FAQ
TipCam FAQ
1. Why does my tip uploaded to YouTube look blurry?
2. How do I get rid of the TipCam’s control pad during recording?
3. What combination of TipCam parameters should I use?
4. Can I edit the recorded tip?
5. Why does my recording not capture some of the screen movements?
6. What is the difference between your mirror driver and VNC driver?
7. How do I record a remote session using VNC?
8. Can I record my sound card music into a video using TipCam?
9. How do I add my recording to my own web site?
10. Can I remove the watermark “www.utipu.com” in the recorded video?
uTIPu.com FAQ
2. Why a tip I uploaded to uTIPu.com does not show up in the Recent Tips page?
4. How do I know whether the person whom I invited to watch a tip has seen it?
5. Can I download the video file from your website to my local drive?
6. Who can see my videos uploaded to your website?
Why does my tip uploaded to YouTube look blurry?
When you upload a tip using TipCam to YouTube, the video would reside at YouTube. When people watch your tip, the video would be downloaded from YouTube instead of uTIPu. YouTube only supports video resolution of 320×240 and 480×360. In fact, when showing a video of 320×240 (standard resolution), YouTube expands it 480×360 thus making it even blurrier. TipCam enables you to upload 480×360 videos to YouTube as YouTube high resolution videos. But it usually takes hours longer for YouTube to make such videos available after uploading. On the other hand, tips uploaded to uTIPu can have a resolution of 640×480. While such a resolution difference may not be critical for regular videos, but it makes a huge difference for screen recordings. This is why tips uploaded to uTIPu always look better than those uploaded to YouTube. To get the best video quality for your videos uploaded to YouTube using TipCam, you should record your video in 480×360 resolution. You can set this in TipCam as shown below:
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/3237/
How do I get rid of the TipCam’s control pad during recording?
You can minimize the TipCam’s control pad to a mini-toolbar, as shown in the tip below:
http://utipu.com/app/tip/id/2133/
What combination of TipCam parameters should I use?
TipCam offers many different combinations of recording parameters. If you are new to screen recording, you should use the default parameters (i.e. do not change anything). After recording a few videos, you should not longer need the control pad anymore. You can minimize it as shown by the tip above.
If you want to upload your videos to YouTube, you should record them in 480×360 resolution.
You should not use a frame-rate that is higher than 7 frame/second unless you record a very fast moving video and you have a very fast computer. For regular screen recording, increasing the frame-rate usually results in less desirable quality and much greater uploading/downloading time (the video would pause frequently during playback as it is downloaded).
You can skip the pre-recording countdown if you do not need it. Here is how to turn it off.
http://utipu.com/app/tip/id/3231/
Can I edit the recorded tip?
To keep TipCam simple, we did not give it many bells and whistles. But it does have a few very useful editing features:
- You can record voice narration after the video has been recorded to replace the original sound track in the video. This way, you can record your tip first then add voice to it later.
- You can add text notes (including URLs) to a video after the video is uploaded to uTIPu.com. You can add notes as shown in the tip below:
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/5449/
- You can also change the title, description and tags for your tip anytime as shown in the tip below:
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/3234/
Why does my recording not capture some of the screen movements?
TipCam supports two screen capture drivers: VNC driver and Mirage mirror driver. In general, Mirage mirror driver does a better job at capturing changing screens, especially screens of Java-based application. Therefore, Mirage mirror driver should be used whenever possible. Here is a tip on how to check if mirror driver is used.
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/1227/
However, these drivers may not capture certain screen movements of DirectX applications.
What is the difference between your mirror driver and VNC driver?
TipCam supports two screen capture drivers: VNC driver and Mirage mirror driver. In general, Mirage mirror driver does a better job at capturing changing screens, especially screens of Java-based application. Therefore, Mirage mirror driver should be used whenever possible.
How do I record a remote session using VNC?
TipCam is capable of recording a video of any computer running compatible version of VNC server (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vnc) locally or remotely. This feature makes possible recording from computers running operating systems other then Windows as well as any OS that hosted on VMWare virtual server supporting VNC virtual desktop connections.
