How do I add a spotlight to my desktop recordings?

Some recording software, such as Camtasia, and hardware such as the Logitech Spotlight presentation remotes, allow "spotlighting" an area of the screen, to focus the viewer's attention on a detail – as shown in the example below:

Mediasite Desktop Recorder does not include this functionality at present, however there are other ways to achieve this (such as with the Logitech pointers mentioned above). In the absence of a pointer with this function, there are some software packages available.

We have successfully tested SwordSoft Mousetrack to work with Mediasite Desktop Recorder in both screencast and slideshow modes. It is free to use (with some limitations) and can be installed on your computer by anyone with administrator privileges. Full functionality can be purchased from the website for a small cost. The above screenshot was created using this software.

To use Swordsoft Mousetrack, install it on your computer, and then open the control panel from the Start menu. Set the following options:

• Choose a desired keyboard shortcut to toggle spotlight on/off
  (we recommend choosing a key that is not regularly used, such as F1)
• Uncheck "Show Mouse Click"
• Uncheck "Show Keystroke"

Thereafter every time you press F1, you will toggle a spotlight over the mouse pointer.

NB: Alternatively you can enable the control bar to allow you to toggle the spotlight with your mouse.

See also:

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