Screenflow 7 2 – Create Screen Recordings Without

Many online courses are built on a foundation of slideshow videos with voiceovers because they're quick to create, easy to follow, and when done correctly, quite beautiful.

ScreenFlow has a powerful set of screen recording features, including custom size screen recording and the ability to record multiple monitors at once. If you also want to record your iPhone or iPad screen, you can with ScreenFlow, simply connect the device to your computer and the software will capture it. As mentioned, this post is focused on creating slide content, but you can use ScreenFlow to create quick low-budget talking head videos. Simply follow the same steps below, but instead of recording what's on your screen, record with the computer lens, by clicking 'Record Video Form' and selecting your camera. Editing your video content. Capture the highest quality screen recordings. Edit your video using the easy-to-use editing interface. Create high quality software or iPhone demos, professional video tutorials, dynamic presentations, corporate training and more! ScreenFlow ($129) Stock Media Library ($60/yr $46/1st yr). Recording screen allows you to save online classes, tutorials, live streaming videos, video chats and many other activities to local disk for watching at a later time. When it comes to recording screen, ScreenFlow is one of the most popular applications used by many Mac OS users. However, this program is only available for Mac.

We're a big proponent of slide videos here at Teachable, so we wanted to share with you exactly how to create them.

Deluxe: $1.65/year billed annually; advanced recorder and video editing, easy video editor, record computer audio, import narration and music, scripted recordings, draw and zoom, screenshot tool, create captions with speech-to-text, green screen filter.

In this post, I'll cover basic slide design and give you free templates, show you how I record video, and give step-by-step editing instructions.

Key Concepts

Before beginning, you want to know that there are three common types of video content you can create for your course.

The Talking Head:

Talking head videos are recordings of you sitting and talking to your camera. These are great for conveying emotion and best used in introduction videos or videos meant to excite and engage your audience.

Screencasts + Voice:

Screencasts are great for student learning and they're quick to create.

Screencasts make your video easy to follow and are ideal if you're explaining something complicated or moving at a fast pace.

Computer Screen + Voice: Best for technology tutorials and showing step-by-step instructions for how to do something

ScreenFlows + Video:

Best used if you don't want to edit together talking head videos with screencasts + voice. Students engage well with this content.

Our Advice

HIGH QUALITY: Only using screencasts can get boring, so edit together talking head videos with screencasts + voice, or change up video types between lectures.

OR

ROUGH & DIRTY: Use Screenflows + Video. It 100% works, but don't try to charge over $200 for a course filmed this way.

In this post, I'm going to focus on creating videos with slides. If you want to create talking head videos, you'll want to read up on DIY Home Video Studio Setups & DIY Video Content since a video of just your face put an emphasis on lighting, studio setup, and sound recording.

Creating Slides

As you create slides for your online course, remember the goal: to convey valuable information and help your students reach their transformation as quickly as possible.

Before creating your slides, you need to make a decision: Do you want to create slides with a voiceover? Or do you want slides with a video of you presenting in the bottom right hand corner?

You can incorporate both into your course, but be mindful to leave space on your slides for video.

Our designer places an orange box on her slides where the videos appear to remind us not to place any content in this area.

If you're advanced with videos & editing, you can shoot talking head videos and edit in clips of the slides - which is what we've done with many of our own Teachable courses.

Tips from Teachable's Designer

In this next section, I'm sharing tips to design your own slides, but if you want a shortcut, download our free PowerPoint and Keynote templates and check out our slideshare on creating great presentations.

Layout tips

Before you start designing anything, make sure your slides are in the video format you will be shooting in. For example, we shoot in a 16:9 aspect ratio, so in Keynote we design the slides in widescreen format.

Using slides that are in the same format as your video ensures that no information is cut off and makes editing way easier.

Keep slide text brief

Don't put paragraphs of information on your slides—it's too much to take in and your audience may become distracted trying to read what's on the slides and will stop listening to you. Instead, use bullets or VERY short sentences. Use multiple slides for a point, if needed.

Color tips

If you already have a brand, use your branded color palette.

If you don't have a brand or color palette already, that's ok! Picking colors for your slides is an easy place to start. Choose 2-3 colors to use throughout your slides.

