Recipe: Making a livecoding screencast with QuickTime and RecordIt
This post shows how to make a livecoding screencast using free macOS technologies.
Capturing system audio and screen-recording your live coding performance can be done in multiple ways. Here's a method based on Apple's QuickTime and an audio plugin that is part of third-party software called Record It.
Note: Both of these software components are free. The Record It Audio Device is a free extension that enables you to capture system sounds on your Mac. It acts as a virtual audio input device and sends the sound from music, videos, and system alerts that you would normally hear through your speakers to the input channel.
Recording a screencast: Steps
- Get the Record It audio plugin. (PS: This is a free audio extension, even though it is part of paid software: RecordItAudioDevice.pkg)
- Install it by right-clicking on the app and selecting "Open..." to avoid the permissions issue
- In Audio MIDI Setup, create an Aggregate Device to combine multiple audio interfaces
- Increase the sample rate to 96 kHz if necessary
- Open QuickTime and set it to record your screen, making sure you capture audio from the Record It audio plugin
- Set your DAW (e.g., Ableton Live) to output audio to Record It
- Set your computer to output sound to the Aggregate Device (so that you can also hear what's going on, e.g., if you are using headphones)
DONE!
Post-processing tips
Often, the audio I get from a QuickTime screencast recording is rather weak.
I found an easy way to fix this by using iMovie, which normally comes with any Mac. Here are the steps:
- Open the livecoding screencast in iMovie
- Detach the audio (right-click on the movie bar to see the options menu)
- Adjust the volume in the audio track editor by dragging the mouse up or down (avoid red zones!)
- Additionally, you can try using the top left menu:
Music Settings > Equalizer > Music Enhance
- Additionally, you can try using the top left menu:
- Save the new movie:
Share > File- Resolution: 720p 60
- Quality: High
- Compress: Faster
Results: For a 10-minute video, this gives me a .mp4 file of approximately 250 MB.
Upload to YouTube and off you go!