Digging into the ScreenFlow recording settings - Screenflow Tutorial

- [Instructor] In this chapter, we're gonna take a deeper dive into the powerful recording capabilities of ScreenFlow. Now, from the new recording window, you can set what sources you wanna record, including the desktop of any monitor connected to your Mac, the screen of any iOS device or webcam, and the audio capture from a microphone or your computer, and each of these options is enabled by checking the box on the left hand side and then selecting the specific input source that you wanna record from the dropdown if it's available. ScreenFlow will record each of these inputs into separate tracks in the editor, giving you incredible control over your finished product. Now, for microphone sources, you can click the small gear icon and then control the pan of each microphone channel independently. You can also use this slider to make fine tune adjustments to the gain that'll get baked into your recordings. Now, the first time you check the box to record computer audio, a dialogue box will open up letting you know that you may need to install a specific driver to record computer audio. Just click the install button and follow the on screen instructions. I'll click cancel and install this offscreen. Clicking on the small open circle icon takes you over to the advanced recording settings. Here you can choose the frame rate that you wanna capture your screen or webcam with using this first dropdown, and then, what frame rate that you wanna edit your project with using the second dropdown. ScreenFlow will automatically adjust your footage to match if you use different settings here between these two options, but it's a good idea to use 30 frames per second for both capture and editing, unless you're recording gameplay or have a very specific editing or recording situation. And for gameplay recordings, set the desktop frame rate to the highest setting and the editing frame rate to 60 frames per second. And the actual capture frame rate will vary depending on the speed of your graphics card and the load on your CPU while playing the game, but you should see capture rates well above 60 frames per second. 30 frames per second is the most common frame rate for web-based content and screen captured footage, looks great at this frame rate. Now, the other recording and editing options here are all here if you need them. Next, you can choose to record in a loop. If you check this option, once you begin recording, ScreenFlow will begin recording the inputs that you've selected continuously, but it will only save the last bit of the recording that you specify in hours and minutes here. Now, this is extremely helpful if you're trying to capture some action, but you're not exactly sure when that action is going to occur. And this could be if you're recording gameplay and you wanna capture a particular point in the game, but you don't need to capture the entire game, or if you're having an intermittent issue with an application that you're developing or using, you could set this to record in a loop for say, three minutes, and then start recording. And when the bug occurs, you can stop the recording and you'll have roughly three minutes of screen capture to note exactly what was happening just prior to that bug occurring. Now, with the record in a loop option unchecked, you can set a timer and have ScreenFlow automatically record for a set period of time. Now, this is extremely helpful for recording webinars that you wanna watch at a later time. And if the webinar is say, an hour long, then set the timer to run for 70 minutes, then click the set timer button, then press record five minutes before the webinar is supposed to begin, and ScreenFlow will automatically stop recording five minutes after the webinar is scheduled to end, ensuring that you capture a little bit of extra time in case things run over a bit. Now, if you use this feature, then don't forget to come back into here and click the reset timer option to turn this feature off. And this is also a great feature for capturing team meetings, lectures, live events, and conference presentations. Click the open circle on the left to go back to the basic recording settings. At the bottom of the new recording window is a custom region select tool, which we'll look at in the next movie, and the start recording button. Pressing the start recording button will begin a countdown timer so you can settle yourself and prepare to record. Now, if you don't wanna wait for the timer, you can click the timer and the recording will begin immediately. I do like having the countdown timer, though, as it'll give me just an extra reminder to take a deep breath and stop fidgeting in my chair and focus on the recording. You could go up to the ScreenFlow menu, go down to preferences, and on the general tab for countdown timer, you can choose to disable this countdown or change the duration of the countdown. Now, anytime you wanna stop a recording, just press command, shift, two. If you have a project file that's already open, then a recording complete window will appear. From here, you can choose to create a new document or add this recording to an existing document and give the recording a custom name. If you choose this option, you can also check the box to add the clip directly to the timeline and it'll begin wherever your scrubber is currently located. From this window, you could also choose to discard this recording, which is what I'm gonna do.