Picking one dark color and one light color is a good place to start. Then choose an accent color for shapes or other design elements, like calling out important points.

As you can see below, the colors in the right hand column look great together. The light blue pops on the charcoal grey background and so does the dark green text on the pale green background.

They're also easy to read, which is definitely another factor when you're choosing your colors.

Keep in mind ease of legibility & how the colors look together when picking yours.

To help you choose colors that work well together, here are three great sites to use:

Every color has certain characteristics associated with it. Pink, for example is often associated as a feminine and romantic color, green is associated with wealth and balance, while blue is cool and trustworthy. Pick something that conveys the right emotions.

For text, use one color for the header text or when you want to emphasize an important word. And use another color for the body text.

Typography tips

Choose a serif or sans serif font. They are the easiest to read.

A serif font has the tails on the edges of the letters, while the sans serif does not. I prefer sans serif fonts because they seem more friendly and casual.

Avoid using decorative or script fonts for your slides because they're harder to read, especially when small. They are great to call out an important word or phrase (especially if it's the only word on the slide). Yes, these fonts add pizzazz to your slides, but use them in moderation.

Here is a great list of the most commonly used fonts. If you're unsure of what to use, pick some- thing from this list.

Now, although this list is great to get started with, you can have a bit more fun with fonts. Start by exploring fontsquirrel.com. It's filled with commercially free fonts that can really give your content something extra.

One last thing to remember: make sure the fonts you choose are large enough to read! Don't go for a size 20 font. Start at least with 60 points for the body text and 112 for the headlines.

Image tips

You don't have to be a pro photographer to use beautiful images within your online course. There are plenty of free stock image websites where you can source visuals from.

All of these sites are commercially free, which means that you can use these images for anything without attribution.

Now that you have found your images, it's time to talk about using text with them.

Tip #1: If the image is a darker image, use white or off-white as your text color. I've found that white stands out the best on images versus some other lighter color. Test out other light colors if white doesn't look great. Just make sure you can read it.

Tip #2: If the image is light, use dark colored text.

Tip #3: If the photo has a lot of colors or a lot of different stuff going on, add a solid colored shape over it. It can be anything—circle, square, rectangle, maybeeven a star, and then add the text over the shape.

Tip #4: Another way to make text readable on busy photos is to add a solid color rectangle over the image and reduce the opacity. Make a solid colored rectangle the size of the slide, place it over the photo and then reduce the opacity until you reach your desired image to color ratio.

Bonus: this is another way to bring your brand colors into your slides. Yay!

Tip #5: You can also reverse that process. Instead of putting a color on top of the image, just reduce the opacity of the image itself so you can see it faintly in the background.

Screenflow Tutorial: Recording Content

Once your slides are designed and you're ready to record course content, it's time to play with technology.

We recommend you use ScreenFlow for Mac or Camtasia for PC. ScreenFlow is what we use in all of our courses and that's what I'm going to demo.

How to use ScreenFlow to record video content

Screencast + voice over content

1. Get setup. You can read our DIY Studio Guide, but remember to:

• Have your computer charged and open
• If you're using a microphone have it on and set the right distance from your mouth
• Make sure there's not background noise or white noise like the AC audible
• Check for echo, if you're room has an echo grab some pillows, sweaters, blankets to absorb the noise
• Remember, it doesn't have to be fancy. Here was my setup:

2. Open your deck to the very beginning of the presentation (or don't if you're not going through slides)

3. Click on the screen flow icon and click though File > New

4. Adjust the recording size here

5. Check your recording options here

6. Hit the red button (it counts down from 5, but you can adjust this in 'Preferences'

7. As the time is counting down, hit 'start' on your presentation

8. Start speaking just after the recording starts and flip through your slides as you speak over them

9. Quickly end the presentation using the apple+shift+2 command when you're done.

10. If you plan to edit off the ending, make a loud noise and then hit the command.

Here is a video tutorial:

For a screencast + video

The only difference is that your computer will be recording video not just voice. You'll want to make sure

1. Do NOT tilt the laptop screen, keep it vertical
2. Make sure your outfit is a solid color and doesn't match your background
3. Appearance, keep it in mind. I prefer long sleeves, no low cut necklines and I wear my eye makeup a bit darker than normal.

