Recording a how-to video

Showing someone how to do something on screen is often quicker than writing it down: a bug report, a training clip, a walkthrough for a colleague. These tools record, trim and finish it in your browser: no app to install, no watermark, and the recording never leaves your computer until you send it.

1. Record it

Close what you don’t want seen (notifications, other tabs, a desktop full of files) and open the Screen Recorder. Tick Record my microphone for narration, and Record the sound of the tab or screen if the thing you’re showing makes sounds. Choose MP4 if possible as the Format, so it plays everywhere, then Start recording and pick the window or tab. Recording a single window rather than the whole screen keeps the file smaller and hides everything else. Stop when you’re done and Save the video.

On a Mac, the browser needs Screen Recording permission in System Settings › Privacy & Security the first time.

2. Trim the start and end

Every recording starts with you choosing the window and ends with you reaching for Stop. Open it in the Video Trimmer, play to where the real content starts and press Start here, then to where it ends and press End here, and Save the trimmed video. MP4 is cut in moments without re-encoding, so the picture is exactly as recorded; the cut starts on the nearest key frame at or before your start, which the message mentions. Untick Keep the sound for a silent clip.

3. A thumbnail and a GIF

Open the trimmed video in the Frame Grabber, step to a frame that shows what the video is about with Previous frame and Next frame, and Save this frame (PNG) for the thumbnail in a page, an email or an LMS. For documentation and chat, where a video won’t play inline, set From and To around the key moment (5 to 10 seconds) and Save as GIF at Width 800 or so: a GIF loops silently in any app.

4. Check it before you send it

Open the finished file in Video Info to check its length, resolution and size against the limit of where it’s going (many email systems stop at 20 to 25 MB, and some LMSs at 100 MB), and that its codec is H.264, which plays everywhere. Too big? Open it in the Video Compressor, type the limit under Fit in (MB) and Make it smaller: it re-encodes the picture as H.264 at the resolution that size allows and keeps the sound as it is. Watch the copy through to check the text on screen is still readable.

5. Captions

Captions make a how-to usable with the sound off, for deaf viewers and in a second language. Most video platforms and LMSs make them automatically or take an SRT or WebVTT file you write. Open the file in the Caption Checker before uploading: it finds captions too fast to read, too long for a line, overlapping, or out of step, and Shift moves them all if they’re early or late. Its Convert turns SRT into the WebVTT that web players need.