Use Screen Capture as a Live Broadcasting device

You can also use Screen Capture as your video device in a Live Broadcasting Project. This feature enables you to perform a screen capture and simultaneously stream the capture as a live broadcast.

To use Screen Capture as a video device

1. In a Live Broadcasting Project, click the Live Sources tab to display the live source options.

2. In the Video Device menu, choose Screen Capture Source. If the Video Device menu is not active, then in the Preview area, click Select a Video Device.

3. Click Configure.

4. In the Configure dialog box, specify your configuration options according to the following descriptions, and click OK:

   • X, Y, Width, Height   If you know the coordinates of the area of the screen that you want to capture, as well as the dimensions that you want to capture, then enter coordinates for X and Y, or enter values for Width and Height. If you want to manually draw a capture area, do not enter any values. The tasks in Step 6 describe how to manually draw a capture area.

   • Frame Rate   Enter the number of frames per second at which to record your capture. If you are using several sources, you should make sure that the frame rate you set here matches the frame rates of those other sources. Mixed frame rates in live broadcasts can cause playback problems.

   • Capture Mouse Cursor   Specifies whether the pointer will be visible in your capture. Select Enlarge to have the cursor appear in your capture at three times its normal size.

5. Select Minimize if you want Microsoft Expression Encoder to minimize once you begin your broadcast.

6. Click Pick Rectangle. Expression Encoder minimizes so that you can pick an area of the screen. The area that you pick will be the area that is captured during your broadcast. To pick an area, do one of the following:

   • To pick a window or a rectangular segment of the UI, position the pointer over the window or segment that you want to capture. You will see a red border appear over the UI element that you want to capture. To capture the full screen, move the pointer to any corner of the screen. Once the area you want to capture is highlighted, click the mouse.

   • To manually define an area to capture, drag the pointer over the area that you want to capture. A red triangle will define the area as you drag. Once you have defined an area, release the mouse.

     Note

     After defining your capture area, you can further refine it by clicking Configure and entering new width, height, and coordinate values, as described in Step 4.

7. Once you have defined your area, Expression Encoder maximizes. The area of the screen that you are capturing appears as a thumbnail in the Live Sources panel, unless Expression Encoder is obscuring that area. In this case, drag the application window away from the defined capture area.

8. If you plan to include audio in your broadcast then, in the Audio Device menu, choose the device that you want to use to record your audio. You can choose any audio device that your system recognizes and, depending upon what you choose, you will have varying options to adjust when you click Configure. If your chosen device has multiple lines that you can control, you can choose one from the Audio Line menu. Adjust the volume by either entering a figure or dragging in the box. The highest figure you can enter is 1, which means that you have increased the audio volume by 100%.

9. Set any other live broadcasting options and click Start to begin the capture and the broadcast. For more information on setting live broadcasting options, see Set Live Sources and Set File Sources.

   Note

   If you chose to minimize Expression Encoder during recording, you can stop the broadcast without maximizing Expression Encoder by pressing CTRL+ALT+F12

See also

Tasks

Set File Sources
Set the Broadcast stream options
Set Live Sources

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