With the release of ProPresenter 7.1 comes the introduction of a Capture option for screen recording and streaming.
Capturing a ProPresenter Screen for streaming to an RTMP server allows for a simple streaming option for ProPresenter users.
To access the Capture settings window, go to Screens>Capture Settings in your menu bar. The window that opens will allow you to set the parameters of your Recording. For the purposes of this article, we'll focus on the Streaming option to an RTMP server. If you are looking to only capture your Screen to a recording, please take a look at this article.
The Capture Settings window offers you the options to set the parameters for your output recording. Below we'll highlight each option in this window.
- Source: This is the screen that you wish to capture from your Screen Configuration window. You can capture any currently set Audience or Stage screen. At this time, this is a single source, so you can only capture one ProPresenter screen at a time.
- Destination: This is where you select if your recording will be saved as a video file or sent out via an RTMP stream -- Saving as only a video file is explained here. At this time, this is a single destination option, so you can only send to one RTMP server.
- Address: This is the server URL that you are streaming to from your streaming provider.
- Key: This is the key that you'll need to retrieve also from the streaming provider allowing you to stream live from the program.
- For streaming from Facebook, you can find information from their Help Center on how to retrieve this information here.
- For streaming from YouTube, you can find information from their Help Center on how to retrieve this information here.
- For streaming from Vimeo, you can find information from their Help Center on how to retrieve this information here.
- Encoding: Here you can set the resolution and frame rate of your video stream. We would recommend matching this to the resolution of the screen you are capturing and based around your internet upload speed.
- Save Local Copy: Enabling this option will allow you to also save the stream as a video file.
- Save To: This option will appear when Save Local Copy is enabled and you can select where you want the recorded video file to save. You can select the Desktop, Documents, or Movies/Videos folder by default or browse to choose another location to save the file.
Once you have your settings in place, you can either click Start Capture to immediately begin the capture or close out of this window. You can then go back to start a capture in the Screens menu by going to Screens>Start Capture.
When you begin the Capture, a progress indicator will appear in the upper right of your Preview window.
There are three colors the indicator can be depending on the status of your streaming connection. The indicator will typically be green as that means the connection is properly streaming and there are no interruptions through ProPresenter. If the color is yellow, this is a warning that the stream is dropping frames. If the color is red, this signals that your network connection has been lost or the stream has been stopped for another reason. This check happens on a regular basis and we recommend watching this indicator to confirm the health of your stream.
Once you are finished streaming, you can stop the capture through either clicking on the indicator in the Preview window and going to Stop Capture, going to the Screens menu>Stop Capture, or through the Stop Capture button in the Capture Settings window.