How to record video on mac laptop

Ever wanted to record a video on a Mac using the computers built-in camera? Maybe you want to capture a special moment as a movie, record a quick video note, record a movie for social media, or for any other purpose. Whatever the reason, you can easily record video on Mac using the front facing FaceTime camera and a built-in app.

There are a few different ways to accomplish video capture on a Mac, but we’re going to focus on recording video with QuickTime Player and the Mac computers webcam, because the software is bundled on all Macs and virtually every Mac has a built in camera to record from. This end result will be a movie file being saved that can be shared, uploaded, edited, or used however you’d like.

How to Record Movies on Mac

1. Open QuickTime Player in Mac OS, it’s found in the /Applications folder
2. Pull down the “File” menu and choose “New Movie Recording”


3. The FaceTime webcam will activate and show on screen, click the red record button to start recording your movie


4. When finished recording, hit the Stop button to end the recording
• Optionally, trim the video to shorten it
5. Go to the “File” menu and choose “Save” (or Export)


6. Give the recorded movie a name and save the recorded movie to the location of your choice

The default movie file type recorded will be a .mov QuickTime file but you can save it as another format if desired, or convert it to a different video format later if you’d like. The .mov file format is widely compatible and will upload directly to any social media site and be immediately viewable by any Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows, or Android user with an appropriately modern media player.

Resolution of recorded movies depends on the model of the Mac since each Mac has a different FaceTime webcam camera with different resolution, but generally speaking you can expect somewhere between 480p and 720p resolution for most Mac webcam recordings. If you want higher quality footage like 1080p or 4k, you might want to consider recording 4k video with an iPhone or iPad instead.

QuickTime Player is a powerful app that has a lot of great features and recording abilities, including an excellent screen recorder for capturing videos of the Mac display, a similar option to record an iPhone or iPad screen, and even the ability to record sound and audio using the computers built-in microphone.

For what it’s worth, you can also capture video directly on the Mac with iMovie and some third party apps too, but QuickTime is so fast, easy, and efficient, that if all you’re looking to do is capture a quick movie, it’s by far the simplest choice.

• Tweet
• More

• Print
• Share on Tumblr

• 
  

• Pocket

• Telegram
• WhatsApp

Related

Enjoy this tip? Subscribe to our newsletter!

Get more of our great Apple tips, tricks, and important news delivered to your inbox with the OSXDaily newsletter. 

Go to System Preferences/Sound. In the sound Output, choose Loopback Audio in the Output tab.

At this point, you will hear no sound from any of your Mac’s applications, but don’t worry.

Go to the QuickTime Player application; choose File/New Screen Recording.

Choose if you want to record all your screen, or a portion of your screen (highlighted in red below), then click on the Record button.

Click on the Options menu.

Choose the appropriate audio source, in this case Loopback Audio.

After you’re done recording:

1. Stop the video in your application that was playing your video.
2. At the top of your screen (to the right of Finder menu items), click on the black square, which is the button to stop the Quicktime recording.
   Save your video file.
3. Go to System Preferences/Sound. In the sound Output, change the preference back to Internal Speakers (or whatever was your original choice). You should be able to hear sounds now from your speakers.
4. Go to your saved movie in QuickTime Player, and test out the sound. Trim the clip either in QuickTime Player or iMovie.

   Can I record a video on my Mac screen?

   Using Screenshot in the QuickTime Player app, you can make a video recording of your computer screen. You can open the recording in the app and save it on your Mac. In the QuickTime Player app on your Mac, choose File > New Screen Recording to open Screenshot and display the tools.

   How do I record audio and video on a Mac?

   Follow the three simple steps..

   Open QuickTime Player, and choose "File" > "New Screen Recording"..

   To record the screen with the audio, hit the arrow next to the Record button. Choose the microphone..

   Click the "Record" button to start recording..