"Laser Pointer" Effect in Screen Capture Videos

December 6, 2018 9:10 AM

A friend wants to create videos where she clicks through online slideshows while commenting. I suggested she us QuickTime Player's screen recording feature, constrained to browser window, plus a decent external microphone. But she wants to be able to point at specific parts of photos. Any ideas of how to integrate a sort of "laser pointer" into this? She's on a Mac.

A full-fledged screen capture tool ala ScreenFlow would surely enable this, but it would be expensive and have a high learning curve. Hoping to do this more on the down-low. Any creative solutions?

posted by Quisp Lover to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I suspect that there's some reason this isn't enough, but the mouse should still appear while using quicktime, and you can click the little down arrow next to the red record button and select "show mouse clicks" to make those extra visible as well.
posted by Phredward at 9:16 AM on December 6, 2018

Screencast-O-Matic will enable her to do this. It's free but has a watermark. You can remove it with a $1.50/mo subscription.
posted by Hermione Granger at 10:18 AM on December 6, 2018

FastStone Capture is a screen capture and recording shareware too. It will optionally allow a user to highlight a cursor/pointer when clicking.
faststone
I use it every day for work.
posted by smuna at 10:41 AM on December 6, 2018

oof, FastStone is Windows only. Sorry.
posted by smuna at 11:03 AM on December 6, 2018

Response by poster: My experience with second-tier alternative software is that it tends to present all the learning curve with only a fraction of the end-result satisfaction. But I'll try Screencast-O-Matic, thanks!
posted by Quisp Lover at 11:10 AM on December 6, 2018

PowerPoint ,when placed in presentation mode will allow you to change your cursor and toggle a "laser pointer" to point at things on screen.
posted by Karaage at 4:29 AM on December 7, 2018 [1 favorite]