Just few weeks ago, Oracle the current parent company of VirtualBox released version 4.3 product mainline. This releases introduces a new feature called Video Capture. This feature lets you capture in video frames, every moment of the guest machine from start to the end.
It is the perfect tool for screencasters. When you enable it, every moment of the guest machine is captured and recorded as video. It get saved in .webm video format which can easily be uploaded to YouTube and other online video services.
So, instead of installing third-party screencasting tools, you can just enable Video Capture and begin recording activities within the guest machine. This brief tutorial is going to show you how to access and use it. I tested it in both Windows 8 and Ubuntu 13.10 guest machines, however, only the Windows machine performed well with it.
The Ubuntu machine recorded dark screens. Maybe there’s something was missing but I couldn’t get Ubuntu 13.10 guest machine to record correctly.
To use this feature, you must be running VirtualBox 4.3. Anything lower won’t work. When ready, open VirtualBox and select a guest machine and click Settings.
Next, select Display –> Video Capture to set how the screen is capture, and where to store the captured videos. One thing to remember is the higher the Frame Rate, the better the video quality will be. You may also adjust the quality score by dragging the slider to high.
When you’re done, click OK.
When you turn on the guest machine, it will automatically start recording. To stop it, right-click the spinning tape and select Video Capture. You can also set the video preferences while the guest machine is running.
To start it again, right-click the video camera and select ‘Video Capture. When you’re done, go to where to specified to store the videos to see them.
Enjoy!