Rutba Office 2.5: Recorder, an eleventh app that records your screen and streams it live

Rutba Office 2.5 came out on 20 October with an eleventh app. Video has recorded the screen since 1.44, but a recording you mean to show people, a lesson, a demonstration or a weekly update, is easier made in a window built for it, and some of them are better watched live. Rutba Recorder is that window.

Recorder

• Scenes you change as you go. The screen with your camera in a corner, the screen alone, the camera alone, the two side by side, or a Be right back card. Change the scene at any time, while it records too.
• Sources and overlays. A screen or a window; the camera, round, rounded or square, in the corner you choose and mirrored or not; the microphone and the computer’s own sound, each with its level; and a title with a line under it and your logo on the picture.
• One finished file. Recorder writes one video at 720p or 1080p and 24, 30 or 60 frames a second as it goes, so a recording cut short by a crash still plays. Pause holds it, a key stops it from anywhere, and when it stops you can play it, edit it in Video or open its folder.

Go Live

Go Live streams the same picture to several places at once: YouTube, Facebook and Twitch with their servers filled in, or any RTMP server. You paste each platform’s stream key once. It is kept encrypted by Windows on your computer, sent only to the server it belongs to, and shown afterwards by its last four characters alone.

The picture is encoded on the graphics chip where there is one, at the steady bitrate and key-frame spacing the platforms ask for. A destination that drops is tried again by itself, each one shows its state under the picture, and a copy is recorded on your computer while you stream, unless you turn that off. Nothing connects until you press Go Live, and the dialog says how much upload the streams will need.

Also in 2.5

• Video plays first. A video or sound file opened in Video now plays in a player, with speed, repeat, captions from a subtitle file beside it, picture in picture and full screen, and the usual keys. Edit Video puts it on the timeline.
• Record Voice records your voice alone and puts it on a sound track at the playhead.
• Mail opens a draft in the editor to be finished, with its recipients, formatting and attachments, and a double-click opens a message in a window of its own.

The releases since 2.1 did quieter work. 2.1.1 made a turned picture or shape take its handles with it. 2.2 moved the suite onto a newer runtime for its security fixes. 2.3 made Video’s preview editable, so anything on it can be picked, moved, resized and turned there, and made Mail open links in your browser and warn before one that looks like a trap.