Remote Desktop Sessions (RDS) in Windows (or Terminal Services in Linux) offer an easy way to control and standardize your Winks; it's now my preferred method for doing just about every Wink I create. The trick is to set the display size for your session to something smaller and tell Wink to record that:
- SVGA: 800x600 (classic aspect ratio)
- XVGA: 1024x768 (widescreen)
What do you gain by using RDS in smaller display sizes for your demos?
- Minimize scrolling during capture: Reducing the display size forces all screen events to occur within that space.
- Demo fits in viewable area: Reducing the display size also helps ensure that your movie fits inside your viewer's available display area (that is, you reduce their scrolling pain as well) -- keep in mind that Flash files appear inside browser pages, and the browser and start bar eat up screen real estate.
- Smaller movies: Reducing the display size and color depth of your RDS helps minimize output file size.
- Standardization: You can save your session settings to a reusable, shared file (.RDS).
- Separate user preferences: You can apply Wink-friendly tweaks to the OS settings for your profile on the remote machine without affecting your workstation (or anyone else who logs into that machine).
- Flexibility: You can capture off a server or someone else’s computer! this greatly simplifies the logistics of accessing the software/data you want to show.
- No resolution switching: If you make the RDS change to the resolution you need, you don't have to stop and resize your own display in order to have enough screen space to edit the capture inside of Wink. Saves time.