While you're recording, make sure to look at the camera. You can insert presenter notes into you slides if you've written a script or download a teleprompter app on a tablet and use this to assist you.

Or, you can simply rehearse your script before recording.

It's a best practice to keep your course lectures short. This has the added benefit of making them easy to remember in chunks. If you're comfortable, memorize what what you want to say for one lecture and record it in one take.

You can then review the script and content for a second lecture and record it when you're comfortable.

Talking Head Videos:

As mentioned, this post is focused on creating slide content, but you can use ScreenFlow to create quick low-budget talking head videos.

Simply follow the same steps below, but instead of recording what's on your screen, record with the computer lens, by clicking 'Record Video Form' and selecting your camera.

Editing your video content

Whatever type of content you've created, ScreenFlow is an amazingly simple tool for editing videos.

In the video below, I give a tutorial for clipping your videos and editing out small mistakes.

But keep this in mind: Spending time on 'perfection' means it takes longer to launch your course and you're probably not putting your time where you should. Cut out any big mistakes, but don't worry about how many times you said 'um,' or stuttered. Additional time can be spent giving bonus worksheets or group coaching – which is extremely valuable. Students also like people who are relaxed and relatable, not script-reading machines.

Where editing comes in hand is for large chunks that you redo in the same take. For instance, sometimes I'll start a lecture, mess up the beginning, stop, restart and the second attempt is perfect. This is fine.

With ScreenFlow, cutting off the beginning and endings of videos is SUPER simple and fast.

Edit out beginning and end noise

1. Use the scrubber to find the area where you start speaking and look for where the spike indicates audio.

You can magnify the editor to assist.

2. Drag the scrubber to right before the spike, select both the sound and visual, and hit the ‘T' button on your keyboard.'

3. Pull the clips apart, hit play to test what you just did. If you want to redo it, apply +Z to undo and retry

4. Delete the section you don't want by highlighting the clipped bars and hitting delete and then dragging the bars to the start of the video

Editing out a LARGE mistake in the middle of the video

Let's assume I hate section 3.5 seconds to 6 seconds because I swore and it has to go.

1. Move your cursor to the start of what you want to cut. Highlight the sound and visual bars.

2. Hit T where the undesired section starts

3. Move the cursor to where you want the clip to end, highlight both bars, hit T

4. Delete the middle section

5. Merge the bars by dragging them next to each other

Add transitions to the beginning of your video

1. Hit Edit from the top tool bar and select 'Add Starting Transition'

1. Drag the cursor to the end of the clips and go to edit, select 'Add Ending Transition'

This is super simple stuff and looks professional. No need to pay for an editor when you can do this on your own in a matter of minutes and edit it to exactly what you want.

Exporting Your Videos To Your Teachable Course

When you're happy with your clip, it's time to export your videos.

This is as simple as going to file, export and selecting your settings.

ALERT: Make sure you select 'Dimensions' > Scale by 100 (NOT 50).

This is extremely important because it affects the quality and resolution of your course videos. If this is small, it doesn't matter how many precautions you took while filming, you course is going to look gritty, low-budget and bad.

However, what you'll notice is that the video will be huge! Check out this 5 minute video that's over 57 MB!

For that, you'll want to use Handbrake. It's completely free and can be downloaded here.

1. Drag your video file from your finder to the icon at the bottom of your screen

2. Go to picture settings and set anamorphic to strict and select a custom cropping and adjust all numbers to 0.

3. Select browse and set where you'd like the video to be saved and give it a new name if you want

4. Log into your course > curriculum > create a lecture & name it & click on the teal box to 'Choose Files'

5. Select your file and hit upload

That's it! You can create a new lecture at the top of the screen or simply use the right arrow key to move to the next lecture from within one to upload multiple videos.

Eventually the inside of your course will start to look like this:

And a preview can be seen from your sales page / landing page:

Now that we've covered basic slide design, video recording, and step-by-step editing instructions, you should be feeling more confident in creating your slides for your online course.

What do you think? Was this helpful? What have you done? Let me know in the comment section below.

In today's world, sharing is everything. Whether we share our life milestones with friends and family, create training videos to share with colleagues, or record a walkthrough of this year's hottest game, it's important that we successfully and easily capture these moments. This is what screen recorders are designed to do.

