From the course: Producing Screencast Videos on a Mac
Recording an iPhone screen
From the course: Producing Screencast Videos on a Mac
Recording an iPhone screen
- As smartphones continue to rise in popularity, the need to screencast smartphones just keeps going up. There's so much effort putting into app development as well as mobile friendly websites. So creating marketing and educational content around this just keeps increasing. Early on, it was impossible to record phones or tablets. They had to be jail-broken or hacked to get things out but over time, different manufacturers have made this easier and easier. Right now for example, on your iPhone, screen recording is built in by default. What you could do is power up your phone, just to simply open it up. And then from the upper corner, drag from the right corner down to open up the notification settings. You'll likely see a record button down here that you could tap. If you don't see that button, you just need to go under your system preferences. So you can go in here, go to the option for control center and scroll through the list. If screen recording isn't already in the list, you'll find it in the bottom here and you just need to tap the plus button to add it to the list of available tools. Now it's really simple, just drag from the upper right corner down and tap the record button. It'll give you a small countdown so you know what's happening. Now there's a record light. And if you go out to the top level, you'll see things like the upper right corner is lit up. Also unusually it may not show the correct time. Now you might see some extra information in there depending upon the version of the iPhone operating system you're using but in general, you'll see a red indicator light. Not all things can be recorded. For example, the screen recording option is really for recording screens and not so much audio or recording phone calls. Now, anything I do is going to be visible. So for example, if we go into the LinkedIn application and I open it up, you'll see that it becomes visible. So I could tap and go to my profile for example and you see how I'm recording the contents of the screen. This is great so that I could walk people through maybe how to connect with me on LinkedIn or how to post or share a story. This allows me to create tutorial content about a mobile app or a website. And that works quite nicely when you're all done, swipe from the upper corner and just stop the record button. It'll take a second, but it gives you a notice that it was recorded to your photo's role. If you tap, you'll see it and you can now review the movie and simply watch it. It's a little confusing because it's a movie of your screen but you could drag through or press the play button to get a pretty good idea. Also, you'll find it inside of your movies folder there for photos, tap to share it and you can easily send that to something like your Mac Book via Airplay. Now, this is fine and good but what about if you want to record it on the computer? Well, that's possible too. What you're going to need to do is make sure you're connected with a lightning cable that goes directly into the computer. I have experienced that some third-party cables don't work. So you might try unplugging and replugging or go with one that is actually been certified by Apple whether that be an Apple branded one or one that has the approved for iOS or iPhone label on it that comes as the official Apple logo. Now, what you could do is launch quick time. Now I've got quick time open here. And what else we'll do is choose file new movie recording. Here's what's really cool, you could actually select your iPhone. Now I'm seeing the content right here on my Mac and I can even go full screen like this to minimize. I'll pull the record features off to the side and just click Record. You'll notice that it's also recording my audio. So if I wanted to do something simple like, hey, you can go into photos and let's take a look at an image here and I'll navigate to a recent picture, tap to open and we could click to edit. And notice how simple this is allowing us to create an easy demonstration. Everything is being recorded that we've made and it's all going right to the computer. On our computer when I click Stop, the new movie file is created and it's like any other movie on your computer ready for editing or posting. This gives you great source material. Another thing you could do instead of going into the computer is take advantage of Apples adapter. They have an adapter that will go from lightning to the HDMI port. Lightning is the standard cable that's used on most iOS devices at this time. This will also work tablets. Simply connect that and then take it into the HDMI external recorder. Notice that it does appear on the screen. The only thing to keep in mind is that certain apps particularly those that show photos or video may treat the HDMI port as a full screen playback but most other apps, including games and websites and everything else will simply pass the screen signal out over the HDMI port which can be run to a projector or a dedicated recorder like you're seeing here. Most of the time, I rely upon the software option to capture the screen but if I need greater control or I want to see it on a larger screen as I'm working, the ability to connect and run it into the computer is very useful. But having that dedicated lightening to HDMI adapter is a great fallback particularly if you need to use external recording or external monitoring as part of your screencasting.
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