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Screencastify: Record Smaller Files, Get Better Results

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Screencastify has been an essential tool for us this school year. Creating screencasts with this tool is easy. And best yet, they load right to Google Drive for simple sharing!

However, this tool (as with many others) may require some tweaking. Let's look at a couple of ways to get better results.

Understanding Screencastify

In order for Screencastify to record videos in the way it does, it must record using the hardware on the device until the recording is complete. Once the recording has finished, the video is automatically uploaded to Google Drive and removed from the device. This process means that Screencastify will never fill up the hard drive on your device. Of course, it also means that your device has to have enough space available depending on the length of video you intend to record. The best thing you can do is to keep your Chromebook's hard drive clear of any files that are not essential. Generally, you just need to keep your Downloads folder empty.

Speed and Storage

If you are experiencing speed and storage issues where your Chromebook is lagging or you receive warnings about limited storage space, then these setting adjustments may help. First, remove any unnecessary files from your downloads folder. Then, you may proceed to change your Screencastify settings.

         

Lower Resolution

  1. Open Screencastify as if to record video
  2. Click on the gear at the upper-right
  3. Choose Limit Resolution
  4. Select 720p (1280x720)
This setting change will produce a video with less resolution but will maintain high quality and, ultimately a smaller file size.


Quality vs. file size

The next adjustment to make is turning on Hardware encoding and setting the file size to the smallest setting.
  1. Again, open Screencastify as if to record
  2. Click on the "hamburger" menu (top-left)
  3. Choose Options
  4. Scroll to the bottom of the page
  5. Under Advanced turn on Hardware encoding
  6. Click on Quality vs. file size
  7. Choose Record with lowest quality (create smallest files)


Results

With these settings, I have witnessed extremely large videos reduce in file size by a factor of 10. Wow! And, by generating small files, your processor should not have to work as hard, therefore, you may experience a slight boost in speed. 

Note there are a lot of factors that contribute to the quality of a video such as your device, bandwidth, number of windows and tabs, etc. For that reason, it is best to experiment with your settings as there is no "one size fits all" solution. 

I hope these settings will get you closer to a solution that works for you today. 


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