The recording aspect is simple
It can be done with a Mac built-in tool: simply press “shift”+”command”+”5” at the same time and, voila, your Mac is ready to record what’s on your screen. And yes, you can narrate via microphone while recording. The built-in screen recording functionality on any Mac comes with a few options such as capturing the entire screen or just a selected window or selecting a specific portion of the screen. One can also delay the start of the recording by 5 or 10 seconds with a built-in timer and change the microphone input to an alternative source of sound.
However
The built-in Mac screen recording feature will not let you narrate your screen recording with your own video (camera cannot be turned on to capture your face as you speak) and there is no way to pause the screen recording (to take a breath or a break) and continue your recording. Then it gets complicated.
What’s not simple
with built-in tools is sharing your screen recordings with someone else due to the size of a resulting file. One usually cannot send a large file (over 100mb) via email (messengers also impose size limitations on attachments). What is one to do? Upload video to YouTube or Vimeo, Dropbox or Google Drive? Latter two have very poor playback experience for video and the former two take some time to figure out. Ultimately you will receive a URL (YouTube or Vimeo) for the screen recording video you’d like to share with someone. That someone is expected to have a great experience viewing your screen recording and providing you with (easy) feedback via comments or by recording their own screen recording and narrative over your original screen recording. Built-in Mac screen recording feature falls short here again. Enter the world of third party screen recording software companies. It’s really a category now comprising of over a hundred applications with some even covered by financial analysts.
Lots of great tools
out there that combine both recording and publishing functionality while keeping it simple: Loom and CloudApp, for example, or hhMhh for more advanced screen recording experience.
But, if your team is engaged in a lot of screen recording exchanges (group of designers and illustrators working with client’s asynchronously) then these random URLs that Loom and others generate will make it burdensome to keep track of videos individually and share them within a team.
Enter Stork
that’s a group messenger and collaboration co-working platform designed specifically for media heavy exchanges such as screen recordings within a team. Screen recording is built into Stork so that there is no need to exchange URLs within your team and your screen recordings will automatically be organized within channels or chats. Think of Stork as Slack + Screen Recording for designers, videographers, illustrators, etc.
Once Stork (free Mac app) is installed, Screen Recording is available from every chat and every channel within your team. There is also a tray app icon that allows you to start recording your screen without having to open Stork. Stork allows you to record “Screen and Camera” or “Screen” only, choose quality (anything between 360p and FullHD), imposes no time limits nor watermarks. You can pose and resume recordings at any time.
