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Create smoother SnapzPro movie captures Desktop
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.

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.
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!
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Create smoother SnapzPro movie captures | 3 comments | Create New Account
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Drawing a marquee too!
Authored by: Welles Goodrich on Nov 23, '02 11:22:10AM

I was just messing around with this tip and found that if you hit the numeric '0' key prior to moving the cursor with the 1,2,3,6,9,8,7, & 4 keys it will draw a marquee. Hitting the decimal point key right next to the '0' key on the numeric keyboard returns you to the normal keystroke mouse movement.



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Drawing a marquee too!
Authored by: Welles Goodrich on Nov 23, '02 11:22:51AM

I was just messing around with this tip and found that if you hit the numeric '0' key prior to moving the cursor with the 1,2,3,6,9,8,7, & 4 keys it will draw a marquee. Hitting the decimal point key right next to the '0' key on the numeric keyboard returns you to the normal keystroke mouse movement.



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Drawing a marquee too!
Authored by: Welles Goodrich on Nov 23, '02 11:24:36AM

Drat! Sorry for the double post!



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