Neat Tool To Document Surveillance Problems

Surveillance problems are often difficult to explain. Fuzzy language like 'grainy, nosiy, blurry' are common but those subjective terms are hard for others to pin down. Perhaps the best way to overcome this is to take a video screencast that shows the problem in action. However, traditional screencasts can be a pain requiring users to install an application, produce a video and then upload it to a hosting service. In this note, we look at an alternative solution that makes screencasting surveillance problems trivial.

Background

Traditionally, two ways exist to share video of a problem:

• Remote Access Utilities like TeamViewer and GoToAssist. These are very popular among support departments but require a user to first call support and initiate a session.
• Video screencasting software that allows production of full videos. For Windows, Camatasia is the most popular and full featured offering. We use it for our training and testing videos. It is a powerful tool but requires time and skills on how to use it. However, camtasia is not good for creating a quick video.

Alternative Tool - Screenr

Screenr, recommended here, was shut down in 2015.

Conclusion

Our tests regularly hit challenges. Being able to quickly record and share them will save us time and help us get answers faster. For your deployments or bench tests, we see a similar opportunity for benefits.