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How to record your screen with no lag

Written by: sunny qing

Article Overview: Get stuck on lag while record your screencast? Here are the common tips you should know to get rid of creating laggy videos. Easy and practical for anyone who is willing to be the master of screencast.

How to record your screen with no lag

Screencast is a new digital way to record your computer screen with software. It gets popular online worldwide since it creates a face-to-face communication, or a hand-by-hand solution to demonstrate and share knowledge with people. It's widely used as tutorial maker and presentation tool in education, e-learning and commercial fields. However, the screencast asks for higher computer hardware requirements as the rapid increase of video quality, like more visual effect and synchronous narration. Many people find lag when recording, making their videos blunt and ambiguous.

In fact, under the majority of cases, the video lag can be effectively moderated and solved. Here are some useful tips on how to record your screen with no lag. Have a try before your next screencast.

Close all unnecessary applications before recordingThe whole process of screencast requires plenty system resources to run smoothly. The extra loading time and redundant responding time will appear if there're too many processes which do no benefits to your screencast working at the same time, slowing down your video and making it unwatchable.

This is the first thing you should do, check your system task manager and find out if there's any extra program might do harm to your screencast, end them at once.

Set right resolution for your computer screenThe higher screen resolution you choose the more memory space it costs. Since the working principle of screen recorder is to record what happens on your desktop, it captures any changes of every pixel on your computer screen. When you record screencast under a larger resolution, more pixel information will be recorded, indicating more memory rooms are occupied.

In that case, lag always happens if your whole screen alters rapidly (because of the frequent data exchange), so adjust your screen resolution to a lower but acceptable level to reduce the consumption of pixel information. Generally, 800*600 is enough for most of demo tutorial videos.

Another way is to customize your recording area. Now most of screen recording software allow you to customize your recording area, so you can create your screencast by recording just a part of your screen.

Simplify the display color qualityDo you like to set your desktop in higher color display? And is it necessary while screencasting? It's hard to distinguish between the 16bit and 32bit color by human's eyes, but it is rather a big difference for computer. Why not set your screen in lower color quality and save rooms for your screencast resource?

Right click on your desktop and choose "Properties", then change your color quality from 32bit to 16 bit in setting page.

Furthermore, if it is possible, change your screen refresh rate is also a great way to reduce the system resource consumption. It's commonly used in screencast which contains more simple frozen pictures than movies. You can set it at 60 Hertz, that's enough for screencast as well as no harm to your eyes while recording.

Lower your recording frame rateThe frame rate describes how frequent the program capture image for your screencast in every second. For desktop demo and tutorial, 10~15 frame is enough to make your video clear and smooth. If you're preparing to make a gameplay or movie recording, you have to set it higher.

It's quite confusing for a beginner to adjust the frame rate perfectly to adapt to what he records. Once you meet this tough job and don't know how to do, try some simple programs with lazy settings. There're two popular recording modes: the screen shots and full motion recording. The former takes every shot according to your mouse click and keystrokes, and the latter records all your movement as a video, so you don't need to bother with the setting. Just choose the recording mode and check whether it work well with no lag.

Optimize the audio inputThe audio of screencast is also a key section of system resource consumption, since you have to import your voice through microphones which will take up some system memory to keep it works properly. The best way, as you consider that the audio is not a must-have and can be omitted, is to disable the sound while screencasting. You will find much more efficient recording progress with fluency.

Certainly, if you want to keep the sound, voice and even music in your video, try post synchronization instead of synchronous narration. Take DemoCreatoras example, you can use Audio Editor to add narration for your screencast, or directly import an audio file into it. It really eases the burden of OS, making the screencast fluently.

Combine all short clips into an integrated videoThis would be the last but most complicated way so you can jump over this part unless that your computer can't afford to create a good screencast. Make full use of pause function during the recording, save your screencast every minute as a small video clip. After all parts are done, open all project files and combine them together. Originally the combination is used as an advanced video editing feature, and now it can also solve the lag problem for the computers.

SummaryWell, that's all the tips you can make your screencast easy and smooth. There's one thing have to mention that more and more powerful screencast software with fantastic features are coming out. In order to make full use of them, the best way is to choose the program wisely, and don't forget to speak up your requirement to the developer. Our aim is, to record your screen with no lag.