With the right screen recorder, you are able to easily capture footage of video conversations with family and friends, record streaming videos, record tutorials and informative videos for work, and record live gameplay to share with gamers and fans.

As convenient as this may sound, lagging can make screen recording a pain in the butt! Imagine trying to record an important tutorial or a high energy video game and all of sudden the audio begins to fall behind the video, or the video skips and jumps or pauses unnecessarily. The frustration is real!

Contents

Why do screen recorders lag?

Lagging typically occurs when your computer's RAM storage is being excessively consumed. This often happens when you have multiple programs and applications with high RAM usage running simultaneously. Most screen recorders fall into this category.

It's no small feat to record your computer screen while you navigate through web pages and other programs. So it's no surprise that your RAM storage is being devoured. It's even worse when you're recording with high video resolution and a high number of FPS creating a large video file size. Screen recording apps that provide high-quality footage can really slow things down. Or at least they used to.

Recently, a few paid and free no lag screen recorders have made their way onto the screen recording scene to offer users the best lag-free screen recorder solution. While these screen recorders compete to be the best of the best, we've decided to create a comprehensive no lag screen recorder comparison chart to see who truly is the best.

So take a minute and browse through our list of the top 7 reliable, easy, and most importantly, not laggy, screen recorders.

No Lag Screen Recorders

Screenflow App

1. ScreenRec

If you want a free screen recorder with no lag or watermark, ScreenRec is what you're looking for. ScreenRec is an HD screen recorder that features webcam recording, and simultaneous mic and computer audio recording without lagging.

It creates small file sizes all saved in MP4 format where it can be saved locally or in the included free private cloud storage. It even gives you a private shareable link so you can share and post your videos anywhere and with anyone.

You would think that a screen recorder this powerful would undoubtedly eat up RAM storage and cause severe lagging, but ScreenRec is surprisingly lightweight and takes up little storage. This is what makes ScreenRec the best lag-free game recording software as it can handle high def recording of gameplay, webcam, and audio; everything a gamer needs to create high-quality content.

Available for:

Windows, Linux, Mac (Coming soon)

Price:

FREE

2. AceThinker Screen Grabber Pro

AceThinker is a paid screen recorder that gives you the ability to record your computer screen, webcam, and audio while making live annotations with the editing tools. Perfectly suitable for a tutorial creator, AceThinker also allows you to capture mouse clicks. The non-zero price tag of course means that Acethinker is on the list of screen recorders without watermark.

Unfortunately, selecting your capture region isn't easy as you can only choose to record in full screen or choose a custom region in which you must enter the area as a numerical value (i.e, 1920×1080, 1280×720, or 854×480). You also cannot share easily as your only options are to upload directly to their predetermined sharing site or download to your computer. Nonetheless, you can save your files in just about any format and there is zero lagging when you start recording or during playback.

Available for:

Windows and Mac

Price:

Starting at $29.95

3. BB Flashback Express

Flashback Express is a simple PC game recorder with no lag for free. Only available for Windows, this recorder keeps things extremely simple. With a few hotkeys, you can easily start capturing videos in HD, take screenshots, record webcam, and system/mic audio, and even live stream.

With basic effects like gif creation, slow-mo, and captions, the video editor lets you create awesome in-game footage. Sharing isn't so easy as you can only choose to export or upload to YouTube, but for avid YouTube gamers, that may not be an issue. It also cannot handle ALL games, however, most new and popular games are supported.

Available for:

Windows Only

Price:

FREE

4. ScreenFlow

There aren't too many exclusive paid or free no lag screen recorders for Mac, but ScreenFlow is one of the best ones. Designed for professionals, ScreenFlow offers high-end tools for recording videos that help you to create top-notch tutorials, how-to videos, and even record gaming and vlogging videos.

With a powerful editor, you can add just about anything to your HD videos including music, graphics, images, annotations and more. This app also lets you record your webcam, system and mic audio, and even multiple computer screens. You have the option to upload directly to sharing sites, though this may not be ideal for professionals who want to share privately.

Regardless, the interface is incredibly easy to navigate even with the abundant editing options. Calendarique 2 0. The only downside is that ScreenFlow is quite expensive and in order to access the free images, you have to be willing to pay an extra $60 per year. But if cost isn't a factor for you, ScreenFlow is worth trying out.

