Screen Recording
Screen recording captures everything happening on your display — UI walkthroughs, software demos, online meetings, gameplay, or any visual workflow — and saves it as a video file. Modern browsers expose this capability through the Screen Capture API, meaning no software installation is needed.
A good screen recording setup involves three decisions: what to capture (entire screen, application window, or browser tab), what audio to include (system audio, microphone, both, or neither), and what output quality to target based on the final use case.
Frame rate is a key variable. For capturing static UI, 15–24 fps is sufficient and produces smaller files. For fast motion — gameplay, animations, cursor-heavy demos — 30–60 fps is recommended. Higher frame rates increase file size proportionally.
Before recording, close unnecessary applications, disable notifications, and set your display to the target resolution. Recordings cannot be upscaled later without quality loss — what you capture is the ceiling.
Video Editing
Even a raw screen recording rarely ships as-is. Basic editing transforms a rough capture into a polished, watchable video. The core operations are trimming, cropping, and export configuration — and most use cases require nothing beyond these three.
Trimming removes unwanted sections from the beginning and end (and sometimes the middle) of a clip. It's the single highest-impact edit — a tightly trimmed video holds attention far better than one with long pauses or a slow start.
Cropping reframes the image to focus on the relevant region. If you recorded the full screen but the action only happens in a quarter of it, cropping eliminates dead space and makes the subject fill the frame. This also reduces file size since fewer pixels are encoded.
Format & Codec
A container format (MP4, WebM, MOV, AVI…) is the file wrapper — it holds the video stream, audio stream, and metadata together. A codec (H.264, H.265, VP9, AV1…) is the compression algorithm that actually encodes and decodes the pixel data inside that container. The same codec can exist inside different containers.
Choosing the wrong combination can result in files that are too large for their quality, not playable on certain devices, or rejected by upload platforms. Here are the three formats you'll encounter most:
For most screen recordings destined for the web or social media, MP4 with H.264 is the safe default. For content that will only play in modern browsers, WebM with VP9 produces smaller files at comparable quality. For animated documentation, short demo clips, or anywhere video embedding is not available, GIF remains relevant despite its limitations.
H.265 vs H.264: H.265 delivers about 40–50% smaller file sizes for the same perceived quality, but requires hardware decoding support. For delivery to unknown audiences, H.264 remains more practical. For archiving your own footage, H.265 is worth the smaller storage footprint.
Size & Quality
Video file size is determined by four main variables: resolution, frame rate, bitrate, and duration. Understanding how they interact lets you hit the right balance for any use case.
| Setting | What it controls | Typical range |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | Pixel dimensions of the frame. Higher = sharper, larger file. | 720p → 4K |
| Frame Rate (FPS) | Frames captured per second. Higher = smoother motion, larger file. | 15 / 24 / 30 / 60 fps |
| Bitrate | Data per second of video. Directly controls quality vs file size tradeoff. | 1–50 Mbps |
| CRF / Quality Level | Constant Rate Factor: codec-managed quality target. Lower number = higher quality. | H.264: 18–28 |
| Audio Bitrate | Quality of the audio stream. Most recordings need 128–192 kbps for clear narration. | 96–320 kbps |
For screen recordings (mostly static UI, limited motion): 1080p at 24–30 fps with H.264 CRF 23 produces excellent quality at a reasonable file size. UI content compresses very efficiently because large areas of the frame don't change between frames.
For gameplay or motion-heavy content: 1080p at 60 fps with CRF 18–20 is the common standard for quality-first recording. Expect files of 1–3 GB per hour. For upload-first workflows, add a second-pass export targeting a specific bitrate (8–12 Mbps for 1080p60).
Two-pass encoding takes twice as long but produces more consistent quality across complex and simple scenes compared to single-pass CRF encoding. For anything longer than a few minutes, two-pass is worth it.
Social Media Video Settings
Every platform re-encodes uploaded videos through its own compression pipeline. Uploading a well-prepared source file — in the platform's preferred format and resolution — minimizes the quality loss from this double-compression. Uploading a poorly compressed source gives the platform's algorithm less information to work with and produces worse results.
The general rule: upload the highest quality source you can reasonably produce, in the platform's preferred container and aspect ratio. Platforms compress down, not up. The sidebar shows quick specs for each major platform.
For short-form vertical video (Reels, TikTok, Shorts), 1080×1920 at 30 fps MP4 H.264 is the universal safe choice. For landscape YouTube content, 1920×1080 or higher at your content's native frame rate. For LinkedIn, quality matters less than pacing — the platform's compression is aggressive and short, punchy clips outperform long ones regardless of quality.
One frequently overlooked detail: always upload with stereo audio even if your source is mono. Some platforms strip mono audio or apply unexpected normalization. Duplicating a mono track to stereo before export avoids this.