Recording Quality
Record at high quality, then export at the quality you need.
Screenflick's approach is to record at high quality, and then export at lower qualities. The recording is your high quality original, and every time you export, you choose the quality, size, and format of the movie you get.
Record High, Export Lower #
Quality can only go down. If a recording is made at low quality, it can't be made sharper later. But a recording made at high quality can be exported at any lower quality, at any size, and in any format, whenever you need it.
So Screenflick records at high quality, even if the movie you'll share will end up small. That way you can:
- Export a small movie for the web, and a larger, sharper one for a presentation, from the same recording.
- Export again later with different settings, without having to record anything again.
- Keep the original quality around in case you need it someday.
High Quality Without Using Up Your Disk #
Screenflick records using a fast capture method that keeps nearly all of the image quality of your screen, while using far less disk space than recording to ProRes does. When "Ultra High" is chosen in Screenflick's Quality preferences, the recording looks just like your screen. You can't tell the difference by eye. It also keeps up at high frame rates, and it makes long recordings at the highest quality practical.
The Trade-Off: Exporting #
To make this possible, Screenflick records to its own file format. It isn't a movie file you can open in other programs or share. To get a movie, you export the recording. See Exporting Movies.
Exporting takes a little time, but that's also when you choose the size, format, and settings of the final movie, so you don't have to decide on them while you're recording.
Choosing the Quality #
Choose "Preferences…" from the Screenflick menu, click on "Quality", and use the "Video Encoder" pop-up menu. When you choose the standard encoder, you can also choose the level of quality used while recording: "Medium", "High", or "Ultra High". Higher levels look better, but use more disk space and more of your Mac's power.
- Ultra High is the best quality. Choose it any time your Mac and your disk keep up, which they will for most recordings.
- High is a very good recording that uses less disk space and less of your Mac's power.
- Medium is the lightest of the three. Use it if your Mac has trouble keeping up with the frame rate you want, or you're short on disk space.
Every export is made from the recording, so the quality you record at is the best quality any export can have.
| Video Encoder | What it does |
|---|---|
| Automatic | This is the default. Screenflick chooses a high quality compression based on your Mac's capabilities. |
| Standard (Screenflick Custom) | Screenflick's own capture method described above, with a choice of "Medium", "High", or "Ultra High" quality. |
| Hardware Accelerated | Screenflick chooses between high quality H.264 and HEVC compression, based on the size of the recording and your Mac's capabilities. |
| Pixel-Perfect (ProRes 4444) | Records with Apple ProRes 4444 for the highest possible quality. The files are very large. If your Mac can't do ProRes in hardware, the recorded frame rate may be lower than you'd like. |
| H.264 | Uses your Mac's hardware to compress with H.264. If the recording is larger than 4096 × 2160, it's scaled down to fit. |
| HEVC | Uses your Mac's hardware to compress with HEVC. |
Lossless Audio #
The "Record lossless audio" checkbox records audio with Apple's Lossless codec instead of high quality AAC. That lets you export fully lossless audio, which is useful for professional work.