How to Screen-Record for YouTube

I’d like to breakdown how to screen-record on YouTube to make it easy for you to get started building your brand. The advice will assume you are using a Mac but a lot of the skills can transfer over to Windows.

To get started making videos all you essentially need is a laptop, but below I’ll outline an example setup you can also model and then decide for yourself what you need.

What You Need To Screen-Record and Make Videos for YouTube

1. Laptop
2. iPhone
3. Tripod
4. Phone Tripod Mount
5. Rode Video Mic Go II Helix
6. Camera
7. OBS Studio (Free)
8. iMovie (Free)
9. Canva (Free)
10. 2 USB-C Type Cables

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First, you’ll want to download OBS Studio, a free and open-source software that make it simply to record videos for YouTube. The software is pretty straightforward all you need to do is add your desktop screen, audio source, and camera to the software and then click record.

After you complete a recording it will end up in your Videos folder as a .mov file. This file contains both video and audio. If you notice a mismatch between the timing of the audio and video you’ll need to do the following:

What to do when the timing of the audio is different from the video

1. Create new short recording with a clap
2. Pull the audio from the recording and upload it a free service called Audacity to determine the time difference.

brew install ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i INSERT-NAME-OF-YOUR-RECORDING-HERE.mov -vn -acodec copy output_audio.m4a

You’ll then find a new audio file (.m4a) in your Videos folder that you can upload to Audacity. In Audacity you will then note the time of the spike (the clap noise) in the recording and compare it to when the clap is made in the recording.

How to setup your room for screen-recording

In terms of setup you will use your tripod to hold your phone to serve as a camera pointed at you. The phone will be plugged into your laptop with the USB C cable. You’ll then use the other USB C cable to plug into the Rode Video Mic Go II which can be mounted on your camera next to your laptop. Your camera outputs video via HDMI so you would need a converter like Elgato Cam Link 4K in order to use it for your screen-recording. For this post we will just use the camera for intros and outros and the phone/laptop combination for screen-recordings. You could just use your phone for everything, but a camera definitely levels up the production value.

How to use your phone as a second screen in OBS Studio

To use your phone as a second screen for your screen-recording you’ll need to access your camera using Quicktime Player or use Camo Studio. I personally find that Camo Studio offers a better experience and video quality. Camo Studio offers a free tier, but you can also upgrade and supposedly get a higher quality video feed with the upgrade. If you decide to use the Quicktime Player you’ll need to crop the camera output in OBS Studio, which you can do by clicking the corner of the video feed and holding Option to adjust.

Use iMovie and Canva to create, edit and finalize your project.

You are now are ready to screen-record. Feel free to break up your screen-recording into parts as you can then clip them together later in iMovie. After recording hop into iMovie, upload your recordings and clip them all together. For additional flare you can use a free service like Canva to create animated slides to break up your screen-recording. You also can opt for paid editor software like Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere.

That’s is all the basics to getting started. After creating your video simply upload it to YouTube and release when you are ready!