My work holds a lot of international workshops and the odd conferences. They literally fly 30 people in from a bunch of countries to deliver PowerPoint presentations at local meetings. It's really expensive, and the reach is really small. So I like to record said presentations as screencasts and stick them on Youtube, where thousands more people can access them and learn.

I've got a Rode Streamer X, which is an excellent video capture card and audio interface. But there are practical limits on cable length, especially if I have to carry stuff on a flight. My requirements are simple: Let me sit within cable reach of the presentation laptop and put a microphone on the podium, then leave me alone. Simple, right?

Nope: The normies don't understand and absolutely do not care about cable length or letting you sit in the front row. You might be able to extend their audience reach by 1,000 times what they had in the auditorium, but their eyes will glaze over when you try to explain the benefit. So, here's how how to produce a beautiful screencast recording in an uncooperative environment.

You will need three things:

• A microphone and field recorder, preferably 32 bit, or a wireless microphone and receiver you can use to capture high quality audio.
• Any kind of video camera you can use to get a rough recording of the projector screen and a low quality audio track.
• Access to the PowerPoint slides, afterwards.

During the meeting

Place your microphone and field recorder on the podium, so that you can capture the audio unattended. Set the levels conservatively. A 32 bit recorder will give you a bit of extra safety here as you won't be able to monitor the levels, unless you have a wireless microphone and are able to record audio to your laptop remotely. The Rode Go Wireless II is pretty nice, but clipping it onto people's shirts is a hassle.

Use the video camera to get a rough recording of the projector screen while the presentations are taking place. We need this to extract the slide transition timings, and you also want it to have a basic audio track so you can sync the high quality one in post.

Post production

After the meeting:

1. Load your video camera footage into an editor such as Davinci Resolve. Scrub through the timeline marking the slide transition times (in Resolve, press M). You can export these as an Edit Decision List in the Delivery page of Resolve, or just note them down.
2. Open the PowerPoint presentation. Open the Transitions tab and Timings Group and set the timings to advance each slide. We're ready to go!
3. Set up OBS studio to record a screencast at your preferred resolution and framerate, play the presentation and record it.
4. Import your new video recording and the high-quality audio track into your editor. Use low-quality video/audio track to align and synchronise them.
5. Edit as necessary and export!

This will give you a high-quality video with nice audio, without having to actually sit through the whole damn presentation again.