Once you’re done you can do some rudimentary editing on the resultant video.

Tip: Remember to look at the tiny green dot on the top edge of your computer, not the middle of the screen, so the viewer sees you “making” eye contact! High quality is probably plenty sufficient for your son’s presentation, but you can experiment with “Maximum” too, if you prefer.Īll set up properly? Close this menu and press the RECORD button on the control window, then start talking or let your son begin his presentation. The webcam is called “FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)” but it’s probably already selected if you can see yourself in the preview window. I use an Audio-Technica AT2020 microphone to improve audio quality and this is where I can ensure it’s properly selected. This is where you can fine-tune the settings. Next, click on the tiny downward “v” triangle adjacent to the big red RECORD button. Does the bottom bar graph change to show the audio input? Good. That control window is pretty important to adjust so you ensure that you have everything set up properly. It turns on the webcam (notice the tiny green LED indicator light that’s always illuminated when the camera is in use) and you see a preview window of what’s in the shot – me, in this case! – and a floating control window.

What we want is highlighted: “ New Movie Recording“. Choose “ New Screen Recording” and you can capture what’s happening on your computer screen to share with a colleague for training purposes or even to send to IT so they can help debug a problem. To start out, launch QuickTime Player and look at the File menu:Ĭhoose “ New Audio Recording” and you can capture a conversation, your son singing or your daughter practicing cello. Most people just figure it’s a video player since that’s part of its name, but QTP can also manage quite a lot of recording… Whether that separate app exists or not, however, the fact is that QuickTime has always been an underrated powerhouse of a program with far more capabilities than you would guess at first blush. Did you know you can record what’s happening on your screen while you narrate, for example? Or that you can easily record video captured by the webcam on your Mac system and even trim the start and stop times to make the output perfect? I might call it something like iWebcam to keep with the Apple naming conventions for applications.

First off, I want to say that I rarely suggest that there be more applications on a computer system, but the recording capabilities of QuickTime Player should really be broken out into a separate app so people are aware of the additional features. The short answer is yes, QuickTime Player, but let’s have a closer look.

Webcam recorder for mac