is the quick solution. You can capture multiple screenshot images of an app (here’s how) and then stitch them together in one video either using Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie on your Mac. This is how I created the following video screencast of an iPad.

If you would like to make your screencasting appear more natural, put all these different screenshot images in a PowerPoint slideshow, run it in Full-screen mode and then use Camtasia or any other screencasting software to record that slideshow. The advantage here is that the cursor will also be captured so people will find it easier to follow your video tours or game walkthroughs.

Option 2: Use Display Recorder to Capture your iPhone /iPad Screen

If you have jailbroken your iPad (or iPhone), you can use the Display Recorderutility to record the onscreen activity of your iOS device and save the video as an AVI or MP4 file. The app can also upload your recorded screencast to YouTube directly.

I haven’t tried this Cydia app myself but here’s a move of an iPad screen recorded using Display Recorder. The app doesn’t record system sounds though but you can run another app in parallel for that purpose.

Option 3: Create Screencasts using a Dedicated Video Capture Card

You can easily connect your iPhone or iPad to an external monitor – be it a TV screen or a computer monitor or a projector – using either the HDMI Adapter or the VGA Adapter.

Now instead of connecting the iOS device output directly to an external screen, you can connect it to a capture card and it will then automatically record your iPhone /iPad screen.

AverTV HD and Blackmagic Design are some of the available graphic capture cards that can be used in this kind of setup. The following video by Kelly Rush will walk you through the entire process of recording screencasts on tablets – Android, iPads or anything else – with the help of a capture card.

Also, if you do not wish to open to chassis of your computer to install an internal graphics card, there are other options like Epiphan and UltraStudio 3D. These are external capture devices though you would require a much higher budget for them.

Option 4: Record Screencasts using Whiteboard Apps

If you wish to create simple whiteboard style screencasts where your audio and all you activity on a whiteboard is recorded as a movie, you have some good options including Screenchomp, Explain Everything, ShowMe, Replay Note, Doodlecast Pro and Educreations.

ScreenChomp, Educreations and ShowMe are free apps for the iPad that will help you record Khan Academly style videos. You can create freehand drawings, write text, annotate pictures, and all your activity (including voice) will be recorded in one video.

Explain Everything goes one step further. It has a built-in web browser and anything you do inside that browser is also captured in the video so you be more creative here. You can also import PDF files, PowerPoint slides and other documents into Explain Everything through Dropbox, add voice narrations or annotations and publish them into a movie.

Option 5: Use a Digital Camera to Record App Demos

The trouble with all the above workarounds is that none of them would record your hand gestures.

To get around the problem, the developers of the Denso App recorded their interaction video with the iPad using the iPhone camera (see details). They placed the iPad on a white sheet of paper, added enough lights to get rid of all the shadows and they also placed paper on the lamps to diffuse the harsh light.

It’s an easy setup and end result is much like the various iPad /iPhone demos that you see on Apple website. The following video from the DoodleCast team explains a similar setup that also uses an iPhone camera to record iPad videos – the key here is good lighting.

Option 6: Record Screencasts of your iPad or iPhone using AirPlay

I saved the best option for the last. Download and install the Reflector app and it will wirelessly mirror your iPhone or iPad screen  on to your desktop live. You don’t have to install any additional software on your iOS device, no cables are involved and there’s no jailbreaking required either – the only requirement is that your iPad / iPhone and the destkop should be part of the same home network.

Once the iPad or iPhone screen is beamed on to your desktop, you can use any of existing screencasting utilities – like Camtasia Studio or ScreenFlow – to automatically capture a video while you work on the iPhone or iPad. That’s easy and very convenient.

Reflector is available for both Mac and Windows PCs. Here’s a screencast video of an iPad that I recorded using the Reflector app on a Mac. This is what you have been waiting for!

Also see :- How to Record Screencast Videos on Android

Source :- labnol.org

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How to Record Screencast Videos on Android

I uploaded my first Android screencast on YouTube today. The video walks you through the steps necessary to install an Android app from the Google Play store on your mobile phone.

The Android screen was recorded at 720p (1280×720) resolution, there are no visible frame-drops in the video and the screencast output is in MPEG-4 (.mp4) format that can be directly uploaded to YouTube or can be edited in any video editing app, both on your phone and the desktop.

Screencasting on Android – Step by Step

If you would like to record screencast videos of your own Android phone, the good news is that you don’t need to install any app nor do you have to root your device. The not-so-good news is that you can only capture screencasts on phones (or tablets) that are running Android 4.4+ and it will not record the audio.

According to Google, about 14% of Android devices are currently running KitKat. If you happen to be one among them, here’s how you can screencast your phone.

Step 1: Prepare your Android Device for Screencasting

Open your Android phone settings and go to About Phone, the last option in the list. Next tap Build Number seven times in quick succession and you’ll see a message saying that Developer Options have been enabled in your device.