Available for:

Mac and iOS

Price:

Starting at $129

5. liteCam

Yet another free HD screen recorder, liteCam is the best of the basics. You can easily record your screen, choose your capture area, even add simple annotations. With their game version, you can record your webcam, as well as system and mic audio.

Recording audio isn't simple, however. You first must ensure that you are using a sound card and that it supports full-duplexing. Without this, system audio cannot be captured.

Nonetheless, you can record up to 30 fps with liteCam's screen recorder and 120 fps with their game recorder all with lossless high compression which eliminates lagging. There are serious limitations though, like the 10-minute recording limit and watermark on all videos, but if you want to record something quick and easy, you may want to give this a try.

Available for:

Windows Only

Price:

FREE

6. Bandicam

WIth Bandicam, you can record your computer screen in ultra high definition. They also have a game recorder with no lag that allows you to record up to 480 fps. While you have multiple capture regions to choose from, you must select one of their predetermined ratios instead of easily dragging and dropping your desired region.

Despite that drawback, Bandicam makes up for it by making live editing available. You also have the option to directly upload to YouTube. Unfortunately, like liteCam, there is a 10-minute recording limit and watermark.

Available for:

Windows Only

Price:

Screenflow 7 2 – Create Screen Recordings Without Damaging

Starting from $39.95

7. Rylstim Screen Recorder

If you don't want any extra features and just want to do a quick recording, then Rylstim is for you. This basic screen recorder lets you record your screen, mouse clicks, and lets you choose your frame rate. Unfortunately, you can't record any form of audio or webcam and you can't share directly to any site. So it isn't as sophisticated as our other apps, but it records without lagging, and is therefore worth mentioning.

Available for:

Windows Only

Price:

FREE

*HONORABLE MENTION*

Windows Game DVR

We have to be honest here, the Windows Game DVR is known to have occasional lagging issues. However, we felt the need to mention it on this list because it is one of the most popular and convenient game recorders available for free.

Pre-installed to every Windows computer and laptop, this screen recorder allows you to capture any region of your screen easily and record it with the press of a button. You'll be able to view your CPU performance and RAM as you record, and if you sync your Xbox to the app, you'll be able to record gameplay and display your profile and achievements. You can also record system and mic audio simultaneously.

So if you want a game recorder without needing to download an additional app, the WIndows game DVR isn't a bad choice. However, we suggest shutting down any unnecessary programs before recording to minimize the chance of lagging.

No Lag Screen Recorder Comparison

Which Is The Best?

Screenflow Software

We hope this chart will help you make the right decision. While you're wondering, we want to invite you to try ScreenRec.

This small but mighty software is free with no time limits or watermarks. It doesn't lag. It doesn't force you to choose between easy sharing or private sharing. It records in HD. You can record webcam and system/mic audio. Best of all, it's perfect for all screen recording types; tutorials, gameplay, vlogging, personal recording, etc.

Feel free to download ScreenRec and see for yourself!

References and Further Reading

If you're using a no-lag screen recorder like ScreenRec, all you need to do is download the app, press Alt+S, click the record icon and begin recording. Be sure to select your recording options (audio and webcam overlay) in the settings.
If you aren't using a lag-free recorder, you'll want to make sure you're using a high-end computer with a powerful processor. You should also disable any unnecessary programs that may be running in the background to free up some RAM space.

Some screen recorders eat up a lot of RAM storage forcing your computer to work twice as hard to keep things running. The higher the RAM usage, the slower the performance and it is this slow processing speed that causes lagging.

What Is Screenflow

In our experience, ScreenRec is the best screen capture software. Not only does it take up little storage space which eliminates lagging, but it offers HD recording, easy and private sharing, webcam recording, multiple audio recording options, and it's all free.

Low-end PCs tend to have limited RAM storage space and can therefore only handle small applications. When choosing a screen recorder for PCs like these, you'll want something that takes it easy on your computer's processing power but offers features and capabilities that you would typically be reserved for high-end PCs. ScreenRec is such an app. It requires little storage space with high-end capabilities like HD recording, webcam overlay, audio recording, private cloud storage, and instant sharing.