As you may have noticed there are numerous screen recording software available nowadays. In fact some operating systems have built-in screen recorders, such as the screen capture tool on macOS Mojave and the game bar in Windows 10.
To find the right screen recording software for your needs however, you first need to be able to identify what you’re looking for and what factors are important to you:
- Recording settings
The recording settings that are available will determine the type of videos that you’re able to record. Typically screen recorders will let you choose to record the entire screen, a window or a specific region. On top of that they may let you select the audio sources that you want to record, set the volume levels, and configure the frame rate.
- Ease of use
It can help a lot to have a screen recorder that is easy to use and has an intuitive interface. Not only will it make it easier for you to learn how to set up and start recording videos, but you’ll find that you can set them up faster as well.
- Automated recording
While not essential, having the option to automate the recording can help especially if you want to record longer videos but don’t want to have to be present to start or stop it. Typically the automation features in screen recorders can either take the form of a timer (that needs to be manually started) or scheduled recordings.
- Keyboard and mouse input capture
Some screen recorders provide options that will let you improve your ability to capture keyboard and mouse input within the video itself. As you can imagine this can be very useful when creating tutorials. Without it you’d need third party apps to display keystrokes on screen or adjust the cursor size and colour.
- Webcam recording
Many screen recorders have webcam recording available that you can use separately or in tandem with the screen recording. Some will let you set up an overlay, so that the webcam video appears in a small frame on top of the screen recording video.
- Editing tools
Depending on your needs, it should be easy enough to find a PC or Mac screen recorder that has editing tools, or even an entire built-in editor such as in Movavi Screen Recorder Studio for Mac. Some editing tools such as trim, crop, and join can definitely be useful.
- Supported export formats
The range of formats that your screen recorder is able to encode videos in when you export them can be important. A larger range is generally better, though you should try to specifically look for formats that you require. If not at very least you should try to make sure that your screen recorder supports some of the more commonly-used video formats.
Based on the factors listed above you should be able to figure out which features and tools are important to you. Once you do you should find it easier to narrow down your options and find the right screen recorder.
