PowerScreen

Docs

From the first take to the exported file.

How to record, what to do with the pointer and the clicks afterwards, and how to add captions and export.

Recording

Five steps to a recording in the editor.

  1. 1

    Open Record Screen

    Choose File ▸ Record Screen. Under Record, pick the primary display, another display, all displays, or one of the open windows. A window is followed as it moves.

  2. 2

    Choose the frame rate and the sound

    Pick a frame rate, then the microphone and, under System audio, the sound the computer is playing. Both are mixed into the recording. On a Mac, recording the system sound needs macOS 13 or later, and PowerScreen's own sound is left out.

  3. 3

    Leave the pointer out

    Burn the pointer into the video is off by default, and that is the setting to keep. The pointer is then stored beside the picture, with its real shapes, so Cursor Effects can draw it at any size later.

  4. 4

    Record, pause, stop

    Start Recording minimises PowerScreen if Minimize while recording is ticked. F9 pauses and resumes, and F10 stops, with any app in front. On a Mac the keys are ⇧⌘2 to pause and ⌥⌘2 to stop (F9 and F10 work with Fn held).

  5. 5

    Pick up where the recording lands

    When you stop, the recording opens in a new sequence with Cursor Effects already applied, ready to cut, title, caption and export.

On a Mac

Letting PowerScreen see the screen.

  1. 1The first recording makes macOS ask for Screen & System Audio Recording permission (Screen Recording on older versions). Allow PowerScreen in System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security.
  2. 2Quit PowerScreen and open it again. macOS gives the permission to a fresh start of the app, not to the copy already running.
  3. 3If recording still fails, check that PowerScreen is switched on in that list, and that the Mac runs macOS 12.3 or later.

After recording

Making it easy to follow.

  1. 1

    Cursor Effects

    Select the recording on the timeline and open Effect Controls. Under Cursor Effects: Pointer Size makes the pointer larger or smaller, Smoothing steadies its path, Hide When Idle takes it away after it has been still for the Idle Time, Highlight puts a soft disc under it, and Click Rings draws a ring at every click. The highlight and the rings have their own colour and size, and the settings can be keyframed like any others.

  2. 2

    Auto Zoom from Clicks

    With the recording selected, choose Clip ▸ Auto Zoom from Clicks (or right-click the clip). Set how far to zoom, how long to stay zoomed after the last click, how long the move in and out takes, and how close together clicks must be to share one zoom. OK writes Position and Scale keyframes in one undo step; running it again replaces them.

  3. 3

    Transcribe

    Open the Text panel's Transcript tab and transcribe the sequence. The first time, PowerScreen offers to download the speech model; after that it works offline. The transcription runs in the background, so you can keep editing.

  4. 4

    Captions

    In the Transcript tab, Create captions lays the words out as captions. In the Captions tab, Display sets how they appear: Block, Word by word (a few words at a time), or Highlight spoken word (the line stays and each word stands out as it is said). Font, size, bold, italic, colour, box and outline apply to all three.

  5. 5

    Export

    Switch to Export at the top of the window, pick a preset or a format, and export. H.264 MP4 is the usual choice for sharing; HEVC uses the graphics hardware (an NVIDIA card on Windows, or the Mac's own encoder); ProRes and DNxHR are there for further editing, and animated GIF for documentation.

Worth knowing

Things it does that you might miss.

A few of the parts people find after a week, which are worth finding on day one.

Pause, then carry on
Pause a recording and resume it when you are ready, from the recording bar or with F9 (⇧⌘2 on a Mac).
Cut by editing the words
In the Transcript tab, select words and extract them, and that stretch of the recording goes with them. Remove filler words takes out the ums in one step.
Recordings made safe as they are written
The movie is written in pieces as it goes, so a crash or a power cut costs at most the last second.
Themes
Midnight is the default. View ▸ Appearance also has Fjord, Ember, Paper, Mist, two high-contrast themes and the classic dark and light ones.
Zoom the timeline
Shift and the mouse wheel zoom the timeline and the keyframe area of Effect Controls, about the pointer.
Projects are .powerscreen files
One file holds the edit, the transcripts and the pointer tracks of your recordings.