You should download and install the most recent version of VLC, which is updated often. This how-to is based on version 1.1.9, but it is possible some details may change in a future version.
There are two ways to setup your screen capture: using the point-and-click VLC interface, or through a command line. The command line lets you specify more advanced capture settings like desktop crop size and index frames to make a video that is easier to precisely edit. We'll take a closer look at this later.