Mac video capture / recording at a resolution larger than, and aspect ratio different to, native display Goal: I'd like to upscale a recording from a 1680 x 1050 (16:10 aspect ratio), 2010 Macbook Pro screen to 1920 x 1080 (16:9) for 'best-try' upload to a variety of target platforms (FB, YT, Vimeo etc).

Note: thanks to the crap graphics chip ('Black Screen of Death' NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M) on this laptop model, I cannot attach an external monitor.

Clearly, the largest 16:9 aspect ratio video I can natively capture on this screen is 1680 x 945, making the scaling to be applied = 1920 / 1680, or approximately 1.14 times the original.

Not bad, but taking a step back for a moment, am I at the time of recording truly stuck with 1680 x 945 (16:9) max, or are there other options in the pursuit of a 1920 x 1080 end result?


Would (for example) ffmpeg allow original recording at a resolution
larger than the native screen size? (conceivable, as all user interaction is in the middle of the screen, the remainder simply providing visual context).
Can I otherwise trick my laptop into thinking it has a 1920 x 1080 screen attached?
is there some other possibility I should be aware of?


If you see a practical approach to a native 1920 x 1080 recording, some detail (for example ffmpeg command) would be helpful.

Operating System - OS X Yosemite - Version 10.10.5 (14F1021)

Hardware:

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2010)
Processor 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 288 MB
NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
Apparently, it may be possible to get the OS to output a higher resolution than the native one. It requires some config files tweaking. I can't vouch for this method.

If you just need to show, say, the middle third of the screen, then another possibility is to zoom in to provide a larger source for ffmpeg to upscale. Depending on the size of the area of interest, this might not make much difference. 

Of course, I dare say, 1680 --> 1920 should be an easy upscale post-recording with hardly much difference in perceptual quality unless your items of interest are very small.