How to use the Gif Screen Recorder

This desktop recorder makes it extremely easy to create screen video captures. The screencasts are stored as Gif files which can be played on nearly any computer or mobile device and can be included in blogs, websites, powerpoint presentations and help files. Using this PC screen recorder you can record any activity on your desktop. Maybe you want to show how to do certain things with a program. Or make an animation of a movie you made with your mobile or some other source (YouTube) you want to use on your website or social media.

Note

Special techniques are built-in to keep the size of the gif files that store the video screen captures reasonable size. The size is determined by

  1. the size of the screen area being recorded, 
  2. the duration of the recording,
  3. the image quality selected. Lowest quality (64 colors or lower) recording may be a factor 3 smaller as compared to photo quality.
  4. the number of frames per second (FPS),
  5. the amount of change between between subsequent images in the screencast.
  • Screencasts showing user activity such as on-line tutorials are surprisingly small.
  • The file size of recorded films such as made on your smart phone or picked up from YouTube will quickly become large. For example 10 seconds YouTube film can easily amount to several Mb file size. Given the above. and the fact that photo films are characterised by high level of change between subsequent images you are advised to keep them short and not have large areas.

You can further reduce the gif file size by removing images frames using the Animated Gif Editor. See also: How to keep file size of recording reasonable
animated gif recorder video

Prepare what you want to record, e.g. start the program whose behaviour you want to record.

  1. Start the Gif Screen Recorder program (Start > Gif Recorder > Gif Screen Recorder). 
    all recording buttons A large red rectangle appears in the center of the screen with top left buttons for Start, Stop, size recording, etcetera. Initially, the recorder wil set the area to the active application window.
  2. Make the recording area match what you want to record. When you want another area to be recorded, you can drag the titlebar to another application window which the capture area will automatically match. Alternatively, you can drag the red borders to set the exact area to record.
    Note
    • the size of the recording area is given next to the buttonsize button  (width x height in pixels).
    • Preset sizes can be selected from the combo box but you can also drag the borders for this.
  3. select quality button If you are filming a photo recording, maybe made on your smartphone or on YouTube, switching to Photo Quality  (top right of recording area) will give a much better result. The downside is that the encoding of the recording into a gif file takes much more time. A 10 seconds recording can take several minutes to encode. Still, for publising this extra time will certainly be worth it giving you a high quality animated gif. Choosing fewer colors makes the gif smaller - at the cost of the visual quality.
  4. time laps recording If you want to limite the file size of a long recording, you can select a frames per second (FPS) on the top right corner. See also How to make a time lapse animation. 20 FPS gives a fluent film, but 10 FPS is sufficient for many purposes and results in smaller GIF size. If you target the Safari browser 15 may be best because it may degrade images with FPS lager than 10.
  5. Start Recording (using start recording button  button or PrtScn key).
  6. Demonstrate whatever - here I'm demonstrating recording, so apart from that I show nothing interesting.
  7. If during the recording you are not satisfied with what you are doing, press the Restart button, the fastest way to have another shot at the recording.
  8. Stop the Recorder (using stop recording button button or Esc key).
  9. Save the recording. After saving you can choose to opens the recording in the Animated Gif Editor.for editing.
Tips
  • Use the pause recording button pause button or Pause key to suspend recording. To continue recording press recording button continue button or PrtScn key again.
  • During recording or pause you can drag borders to reposition the recorded area.
  • Area presets listed in the combo are stored in system folder C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Gif Recorder\areapresets.txt. You can change the list to make it more suitable for you. If you can't find that folder, change windows system folders setting to 'visible'.
Make Animated Gifs using the Recorder and Editor