This feature is astonishingly buried, I just stumbled upon it. If you hit the Windows key and the letter G, it opens up a screen recorder window. It’s really small, it’s easy to miss. It was meant for recording video games, but it works in SketchUp, too. It isn’t great at recording audio, at least not with my built-in microphone. But hey, it’s free! And in the settings you can optimize it for YouTube posting. So now you don’t have to buy Camtasia or something to make SketchUp videos.
Of course, now I have no excuse to start posting SketchUp tutorials…
I found this video-review. The recorder has some serious drawbacks. It doesn’t capture your cursor, you can’t actually record the Desktop or File Explorer windows and most importantly, it’s not built in (according to the reviewer). It comes with some XBox app and depends on it.
Limitations, sure, I wouldn’t call them drawbacks. Also, the XBox app seems to be built in to my Windows10 machine. It’s really simple to use, too. Maybe it wouldn’t be great for SketchUp tutorials, though. But it might be nice to record a video of the SketchUp screen to show a modeling progression over time.
Unfortunately, after working really well for a few sample clips, it’s now no longer recording for me for SketchUp, not after I messed with the settings. Not sure what I did there.
When it comes to recording SketchUp Models for client presentations and showcases, I feel quality is the most important bit, so either using a paid program (like Fraps), or playing with the Scenes and exporting at high FPS is better than free alternatives.
And this holds especially true when it comes to recording audio together with the video. If it’s for Youtube, you might want to consider not using the build in mic and get yourself something like a Snowball Blue (50~ bucks) to get a very decent audio quality for tutorials etc.
Having a free alternative like this is a good start to learning how it all works though
Exactly. I’m all for quality as well. I use Camtasia for recording the screen and then either its built in editor or Adobe Premiere Pro + After Effects.
I’d like to add the free and open-source OBS Studio to the pool. Its incredibly powerful and relatively easy to use. Supports multiple sources out of the box (1920*1080 OpenGL recorded at 60+fps with super-imposed webcam, marquees and watermarks, anyone?)
ScreenToGif is also quite handy for small gifs like those LICEcap became popular for, with the added bonus of a frame editor…
The built-in recorder is quite simple to use, but users should note that sometimes it captures video in blank screen, this is mainly because that some game does not allow for recording. Lucky me, I find another alternative tool which called Acethinker online screen recorder, it can record any screen activity with audio. And more importantly, it’s free as well.
