Recording Sound

While recording Windows desktop activity, BB TestAssistant can also record sound via a microphone attached to your PC. This soundtrack is saved into the movie file, and could be used to record a spoken commentary, for example.

 

How to turn on sound recording:

  1. Right click the Recorder tray icon to show the main menu. Select Options… and then the Sound tab.

  2. Check the box named Enable Sound Recording.

In order to record sound successfully, you need to select a source device, source and format.

 

 

1. Select a sound device

Choose a device from the Sound Device drop-down list. Your PC will typically have a "default" sound device and one for each sound card or other sound playback or recording device attached to your PC. Select the device you want to record sound from.

 

 

2. Select a sound source

There are 3 options to choose from:

  1. Microphone
    Select this to record a commentary from an attached microphone.
    Use the Level slider and volume indicator on the right of the window to ensure that your microphone is connected and picking up sound correctly. If BB TestAssistant does not detect a suitable microphone source attached to your selected sound device, this option will not be enabled.

     

  2. PC Sounds
    Select this option to record what you hear in your PC speakers.
    A typical sound device (e.g. a sound card) will have a number of 'sources' available for recording. Click the Select Sources button to see the sources that play through your PC speakers. You can select which sources to record and adjust their relative volumes with the mini-sliders.

     

  3. Other Sounds
    Use this to select a sound source that usually does not play back through your PC speakers.

 

3. Select a sound format

Selecting different sound formats will vary the quality of the recording and the amount of space it occupies in the movie file.

You need to select:

  1. Sampling rate in Khz.
    The higher, the rate the better the sound quality but the more file space the sound track occupies.

     

  2. Stereo / Mono.
    Stereo will give better sound quality than mono, but also produce larger movie files.

     

  3. MP3 compression
    This option should always be selected unless you are experiencing problems or crashes during recording or export. Deselecting this option may greatly increase the movie file size.
    BB TestAssistant uses a redistribution of the LAME MP3 codec: www.mp3dev.org .