Capture Fox is a handy tool to create screencasts in a very easy way. In just a few clicks, you can start capturing your screen or browser and get a high quality video with your voice recorded.
This help documentation has been prepared for version 0.8.
The latest stable version of Capture Fox is hosted on Mozilla Add-ons web site and can be downloaded from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8090.
You must use Firefox to download the add-on to install it properly. Click on the “Add to Firefox” button on the page. Then the download process automatically begins in a seperate window. In this window, click Install button to install Capture Fox. After software download is completed, you’ll be asked to restart Firefox in order to complete the installation process.
Capture Fox has really some nice features to create a screencast. Basically, the flow of use of Capture Fox is as follows:
The usage scenario is as follows:
Configuration settings are divided into two categories, basic and advanced settings.
On configuration dialog, you can click Start Capturing! button to start capturing process. Also, you can just save settings and start capturing using shortcut key combination while browsing.
Capture Area
Video Quality
You can set the quality of the output video to three different levels. Level of the video quality is directly proportional to size of the output video.
Frames Per Second
This is the number of frames which are captured in one second. To get smoother transitions between movements of the mouse icon, increasing this value is appropriate. But increasing FPS value also increases the size of the output video.
Voice Recording
If you want to record your voice, check this option. If you don’t have a microphone, you cannot choose this option.
Output Folder
A video file is created every time you start capturing. You can change the folder where this video file is created.
Compression settings / Video Codec
There are two codecs that are supported by Capture Fox. A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal (source: Wikipedia, more information about Codec can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec).
MJPEG stands for Motion JPEG. If MJPEG is used, each video frame is compressed as a JPEG image. The advantage of MJPEG codec is that it’s a built-in codec in Windows XP SP 2 and Windows Vista. Therefore, you don’t need to install it seperately.
XVID is a great codec which is open-source and can be found at www.xvid.org. It compresses video frames very well and the quality is pretty good.
The following table shows the test results of 30-second screencast which has been conducted in moderate quality. The sound codec was MP3.
| Output Results | ||
| Codecs | File Size | Defects |
| XVID | 0,9 MB | Low |
| MJPEG | 10 MB | High |
As seen in the table above, XVID is far better than MJPEG but you need to install XVID codec seperately.
Compression Settings / Audio Codec
There are two audio codec options, MP3 and Wav.
MP3 stands for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 and it’s a digital audio encoding algorithm which is a lossy compression format.
WAV stands for Waveform digital audioformat. It’s also known as Audio for Windows. This format contains uncompressed audio data.
If quality sound is what you need, choose WAV. But if you want to utilize your disk capacity efficiently or to upload your screencasts on a web server, choose MP3 for lower disk usage.
Timing Options
Delay: The number of seconds which elapses before Capture Fox starts. This is useful in some cases
where you need some time after clicking Start Capturing button.
Minimize firefox window on start: Check this option if you want to hide Firefox window immediately after
clicking Start Capturing button. You can also define a Delay value and minimize the browser manually but this option
is more useful. This feature is useful especially for capturing desktop or another program.
Stop capturing on window focus: This option is available if you check the Minimize window on start option.
If you want to capture another window (desktop or another program) and don't want Firefox to be seen in the screencast,
choose this option together with the previous one. When you're done with recording, you can simply click the Firefox
button on the taskbar and recording is stopped while the Firefox window is being focused.
Output File name
The default file name of the output video is capturefox.avi. You can change this parameter in advanced settings tab.
Allow Automatic Start
Capture Fox can be started automatically in some special circumstances. This feature is for developers and testers. By default, this option is not checked. For further details, please click here.
CTRL + SHIFT + U
You can open the settings window by pressing CTRL + SHIFT + U. If Capture Fox is recording, this shortcut is used to stop capturing, too. When recording is stopped, a dialog is opened as mentioned under the title, “Configuration Settings”.
CTRL + SHIFT + F (Quick Start)
This keyboard shortcut is used to start capturing without opening the settings dialog by using the last settings saved. If you use this shortcut while recording, the settings dialog is opened.