Virily Editor
Screen recording has grown to be more accessible over time, with more user-friendly tools enabling users to capture video footage from their screen much more easily. In fact some operating systems even have screen recorders of some variety baked in, such as the Game DVR on Windows 10, and MacOS Mojave’s new screen capture interface.
Despite that however there are still some mistakes that are frequently made when using screen recording that can affect the video quality and how it turns out. Regardless of the software that you’re using or whether you’re recording your screen for personal or professional reasons – there are a few important mistakes that you should try to avoid:
- Not deciding what to do with the mouse cursor
Before you record any video of your screen, you should spend a minute to decide what you want to do about the mouse cursor. Either the mouse cursor will need to be visible to show viewers the actions that are being performed with it, or it will not.
If it needs to be visible you can look into ways to make it more noticeable, such as changing its size or color. On the other hand if it does not need to be visible you’ll be far better off hiding it so that it doesn’t interfere with the video that you record.
For example if you want to download Twitch videos, you probably don’t want the mouse cursor to appear on top of the video. If that is the case you could use Movavi Screen Recorder to make the cursor invisible.
- Keeping too many apps or background processes running
Screen recording can be processor-intensive, and it may also take up a significant amount of RAM. In fact if you have too many other apps or background processes running, your system may start to perform sluggishly – and all that will be captured in the video that you’re recording.
Rather than risking that it would be far better to close any apps or background processes that aren’t needed before you start recording. If you do that it will make your taskbar look less cluttered as well – which is a nice side-benefit.
- Recording in the wrong aspect ratio
Many screen recorders will let you select the area of your screen that you want to record. While it may sound like a good idea to just record a portion of your screen that you’re interested in, very often that video may not have the right aspect ratio.
To avoid the video being ‘letterboxed’ and black bars appearing on either side you should make sure you record it in the right aspect ratio. Typically the most common aspect ratio is 16:9 – but for specific cases you may want to use 9:16, or 1:1.
- Not using hotkeys
Hotkeys are arguably the best way to control screen recording as they will let you quickly and surreptitiously start or stop recording. Ideally you should try to take advantage of them, so that the start of your recording doesn’t involve your mouse cursor getting into position having just clicked the record button – and the end doesn’t involving moving it to click the stop button.
In short you should identify the hotkeys for the software that you’re using, and take advantage of them.
As you can see none of these mistakes are particularly hard to avoid, and you should try to make it a point to do so. Ultimately the videos that you record using screen recording will definitely benefit if you’re able to avoid all of the mistakes listed above, and will look much better and more polished.