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Article Tags: optimize screencast, record desktop with no lag, record screen no lag, record screen wiout lag, screencasting with no lag



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Re: Free Online Screen Recording Tools - [quote="Kevin":3r5ksabo]Hi David, Can any of these tools record YouTube videos (and/or audio from YouTube)?[/quote:3r5ksabo] Hi Kevin, Another option is to download RealPlayer along with their video download manager plugin. What this does is bring up a little bar over any flash video that is opened. You can then choose to download the video straight to your computer. Then, you can watch the video using RealPlayer. The new plugin also allows you to convert the video to other video formats. I've used it quite a bit and absolutely love it. It's much easier than setting up screen recorder software to record the video. It works with any Flash video which includes YouTube videos. So far I've only gotten it to work with Internet Explorer. For some reason I get an Add-On error in FireFox.
Size does matter... - Okay, sorry, I couldn't resist. When I first started office work, 20 years ago, I started on a Macintosh - the black and white screen, the tiny print, the tiny screen... and I loved it. For various reassons I was forced to move to the PC, and although it took me a while I got used to it. Started with a 13 inch screen and had no problem... THen I moved up to the 15 inch screen and after a month or so I absolutely couldn't go back to the 13 inch size - everything was so cramped.... Right now I"ve go that same 15 inch screen and its fine... if I worked seriously with graphics I'd want something larger, but for my writing, 15 inch is more than adequate. But I would like a Plasma TV screen.... if the price goes down a bit more I think I'll snap one up... Interestingly as the size of TV screens get larger, the size of personal "walkmans" gets smaller, now you can put hours and hours of music on a piece of equipment the size of a cigarette lighter...so easy to carry while you're jogging! One thing I could never do is play video games on a cell phone. Not that I have a cell phone. But to squint at those tiny dots...when I'm used to full size games in arcades... I just can't see the attraction of that. But I suppose if kids don't know any better...
Re: Do bigger monitors save time? - Hi Kevin, Thanks for the welcome! I would agree that two 17's would work well but really, any size would work. I'd be careful in going after the larger monitors that are traditional heights but are really wide, unless you have the desk space for it. Choose your monitors carefully as well to ensure that you try to find ones that have a small frame outside of the actual monitor screen. That way, when you put them together, the screens look a little more uniform. Last tip for either multiple monitors or one large one... Speed your mouse motion up. If you don't, you'll spend forever scrolling from one screen to another or across a larger screen. It'll take a bit to get used to at first but after a few days, using a mouse with regular motion will seem painstakingly slow!
Re: Do bigger monitors save time? - [quote="Evan":1xihvhks]How big is your monitor? Have you noticed a difference when working on a larger monitor?[/quote:1xihvhks] Hi Evan, I use my laptop's 15.4" widescreen monitor and I actually prefer to use it over my dad's 20.1" screen because it's easier on my eyes since a) I don't have to push it as far away and b) higher resolution = smaller fonts to read unless I increase the viewing size. Besides, a larger screen would also translate into having to use more wrist and elbow movements to navigate the screen for me.
Re: Do bigger monitors save time? - [quote="Raye":k99n31np]Hi Kevin, Thanks for the welcome! I would agree that two 17's would work well but really, any size would work. I'd be careful in going after the larger monitors that are traditional heights but are really wide, unless you have the desk space for it. Choose your monitors carefully as well to ensure that you try to find ones that have a small frame outside of the actual monitor screen. That way, when you put them together, the screens look a little more uniform. Last tip for either multiple monitors or one large one... Speed your mouse motion up. If you don't, you'll spend forever scrolling from one screen to another or across a larger screen. It'll take a bit to get used to at first but after a few days, using a mouse with regular motion will seem painstakingly slow![/quote:k99n31np] Hi Raye, Thanks for the tips! But if choosing monitors with smaller frames outside of the actual screen space is important when using 2 monitors...then wouldn't using a laptop and a secondary monitor be a bad idea? And are there any current monitor brands and models you would recommend? For instance, for the same price, should someone go for a slightly larger screen or a smaller one with Dell's "Ultrasharp" feature?


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