There has been an interesting increase in the amount of available streaming and kibitzing channels and videos you can find on the internet. I’m glad that more bridge players are deciding to capture their screens and share their games with viewers all over the world – and I’m even more glad that there are viewers out there who are willing to watch them.

Are you a BBO’er who would like to create a video from your next bridge game? It’s useful for learning, useful for creating play-through videos for others, useful for making tutorials and lessons – and just generally useful for anyone who wants to make a video of a bridge game, whether for upload or their own library of bridge games.

It’s not nearly as hard as you might imagine.

Here’s a quick screen capture guide for BBO to run you through recording what’s on your PC or mobile screen if you’ve never done it before – with some extra help at the end of the piece if you need assistance.

Handviewer: BBO Internal Recording

While not traditional screen capture, Bridge Base  Online has its own hand creator program called Handviewer, which can be used to create hands and play diagrams with buttons. These are useful because the user gets to click “previous” or “next” to browse through the moves in the game. These are also brilliant because you can embed these in any site, just like a YouTube video.

A full guide for how to create interactive bridge movies with Handviewer can be found at the BBO Help Section – Making a Bridge Movie.

Next, let’s get to basic screen capture and how to do it.

Screen Capture Software for PC & Mobile

The first thing you’re going to need if you want to screen capture (other than a platform to make the video live, whether YouTube or Twitch) is actual screen capture software.

These days, there are great open source versions available that are easy to work with. As a general recommendation for what many users out there use (although you might know of or eventually find your own preference), Open Broadcaster Software (or OBS) is one of the common open source versions – and CamStudio also happens to be another good one.

Audio editing can also be part of making a bridge video, and Audacity is one of the best open source programs preferred by thousands of people.

Usually, you’ll also need some variety of video converter. Online ones are easy and usually fast: FreeOnlineConverter.net is one I’ve used on a few small videos with success.

The last bit of software you’ll need is editing software. There’s the basic variety of Movie Maker depending on your version of Windows, but there are also a handful of great open source editing programs both online and off out there to try. At most, you’re adding a graphic or two and cutting, pasting and deleting scenes – there’s no need to worry about advanced video editing or a degree in design.

Also make sure that you’re on an updated browser for screen capture: Older browsers have a habit of getting stuck at the worst times.

Struggling with Settings?

If you’re not getting the right visual or audio input, it has something to do with your drivers (rarely) or your settings (far more likely). Take a look at your computer’s Sound Settings before messing around with anything else to fix it.

This you can find by clicking on the little sound icon at the bottom of your taskbar, navigating to advanced settings. Usually, your microphone should be listed here – and this is where you can set the volume, increase the dB boost or set another microphone for capturing. Webcam settings look like much of the same, and the setting you’re looking for is the one to set the right capture device: Where it would normally be set to a webcam, set it to your screen capture software.

Make sure to also check all the settings within your chosen capturing program to make sure that everything looks right if you’re still having any issues.

As a last note on issues, slow recording and lag is a common one: Close any background programs that might be doing the Pacman dance through your computer’s resources and try again.

Any issues beyond these basics are things that you might want to search online, look up on YouTube or just ask the developers/administrators of the software you’re working with.

Adding Bells and Whistles

Let’s add some bells and whistles to the mix.

One of the first things that you might need and not have available on your computer is a viable font for playing cards. There are many – just one of them is the Card Characters font from UrbanFonts.

Next, the actual bells and whistles: Sound effects and accompanying music aren’t always necessary for every video you want to make, but it can be a nice touch. For uploading, make use of original work and get permission from the artist, or draw from the vast library of Creative Commons sound effects and music that’s free-to-use.

CC is the open source of media: For pictures, sound effects and more, it’s usually the first place to go. (There are also paid options, like Flickr for sound effects, where you can pay a small fee to use work listed on the database.)

Here are three links that lead to databases for sound:

• https://creativecommons.org/tag/freesound/
• https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Sound_effects
• https://freesound.org

I’d love to see some videos (and more challenges) recorded using BBO: Share your link in the comments if you happen to have one!