Recording with a camera using Cheese

Recording the screen with an external camera has the following advantages over recording with a screencast:

• Recording a whole session, even if the user restarts Tails.
• Saving the video directly to your computer and not relying on the computer used for the tests.

You can use a document camera. The Ziggi-HD Plus by IPEVO works fine from Tails.

1. Move the AF switch of the camera to C to have continuous autofocus.

2. Install Cheese:

   apt install cheese ffmpegthumbnailer

3. In Cheese, choose  ▸ Preferences and adjust the video resolution to find a good trade-off between resolution and fluidity.

   On my ThinkPad X250, I use 1280 × 720.

4. Adjust the orientation of the camera to capture as much of the screen as possible while not obfuscating the light of sight of the participant.

Recording a screencast

Recording the screen with a screencast has the following advantages over recording with an external camera:

• Better image quality
• Lighter setup

Using GNOME Shell

Press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R in GNOME to start or stop capturing a screencast.

The video is saved to ~/Videos/.