Recording Is Too Large? How to Screen Record at Smaller Size

For saving, sending, or uploading online, screen recording too big in file size is annoying, especially when you are or would be a common video producer…

Taking screencast is a new way of communication and makes life easier. Rather than demonstrating the same thing repeatedly or with long text-and-pic paper, representing this visual recording of a computer screen gives both video makers and audiences the chance to showcase and watch with ease. That’s why screen recording is super popular among teachers & students, business partners, interdepartmental communication, as well as vloggers & common online surfers.

However, as a newbie to screen video capture, you may encounter many unexpected problems regarding the best screen recorder selection, video quality, file size, and post-production. And now it’s turn to the file-size-centered topic. Since many customers are complaining online that their final recordings are too big, which may be (MP4/AVI) video or (WAV/MP3) audio format and come from different recorder programs, this article will unveil the factors that determine media size, how to screen record at smaller size, as well as how to compress the recorded media.

# Record Screen Video at Small Size Guide
# Factors That Decide Video/Audio File Size
# How to Reduce Recorded Large Video/Audio

Part ONE: How to Screen Record at Smaller Size with RecMaster?

RecMaster is an easy and lightweight desktop screen recorder available for both Windows and Mac. With multiple recording modes and quality/size-related options built-in, it enables customers to capture whatever happens on the monitor with a reasonably small size while maintaining the high still quality. You can download it free here and follow the steps below to screen record a smaller size.

Step 1. Install and launch RecMaster, then choose a video recording mode according to your requirements.

Step 2 (IMPORTANT). Do keep the video format into MP4, with quality standard or high, frame rate to any between 20-30fps (depending on your content, 20fps is OK if there are no fast motions during recording).

Step 3. Do other settings on webcam, audio, recording time (if you want a scheduled capture), cursor effect, file saving folder, watermark, and so forth. RecMaster for Mac also features saving the recording every xx hours or MB in case the file is too long or large.

Step 4. Hit the REC or use the hotkey (Alt+1 for Windows by default) to get the recording started. If you need to annotate something, click the pen icon on the floating bar.

Step 5. Stop it with a button or hotkey, too. From the recording list, you can preview, rename, edit, or upload the small video to YouTube immediately. Also, you are free to share it with customers, students, coworkers, etc. via email or chatting apps.

☛ File size examples of 1080P recordings of the same content made by RecMaster on Windows 10:

☛ File size of audio recording on Windows 10:

Note: You can take the data in the table for reference when doing settings before recording. However, the real recording size may differ from the recording contents and situations. To estimate the file size roughly, you can also get the benefit from the free media size calculators online.

Part TWO: Main Parameters Affecting Media File Size

Video first. There are roughly five elements that most consumer screen recorders give access to adjust and could impact the video size.

● Resolution: Video resolution simply refers to “width* height”. It is super easy to understand that the larger the width and height, the bigger the file size. Think about a 1-minute 4K video vs. a 1080p video of the same duration…

● Duration: the longer you record, the larger the recording file you will get.

● Bit rate: Indicating the amount of bits that video processes per unit of time or say second, bit rate influences both video quality and file size directly. Of course, under different recording environments and for different usage, the required bit rate may vary from one to another. Many programs don’t offer setting for bit rate directly but the quality level instead.

● Frame rate: Frame rate, the frequency at which those consecutive images are shown, is known to decide the video fluidity. It also affects the size. Imagine a recording at 60fps vs. the same at 30fps, double frames per second certainly contributes to a larger file size.

● Codec & Format: Nearly all screen video recorders won’t output the raw footage but compress it to a relatively smaller one by processing. The encoding method is a key point during this process because there are a dozen of video codecs, most commonly known ones include (QuickSync) H.264, (NVENC) H.265, MPEG, DivX/Xvid, VP8/VP9, and newly AV1. Different video codec has different compression ratio and also comes with different formats. That’s why they two are put together here. Usually, DivX AVI recording is larger than H.264 MP4 file with other parameters the same.

Besides those mainstream parameters, some advanced screen capture tools may embed less-known options as well to more or less change the size number, for instance, the (Bit) Rate Control, Keyframe Interval, and B Frames output settings of OBS Studio.

Audio then. Similar to video, its size is determined by audio codec/format, audio sample rate, bit rate, and channel count. If you want to dig deeper into what they are, navigate to Wikipedia for more details.

Part THREE: How to Reduce the File Size of Recorded Video/Audio?

Drawing from the last part, you must know how to fix screen recording too large issues. As long as you choose to lower the value of either one or more parameters mentioned above properly, and apply another codec with more compression ratio, the video will become smaller. Then what tool would you utilize? That’s exactly the video converter or video editor.

Set how HandBrake – the most popular open-source video transcoder – reduces recording video file size for example:

– You can change video formats in Summary, e.g. from source AVI to MP4.
– You can resize and crop the huge video under Dimensions.
– In the Video section, you can switch the video codec to a high-compression one, like from H.264/DviX/MPEG to H.265, decrease the framerate value, lower the quality level, or type a fixed average bit rate to obtain a smaller video.
…

There is a plethora of free online and desktop media compressor software on the market you can turn to, HandBrake, Freemake Video/Audio Converter, VSDC Free Video Converter, Zamzar, and VLC Media Player just to name a few.

Final Words

Have you understood why your recording is so huge? If yes, you must have an idea of how to screen record at a smaller size. A warm reminder from the editor is that since file size, to some degree, has a close connection with video quality, keep a good balance between them, and don’t pursue the “absolute small size” while ignoring its quality loss.