Now use the “back” button to return to the Settings page, tap Developer Optionsand toggle the on-off switch. Here turn on USB Debugging and also enable Show Input Touches – the on-screen interactions like taps and swipes will be recorded as circles in the screencast.

Step 2: Prepare your computer (Windows or Mac)

We need to install the Android SDK on our desktop. This is simple. All you have to do is download the SDK in a zip file from the android.com website and unzip the file anywhere on your computer.

The Android SDK is available for both Mac and Windows.

Step 3: Connect your Android phone to the desktop

First connect your Android phone to your computer though the regular micro USB cable. The phone will display a prompt asking you to “Allow USB debugging.” Tap OK to continue.

Now open the command prompt in Windows, or the Terminal shell on your Mac, and switch (use the “cd” command) to the sdk/platform-tools directory inside the Android SDK folder.

Here run the command adb devices and if it shows a device under the “List of devices attached”, you are all set to record the first movie of your Android screen.

Step 4: Record the Screencast Video

Run the follow command to enter recording mode. Advanced users may refer to the help manual to learn about the various options supported by screenrecord.

adb shell screenrecord --verbose ./sdcard/screencast-video.mp4

Now switch to your phone and whatever you do here will get recorded in the video. When you are done, go to command window and press Ctrl + C to stop the video recording. The screencast is now saved in your Android phone.

You can use a File manager app, I prefer File Wrangler, to search for the screencast-video.mp4 file on the phone and transfer it to your desktop for editing.

Source :- labnol.org

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How to Make your Mobile Screenshots Look Awesome

It’s easy to capture screenshots on mobile devices but let’s do a quick recap. If you have an  iPhone, press the Home & Sleep buttons and the screenshot image will be saved instantly. On an Android device, press the Volume Down & Power button simultaneously to capture whatever is currently on your screen. And in the case of Windows Phone 8, press and hold the Start and Power buttons at the same time to take a screenshot.

That’s a raw screenshot saved in your camera roll but you also need to add the hardware frame around your screenshots so that the captured images appear more realistic and provides better context to the viewer.

Why is that important? A 768 pixels wide screenshot of a mobile app in portrait mode could have been captured on an Android device or an old iPad – now wrap that same image inside the Google Nexus frame and everyone is saved from playing a guessing game.

A layered photo editing tool like Adobe Photoshop makes it really easy for you to add hardware device frames to any screenshot image. Go to Dribbble and search for “freebies PSD <mobile name>” and you’ll find beautiful mockups for that mobile device.

Download and import the PSD file into Photoshop and then use the File -> Place command to place the screenshot image as a new layer over the mockup. Use the Save for Web option to export the screen capture in JPEG format.

[*] Dribbble users usually add the tag “freebies” or “free” to indicate that others can reuse their design(s) for personal and commercial use. Other than Dribbble, Deviant Art and Behance are also good places to discover high-quality mobile mockups.

If you aren’t well-versed in Photoshop, you can make use of a web app like PlaceIt that will automatically add device frames to your mobile screenshots.

The tool offers a collection of professional-quality photographs of mobile phones and tablets placed in realistic settings. You need to drag your screenshot image onto a photograph and it will automatically get placed in the screen area of the mobile device perfectly aligned with the hardware frame.

PlaceIt can handle screenshots of your iPhone, iPad, Nokia Lumia, Macbook, Microsoft Surface, iMac, Amazon Kindle, Samsung Galaxy and Google Nexus phones.

The Device Art Generator, available here and here, is provided by Google for anyone to quickly add device frames around screenshots of Android phones and tablets.

Drag the mobile screenshot image on to a device frame and it will quickly wrap that frame around your image. You also have the option to add screen glare and depth (for perspective) to the generated screenshots.

Device Art Generator includes templates for HTC One X, Samsung Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note, Galaxy Tab, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Google Nexus 10 devices.

MockuPhone is another useful web app for adding device frames to your mobile screenshots with a unique feature. You pick a device frame, upload the mobile screenshot image and the tool will generate multiple screenshot images of the same device but at different angles.

The tool produces very high-resolution screenshots and they offer device frames for the iPhone 5, iPad & iPad Mini, Google Nexus and Samsung Galaxy S4.

You can also add realistic device frames to your mobile screenshots via email. Just send the raw screenshot image as an email attachment to smartphones@mailchimp.com and, within in a minute or two, they will send you the processed screenshot with the device frame. You can also send multiple screenshots in the same message.

The service will automatically detects the mobile device name and the image orientation (portrait or landscape) using the EXIF data in the image and adds the appropriate hardware frame. It supports iPhone, iPad, Galaxy Tab, Nexus and a bunch of mobile device – send an email with the subject “help” to the same address for a complete list.

Source:- labnol

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