This hint is courtesy of Christopher Breen, author of the "Mac 911" Macworld column and book of the same name. He posted this to the SnapzPro mailing list, and gave permission for me to repeat it here. If you use SnapzPro to capture "follow the mouse" movies, you'll want to read Christopher's technique for smoother captures. He writes (slightly modified by me to remove OS 9 information):
Ambrosia Software's terrific screen capture utility, Snapz Pro X, allows you to capture screen actions as QuickTime movies. When you capture such a QuickTime movie, you can elect to capture a particular portion of the screen or direct the movie follow your cursor. This cursor option is very helpful when you want to show a moving panorama -- display a panned view of the Dock, for example.I had never even considered using the keyboard to move the mouse; after testing this, there's no comparison - the quality of the captured movies is greatly improved!
Regrettably, after a couple of cups of coffee, my hand isn't terribly steady and movie captures that follow the cursor tend to be less than velvet smooth. I've found a way to fix that.
Open the Universal Access system preference and click the Mouse tab. Turn on the Mouse Keys option. This allows you to control the cursor with your keyboard's numeric keyboard. Begin your movie capture and instead of dragging the mouse, press the appropriate key on your keyboard -- the 6 key, for example, to move the cursor smoothly to the right.
You may need to play with the Initial Delay and Acceleration settings to get it right, but once you do, your captures should be smooth and steady.
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