In order to record video from another computer first ensure that VNC service is running on that computer and is configured to accept connections on default port 5900 using the password of you have chosen. TipCam has been tested to work with UltraVNC (http://www.uvnc.com/). Other VNC service implementations could be configured to work with TipCam as well. Once the service is up and running on the remote computer. Select “Record from the remote computer”, and enter DNS name or an IP address of the remote computer and password in the fields provided in “Advanced” configuration dialog. Next initiate recording as usual. In order to control remote desktop during the TipCam recording a user needs to be present on the remote computer, or VNC remote client application session can be used to control the remote computer locally. When recording remotely, only full screen video recording is supported, zoom/pan functions will not have desired effect.
Can I record my sound card music into a video using TipCam?
In order to record from multiple sources the sound card and OS driver need to support what is called "Stereo Mix" or "Wave Out Mix" as a recording source option. This option, if supported by the card, is available in the "volume control" audio mixer application. Not all sound cards can support this consult your sound card manual. On Vista with legacy sound drivers, there are a couple of extra steps to enable "stereo mix". Right click on the speaker icon in the tray. Select "Recording Devices" In the resulting dialog, make sure you have the "Recording" tab selected and in the middle of the empty area, right click and select "Show Disabled Devices". You will see the stereo mix device appear. You can activate it, by right click-> Enable.
Once you have “Stereo Mix” feature selected as your default recording source in sound mixer, you can play audio tracks with your favorite program and use microphone at the same time. The audio from all selected recording sources will be captured in TipCam video. Here is a tip shows how to set this up in Vista.
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/3235/
How do I add my recording to my own web site?
There are three ways that you can add your recording to your own web site. You should only embed a public tip to your website.
- After you have uploaded your recording to our web site, you can put the URL to the recording into your website. To get such a URL, you can either request it when you upload the recording using TipCam or get this URL from our website after you have uploaded the recording.
- You can embed our player code into your web page.
- You can embed a small icon which is linked to the recording on our website.
Here is how to get the URL, the embedded player code and/or the small icon link from our website.
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/3233/
Finally, you can simply save your recording made with TipCam to your local web server and serve it directly to your web page. In order to do this, you will need to know how to embed a FLV player in your web page.
Can I remove the watermark “www.utipu.com” in the recorded video?
No, you cannot remove the watermark if you use the free version of TipCam. Please contact us (customerservice@utipu.com) about our commercial version of TipCam which does not generate the watermark.
I uploaded a tip to YouTube using TipCam but the web site said the video has been removed. What happened to my video?
The tip might be deleted by the user from YouTube directly. But a more likely scenario is that the video is still being processed by YouTube. After a video is uploaded to YouTube, it may take several hours for YouTube to process the video. It may take even long for the high resolution version of the video. If a video is uploaded to uTIPu, it usually takes less than a minute for the video to become available.
Why a tip I uploaded to uTIPu.com does not show up in the Recent Tips page?
Only public tips are displayed on the Recent Tips page. Also, to minimize the overhead, we only refresh the list every 5 minutes. Your tip will show up on the Recent Tips page the next time we refresh the list. Once your tip has reached a threshold of views, votes, and comments it will be removed from the recent tips list.
When I click on a note mark in the video player, why does the video not start from that spot, but from a previous spot?
A Flash video is made of a series of key frames and incremental changes from the previous key frame. When moving forward/backward in a Flash video, the player always starts from a key frame. If a note is added between two key frames, when the note is clicked, the video will start from the key frame before the note.
How do I know whether the person whom I invited to watch a tip has seen it?
The number of views associated with an invite is the number of times the tip has been viewed via the invite. Here is how to check the number of views on an invite.
http://www.utipu.com/app/tip/id/3229/
Can I download the video file from your website to my local drive?
This is not supported today.
Who can see my videos uploaded to your website?
If you make the video public, then everybody can see it. If you make it private, then only you and people who have an invite from you can view the tip.