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Screenflick 3 Support

Screenflick 3 Support

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Screenflick 3 This page applies to Screenflick 3 only.

Getting the Highest Recording Frame Rate

Helping Screenflick keep up when you want 30 or 60 frames per second.

Recording the screen takes a lot of work from your Mac. When a recording drops frames, or the program you're recording slows down, these are the things that help the most. They're listed roughly from the biggest difference to the smallest.

Why does my screen recording drop frames or stutter?

Screenflick has to handle every pixel on your screen, many times a second. Record a smaller area, use a smaller Capture Scale, or turn off Capture Retina, and it can keep up much more easily. Keep reading.

What frame rate should I record at?

Choose the lowest capture rate you really need. 30 fps is half the work of 60 fps, and it's plenty for most recordings. Keep reading.

How do I record a game without slowing it down?

Turn on V-Sync in the game, and lower the game's own graphics settings if you need to. Keep reading.

Record Fewer Pixels #

The fewer pixels Screenflick has to record, the faster it can go. There are three ways to record fewer of them:

  • Use the smallest recording area you can. The smaller the area, the less work Screenflick needs to do, resulting in higher recording rates.
  • Use a smaller Capture Scale. If you only need a 1280 x 720 movie, for example, a 50% Capture Scale on a 2560 x 1440 display means Screenflick has four times fewer pixels to handle. See Capture Scale.
  • Turn off Capture Retina. Recording at Retina quality uses up more of your Mac's processor and file space. If your video doesn't need it, turning off Capture Retina will improve efficiency and performance. See Capture Retina.

Choose the Frame Rate You Really Need #

The capture rate in the Record view is the highest frame rate Screenflick will record at. A recording at 60 fps is twice as much work as one at 30. If a program runs worse while it's being recorded, dropping from 60 fps to 30 fps can make a big difference. See Capture Rate.

Lower the Recording Quality #

In Screenflick's preferences, the Quality view lets you choose how much work Screenflick does to compress the video while recording. "Ultra High" looks the best, but "High" or "Medium" take less processing power, which may be enough to let Screenflick keep up. The "Pixel-Perfect (ProRes 4444)" encoder gives the highest quality, but if your Mac can't encode ProRes with its hardware, the frame rate you get may be lower than you wanted. See Recording Quality.

Quiet Your Mac Down #

Make sure non-essential background processes using the CPU or hard drive are not running (such as Time Machine, Spotlight, etc).

Games and Other Fast Graphics #

When recording video games or other programs with high performance graphics, make sure the game has V-Sync turned on. With V-Sync off, the frame rate of the game can go above the maximum of the display (and the chosen recording frame rate in Screenflick) which can steal precious GPU processing power away from Screenflick. It can also cause hiccups in when frames are drawn and captured, which can result in a "stuttering" effect when playing.

Reducing the quality of the video game's own graphics can help too. Both the game and Screenflick share all of your computer's resources, so some compromises might be necessary to keep both running smoothly.

Some fullscreen games change the screen resolution when they start. If the recording started before the game launched, this can cause the recording to stop. To handle this, use the "Record Fullscreen After…" feature in the Record menu and select when "Screen Resolution Changes".

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