Video record sessions with ScreenRecorder

Why did I need Video Recording?

When I started my work at HP. I was asked to lead an effort to revamp a 7 year old legacy Product. Being the first one to join the team and the rest of the members to join in couple of more months, my responsibility was to understand the complete system, mentor the new joiners and complete the whole revamp project in 6 months. 

The Product had a very complex architecture with little documentation. Sorry to say, even if we could find something, it was in spanish :-( The only person who knew how it works was the architect of the product.  

We had knowledge transition sessions scheduled everyday for the first month.  During the 1st transition session, I realized the complexity of the system, and the Architect was sharing his knowledge as 10 GBPS speed :-). Obviously I was completely lost, and there was no time for creating the documentation from scratch. So, I decided to record all these sessions from then on, if I had to digest the 10 GBPS information and pass it along to the team.

I tried few products to solve my purpose, and finally settled with ScreenRecorder  UtilityOnlineMarch092009_03.exe  which I found it very useful till now.

When you install the above exe, this will extract 32bit and 64bit versions of screenRecorder. You may have to pick the right version and install the actual screen recorder

How to record using screen Recorder?

Start screenrecorder, then choose the window you want to record, and select the Audio check box whether you want to record the Audio from (Line-In/System's Mic)

Then pick the file to save your video as wmv.

Now, click start and you will be recording your choice of window with or without audio.

 

How to record audio from a phone?

I used a small mic and dropped it near the phone speaker and other end to the line-in of my laptop.  Recently I have seen people using Radioshack converters to connect from Phone to the Line-in of your computer.

How did it help us?

This tool saved lot of my time and the entire team was referring to those videos whenever we had doubts. This was one of the legacy that we left behind for the future team members of the Product.