Discover the best screen recorder for your needs with this guide. Explore features, tools, and top picks
It does not matter if you are a creative professional like a video editor, photo editor, cinematographer, or just a normal person, screen recording nowadays is of everybody’s use.
While it can add a more attractive appeal and clear understanding, screen recordings are used for various purposes. Be it for a documentary or to share personal chats with someone. So, I have brought out this massive article as a guidebook for you that will help you to find the right screen recorder for your audience.
Keep reading the article till the end to find out which one is for you.
Understanding Your Audience
Different platforms have different viewers, and that is what you always have to keep in mind. Whether you are posting on social media platforms, streaming platforms, or even educational platforms, it all comes down to how much time you have to convey your message to your viewers.
When it comes to walkthroughs, long long-formatted YouTube videos, you can take things a bit easy and not rush with your explanations. You can even touch upon any side topics that can further add to your content, to lead the viewers on a side quest sorta speak.
You should also note what kind of devices your audience will be using. Are they primarily desktop users, or do they have laptops, tablets, or mobile devices? This is quite a key information everyone must know. Each platform’s users are looking for different features and information.
Key Features to Look Out For
These are some basic facts about video marketing. With these many complications and a high-competitive market, having a strong resource like a screen recorder is necessary. So, when choosing a screen recording software, you’ll need to look out for a couple of key features and properties:
Video Quality
Resolution and frame rate play a key role in content creation. Nowadays, the golden standard has become 1080p. When speaking of making clips and videos for social media, you can get away with 720p as well, as most are viewed from mobile phones and tablets, rendering the 1080p resolution basically useless.
But if you have the means for it, stick with 1080p and even go as high as 4K to future-proof yourself a bit. Regarding frame rate, 60 fps is a standard. The resolution and frame rates you can achieve also depend on the video processing hardware you are using and running. Always keep that in mind as well.
Audio Recording
Good video quality and audio quality go hand in hand. You can’t compromise on any aspect. Just imagine watching a video and the audio starts to become screechy and unbearable to listen to. You would just close that video and not open it again ever.
Likewise, what you’ll need to look into here is whether the screen recording software offers any of the following features: system sound capturing, microphone input, or both. Noise cancellation will also greatly enhance the audio clarity.
Editing Tools
It will save you a lot of time and effort, not to mention money as well if the screen recorder has built-in editing tools. Nothing special is needed here, just the good old trimming, cutting, and clip-merging features.
For basic tasks, they will do the trick ever so greatly. Good to-haves would be: adding annotations, transitions, effects, etc. With these advanced features, you can neatly and freely edit your videos on the go.
User Interface
Every screen recording software developer out there tries to make their product user-friendly. As long as it is clear what button does what or serves what kind of function, it is good to go. A friendly tip would be if you could find the shortcuts or bind the keys to different input devices. Making content, starting, pausing, or stopping a screen recording with the stroke of a key will save you so much time and hassle.
Output Formats
The big three in question here are MP4, AVI, and MOV. Nowadays, desktop and laptop machines can all recognize and work with these file formats without any issues. If, by any chance, you have a freshly installed operating system and are missing a couple of codecs, you can always download them from the internet. Just make sure you do so from a reputable and trusted website.
Cloud Storage and Sharing Options
This option would only be crucial if you are working with multiple people or within a team. Cloud storage is the most effective way to go. You can generate a link at any time and share it with the person you want to share the file or folder with. It is that simple. Some screen recording software can have these integrable options.
Popular Screen Recording Options
Now that you know what key features to look into a screen recorder, here are some popular suggestions in which you might have an interest:
Movavi Screen Recorder
A powerful screen recorder with a user-friendly design and is well known for its versatility. Movavi is the best screen recorder for creating tutorials, recording webinars, and capturing gameplay. The unique feature of being able to record simultaneous audio both from the system and an external microphone sets it apart from other screen recorders.
This app also has built-in editing tools that enable users to work on their recordings post-capture. With these tools, you can trim clips, add annotations and even insert music onto the already existing audio streams. Its ability to be able to directly upload onto platforms like YouTube also gives it an advantage over other similar software.
OBS Studio
No wonder we cannot help but suggest OBS Studio as well. Many streamers use it for both casual and professional content creation as well. It is open-source, has multi-platform support, and can be further customized to work with various plugins and add-ons.
Let me tell the younger audience, both the audio and video streams have various settings, which sometimes may prove to be a bit confusing for a beginner. Therefore, it is always advisable to look into a couple of OBS tutorials online before you really get into streaming and screen recording with it.
Camtasia
A powerful editing and screen recording tool that is widely used and loved by both educators and marketers. It is not on the cheap side when you consider its price tag for a yearly description.
The premium package it offers includes access to AI-powered tools as well, which can further enhance your content and recorded material. Another futuristic feature is the captioning option, which will generate subtitles for your videos. That is a welcomed feature for tutors and creators who make educational videos online.
Other Worthy Mentions:
- Screen-O-Matic – A screen recording tool for budget-conscious users. Has basic editing tools and easy sharing options with cloud storage capabilities.
- Bandicam – Targeted towards gamers, featuring high-quality recording. It is a lightweight software with real-time drawing features.
- Snagit – Meant to be used as a quick screen-capturing option. Has a simple interface, integrated editing tools, and annotation features.
Conclusion
You can either put a lot of thought into the process of selecting the best screen recorder for your audience or speed-run this handy article and pick the first option you were represented with. Either way, you can’t make any bad decisions, as all the mentioned screen recorders have been around for a long time and know what their users are looking for.
Think about what you want to achieve with your screen recordings, look into the features each screen recorder offers, and make your pick. Remember to always add value to your content, something that your audience is looking for, and you will never go wrong.
