How to zoom in while screencasting?

Question

Is there a way I can zoom in where the cursor is, while screencasting, something like this:

I presently using kazam on Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit for screencasting. Good alternatives which allow this feature are most welcome, but should allow for audio recording as well.

P.S.:

1. The original video here:

   • How to use google drive as music player

2. The screencaster I require should record video and not gif, the gif above is only for explaining what I need and is light-weight for AU.

3. I would like to have the screencaster have its own zooming ability and not application-specific zooming ability, i.e. I can zoom into Firefox using Ctrl++. However, this won't work with all applications, I would like the screencaster to have this ability in itself or a generic zooming ability.

Answer 1

One way to proceed would be to use Compiz and its Zoom Desktop plugin.

The Zoom Desktop plugin offers the ability to zoom in for an enlarged view of the screen. [..] Zoom Desktop works by causing the entire screen to zoom in, effectively giving you a more readable view of a portion of the screen.

Thus you can use compiz as a WM to zoom into portion of the screen while you're recording the screencast.

See also:

• How to zoom in & zoom out

Answer 2

In that video, they used Camtasia studio, the best recorder I have ever used. I spent so much time trying to find recorders that are close to that recorder. Here's a discussion on how to install it on wine.

Anyway, I did not spend hour just to give that answer :)

You can use a web app, which looks great, Screencast Matic, I have java installed this way, I don't have Icedtead plugin, I do not know if it will work on OpenJDK. Just click record my desktop, it will start a Java app and follow your cursor.

There's also Simplescreenrecorder, which you can install like so

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder
# if you want to record 32-bit OpenGL applications on a 64-bit system:
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder-lib:i386

You can choose to let the app follow the cursor. That app uses the codecs that you already have on your system, so you have to install the Codecs that you like.

In the picture above, Camtasia automatically zoom to where the cursor is, the other recorders do not do that, they follow your cursor, but you have to zoom, if you want to zoom you have to hold Ctrl + + or Ctrl + the middle cursor and they will zoom to where the cursor is. But at least, unlike Camtasia, they are free.

• RecordItNow has everything that you need, it's a KDE app, the reviews on the software center are bad. I have not tried it, but here's a demo

• Here's a Sreencast O Matic demo, I hold the ctrl key + middle cursor, but you can also use ctrl + +

• Here's SimpleScreenRecorder demo (please download the video and play it in VLC, just to make sure that it will work) I zoomed the same way mentioned above.

Answer 3

You can achieve that with compizconfig-settings-manager and compiz-plugins-main :

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins-main

Then, open CCSM (Compiz Config Settings Manager) and enable the Enhanced Zoom Desktop

You'll be able to zoom in and out like in this video. Zoom at 0:34