Recording
Starting Recording
Once you’ve created a project and session you’re ready to start recording. Click the ‘Start Session’ button under the iSight preview.
The screen will now dim and prompt you to press the SPACEBAR to start. We recommend that it’s at this point that you bring in your tester and brief them on the session. When you press the SPACEBAR, the recording will start and Silverback will become hidden from view.
Your iSight will now be active, with the green indicator light on. If you’ve selected this preference in your General Preferences, you'll also see the Silverback icon in your menu bar.
Controlling Recording
To pause the test at any time you can click the icon in the menu bar and select ‘Pause’. Please note that the green indicator light by your iSight camera will remain lit whilst recording is paused.
You can switch back to Silverback at any point using the keyboard shortcut if you’ve set this up in General Preferences. Once you’ve pressed your shortcut, you'll see the pause and stop indicators.
Recordings can be paused and restarted by pressing ‘⌘ ⌥ ⌃ F1’ on your keyboard, and stopped by pressing ‘⌘ ⌥ ⌃ F2’ . You can also use your Apple remote to pause and restart recording by using the ‘Play/Pause’ button.
Tasks
It’s likely that you'll have a number of tasks you want your test subjects to perform in each session. You can use Silverback to mark the end of one task and the start of another during a test session. You can then export a specific task from a session, or across the whole project. For example, say everyone found your third task a bit tricky; you can export all the incidences of task three for all sessions into one Quicktime file.
Each session starts at Task 1. To set a new task in your session, press ‘⌘ ⌥ ⌃ F11’ on your keyboard or the ‘Fast Forward’ button on your Apple remote at the end of the previous task.
Highlights
During your usability tests you’re bound to come across some comments and actions that you’d like to note. You can use Silverback’s highlight functionality to do this.
To set a highlight, press ‘⌘ ⌥ ⌃ F12’ on your keyboard or the ‘+’ button on your Apple remote. This will mark a section in your session of 15 seconds before to 30 seconds after the time of your click. You can then export all the highlights in a session, or all the highlights in a project once you’ve finished. This is especially helpful if you want to produce a file for your clients to show specific concerns that come out of your tests.
The Silverback icon in your menu bar will flash yellow when you mark either a new task or a highlight.