Capturing video and screens on Mac

[Sirona]

Perhaps some of you could give me some feedback on your experience with screen recorders. I've not recorded any of my live games but would like to for personal reflection and to improve my strategy. I know Fraps is a popular software for capturing video but it's only available for Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. A friend has recommended Movavi and it seems that it has some extra features too such as video editing and recording live streams.

Does anyone have experience with Movavi or any other video and screen recorders for Mac? I'm inexperienced with such software and would appreciate some preliminary advice before downloading.

[fiveworlds]

Apparently mac has quick time player preinstalled which has screen record functionality. Otherwise there is ffmpeg.

[swansont]

For screen shots, it's cmd-shift-3 (But I think you have to be in the finder for that to work)

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201361

[studiot]

The Mac has always also had for video editing a full blown movie maker that works as part of the operating system.

[Sirona]

Thank you for the suggestions. I've quickly looked up ffmpeg because I've not heard of it previously and it looks promising (free is a bonus too).

The Mac has always also had for video editing a full blown movie maker that works as part of the operating system.

Yeah, I could use iMovie for editing but I'd need to use another program to record the game first. I've heard Screenflow is decent, but it's expensive ($99).

Thank you though for the tip, I wouldn't have thought to use iMovie to edit.

[Sensei]

I have a lot of experience with screen recording software, as I recorded over 200 such videos (with repetitions perhaps 400-500 at least), but on Windows.

 

I am currently using VirtualDub

http://www.virtualdub.org

with Lagarith Lossless Video Codec

http://lags.leetcode.net/codec.html

It has pretty good rate of compression.

 

During recording the first time, it's recommended to record to lossless file format, as mentioned Lagarith,

because if you will encode in lossy file format, and start editing it, cutting start, end, cutting parts in middle etc. etc.

You will have double time encode it in lossy file format, introducing double amount of errors in video.

 

Lossy file format, with small size, large compression, require a lot of CPU power to process data.

If CPU is extensively used by application we're trying to record, the less is for recording software.

And introduction of errors, skipped frames, jumps, possible in extreme situation.

 

Using completely uncompressed lossless file format is also not good idea, as Full HD 1920x1080 32 bit with 30 FPS has to write to disk ~250 MB data per second.

Causing problems by write speed of hard disk.

 

Camtasia is another product for capturing

https://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html

TechSmith (producent of Camtasia) also recommend to encode original data in lossless file format, and even created and provided their own proprietary lossless codec

Described with details on.. Movavi page:

http://www.movavi.com/codec/TSCC.html

then after editing, save in target file format.

 

IIRC, Vimeo accepted video encoded with Lagarith codec, but YouTube didn't, the last time I checked.

They have their own lossy proprietary file formats used to store data on their servers.

So uploading twice compressed-decompressed video already, would end up being triple time decoded-encoded, creating even more errors..

Edited March 28, 2016 by Sensei

[thins1977]

Yeah, fraps is the best, and as i know it works on Mac. My friend launched it without problems. IT is easy in using.

[Sirona]

Yeah, fraps is the best, and as i know it works on Mac. My friend launched it without problems. IT is easy in using.

Thanks, I am thinking of buying a PC for gaming though because I'm too limited with what I can play on a Mac. Has Fraps always worked on Mac? I thought it wasn't compatible.