Movavi Screen Recorder Review

Capturing your screen was not previously necessary. It formerly was a slightly geeky, very niche interest. But now it’s something almost everyone needs from time to time. Whether you are trying to help a friend or relative with a technical problem or make a video for YouTube, capturing the contents of your screen is an essential utility. It’s rare that computers come with a native app to do this, so for most people, the only option is to seek a third-party app to solve the problem. Among the best and most flexible of these is Movavi Screen Recorder.

This is a sponsored article and was made possible by Movavi. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author, who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.

Capture the Moment

Movavi Screen Recorder does exactly what it promises it will. It records your screen while you demonstrate a piece of software or navigate to a part of your system. All screen motion is recorded in real time and made into a video that you can email to someone or edit into a larger work.

It hides out on the side of the screen, ready to be activated for recording. The tab of the “magic drawer” protrudes into the screen a little. Clicking on the tab opens the drawer so that you can access the buttons to record either a still image or video. Once you’ve finished making your capture, you can either press the stop button or F11, the recording will stop, and the video will be saved.

Once saved, the video will pop up in the Movavi Screen Recorder window, enabling you to do rudimentary trimming of the file so that it contains only the bits of the capture you want to show. You can also undo and redo any cuts you make. When you use the camera icon, you can save a still from the video you’ve made at any point. This is handy to zero in on a specific still you wish to capture from moving materials.

Content Creator

This tool is so simple, to be honest, that it’s a bit of a challenge to find enough to say about it, but it’s a good little tool. The interface is clean, uncluttered and easy to use. Although the main controls are shown every time, there are hidden depths for the more discerning screen capturer with the advanced settings button.

There are still more hidden depths in the general settings, available via a cog in the magic. You can set general settings, like toggling the countdown (a timer delaying the start of recording) on and off. You can also set the file type of stills and videos, the hotkeys which control the captures, the audio format, toggle your webcam on or off, and the special effects you would prefer, such as being able to see the cursor, the size of the cursor highlight, and how the system presents mouse clicks visually.

When you click the still or video buttons inside the magic side drawer, you are confronted by a crosshair attached to your mouse. Beside the crosshair is a zoom circle, showing you a magnified circular area so that your placement of the corners of the recording area can be pixel accurate. If you click and drag a rectangle, you will record that area. It’s that simple.

But if you hover over any of the windows open on the screen and click once, the software will intelligently try to frame the window capturing it, ignoring anything else outside that window. Of course, if you click once on the desktop itself, it will default to recording all of the screen.

Before clicking, the software helpfully lets you know the dimensions of the screen you are about to record. Once you have clicked this, the controls appear in the bottom-right corner of the screen. These are invisible to the capture and will not appear in the final video.

To initiate capture of the screen contents as you work, click the record button; everything you do will be captured. When you have finished, click stop (or F11), and the video will be saved.

The main software panel pops up, and you can view and edit the video you have just made. The scissors, undo and redo arrows, and camera icons become usable. (The undo and redo arrows don’t light up until you do something.) Clicking the scissors activates the in and out points on the timeline, and you can move these to the places you want the video to begin and end.

You may want to do this if you had to close a window or open one at the beginning of your recording, or perhaps an alert pops up in the middle of your session, ruining the smooth flow of your capture. This is easily removed by putting the in and out points on either side of the offending interruption and clicking the bin icon above the clip.

Once you are happy with the clip, you can save a new edited version by clicking the export button on the bottom right. In the pop-up window, name and locate a folder for your new clip. You can also adjust the settings.

The basic settings are what you will use most of the time, but if you need more, the “Advanced” button at the bottom left reveals more controls to adjust the output size, frames per second (FPS), sample rate and sound channels (5.1, stereo, mono, that kind of thing).

Finally, at the bottom of the screen, there are some direct links to share the video – without even leaving the software – for WhatsApp, Google Drive, YouTube, Telegram, and email. You can also copy the link to paste elsewhere. It’s a shame there are no links to Facebook or Twitter.

Summary

Movavi Screen Recorder is one of those utilities you don’t think you’ll need but use constantly once you have it. It’s clean, full-featured, easy to use and understand, and the price is not silly. It costs just $42.95 for an annual subscription and lifetime upgrades, but $59.95 if subscriptions are not your thing, and you just want to buy it outright.

Either way, it’s a good price for something that could become indispensable.