Difference between revisions of "Mac Recording and Streaming/ScreenFlow"
From SDA Knowledge Base
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(Added info about capture methods.) |
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| − | *Go to Preferences -> Advanced and choose lossless screen recording. | + | *Go to Preferences -> Advanced and choose adaptive or lossless screen recording (more on this below). |
*Choose whether or not to include your webcam in the recording. | *Choose whether or not to include your webcam in the recording. | ||
*Select an audio device or record computer audio. | *Select an audio device or record computer audio. | ||
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Screen recordings are 60 FPS by default. Playback in the canvas isn't perfect, so it might look like frames were dropped in the recording even though they really weren't. Assuming your hardware doesn't have performance issues, the encoded videos will show all the frames recorded correctly. | Screen recordings are 60 FPS by default. Playback in the canvas isn't perfect, so it might look like frames were dropped in the recording even though they really weren't. Assuming your hardware doesn't have performance issues, the encoded videos will show all the frames recorded correctly. | ||
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| + | == Adaptive VS. Lossless == | ||
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| + | The adaptive capture method will optimize recording performance by focusing more on movement (changing pixels) and less on still parts of the screen. For instance, if you record a game window ScreenFlow will focus on that rather than the bits of your desktop. The quality is practically indistinguishable from lossless, so use this unless you have a really powerful computer. | ||
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| + | Lossless is exactly what it sounds like. Everything on your display is recorded in full for every frame. This method is very taxing at high resolutions, so you may want to do recording tests first to ensure your computer can handle it. To minimize the performance hit, scale your monitor's resolution before recording. | ||
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| + | <u>Note</u>: There is a caveat with adaptive. Depending on the visuals and movement in your source, it might mistake certain moments as "still images" and cause dropped frames in an attempt to reduce the file size. This is uncommon, but if it happens use lossless and scale the monitor resolution. You'll still need a reasonably modern computer in order to handle this without dropped frames. | ||
Revision as of 18:46, 27 October 2014
Main Website
telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
Usage
ScreenFlow does not capture specific regions of your screen when recording (you can select regions after recording). It records the entire screen, but is highly CPU efficient due to its focus on actively changing frames. Here is the basic flow:
- Go to Preferences -> Advanced and choose adaptive or lossless screen recording (more on this below).
- Choose whether or not to include your webcam in the recording.
- Select an audio device or record computer audio.
- Begin recording.
- End recording, which brings up the post-production interface.
- Crop to your desired resolution, and if you want you can add text, transitions, annotations, etc.
- Select an encoding preset (or create a custom one).
- Click export and choose a file name.
Screen recordings are 60 FPS by default. Playback in the canvas isn't perfect, so it might look like frames were dropped in the recording even though they really weren't. Assuming your hardware doesn't have performance issues, the encoded videos will show all the frames recorded correctly.
Adaptive VS. Lossless
The adaptive capture method will optimize recording performance by focusing more on movement (changing pixels) and less on still parts of the screen. For instance, if you record a game window ScreenFlow will focus on that rather than the bits of your desktop. The quality is practically indistinguishable from lossless, so use this unless you have a really powerful computer.
Lossless is exactly what it sounds like. Everything on your display is recorded in full for every frame. This method is very taxing at high resolutions, so you may want to do recording tests first to ensure your computer can handle it. To minimize the performance hit, scale your monitor's resolution before recording.
Note: There is a caveat with adaptive. Depending on the visuals and movement in your source, it might mistake certain moments as "still images" and cause dropped frames in an attempt to reduce the file size. This is uncommon, but if it happens use lossless and scale the monitor resolution. You'll still need a reasonably modern computer in order to handle this without dropped frames.
Encoding
There are a number of presets to choose from, but it is recommended that you create custom presets based on the content you record. To do this, go to File -> Export (or press ⌘E) and click Manage. Click the "Copy" button next to a preset (Uncompressed is recommended) and it will appear on the bottom. From here you can edit your encoding settings such as frame rate, bit rate, etc. You can also do this in the main export prompt by selecting a preset and clicking "Customize." The changes made in this manner are temporary and won't be saved to the preset.
Note: ScreenFlow uses x264 but still calls it H.264.
By default the video scale will be your crop settings in the canvas, but you can change it by choosing other scale options from the dropdown or use your own custom resolution.
Lossless Export
ScreenFlow's x264 codec, unfortunately, does tamper with the color space. Exporting videos like this will not preserve accurate colors in your video. For that reason it is highly recommended that you export Uncompressed, but you'll have to create a custom preset of it:
- Change compression to Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2.
- Change FPS from Current to 60. Even if your source video is 60 FPS, leaving it at Current will export a lossless 30 FPS video.
- Change audio to Linear PCM. Sampling rate should be 48 kHz and quality should be at best.
This will produce an uncompressed .mov file. It is highly recommended that you compress it with FFmpeg's x264 codec, as this one will preserve the correct colors as well as allow you the option for 2-pass encoding.
Warning: ScreenFlow takes a very long time to export an uncompressed file like this. It takes much longer than the progress bar would suggest. If your output file is 100 GB, then you'll actually need 200 GB of free space (temporarily). The finished export will still be 100 GB and the extra space is restored. For long videos it may look like ScreenFlow won't finish, but rest assured that it will.
If you force quit ScreenFlow during this process, it won't delete the very large temp file, resulting in storage space being held hostage. You can find these temp files here:
- /private/var/folders/6b/q33l69c55dbcd07m0bjw82f00000gn/T/net.telestream.screenflow4.legacyexporter/TemporaryItems
