In principle sharing a screen capture video without specialist software is easy but controlling sound from a microphone with computer audio from a DAW or similar is far better if audio is captured as multitrack. Luke Goddard details a way of capturing multitrack audio on a Mac without any additional software. Quicktime for Mac has a trick up its sleeve to help those making screen recordings for the web.

There are a few different approaches to doing screen recording for web videos, but the perennial question has always been how to capture high quality audio in the process.

Words And Pictures

Two workflows available to us are to use a loopback enabled audio interface such as the Audient EVO 4, or to capture discrete audio channels to a second system or field recorder to mix later.

Without using loopback, my workflow up until recently had been the alternative of using a field recorder while capturing picture to Quicktime. I had also been recording my headphone mix into my MacBook's minijack input to Quicktime purely as a placeholder track to help with sync.

New Gear, New Workflow

Recently, I gained a newer MacBook Pro 12.1 with a 3.5mm port that does not support TRS stereo input. This wasn't a problem, as I opted instead to play the DAW out of the minijack into 1 + 2 on a desktop interface feeding Quicktime instead. Assuming stereo only into Quicktime, I could then send my placeholder DAW track to the recorder for the voiceover to be added to it…

Did You Know This?

Capturing stereo audio for screen recordings is Quicktime’s default with a 2 channel interface, but its functionality goes beyond that… As it turns out, when Quicktime sees a multichannel interface it records polywavs, allowing the user to mix tracks in the edit. Some of you may have come across this useful feature in QT, but for me it was a welcome surprise!

Could It Improve Your Workflow?

Capturing polywavs means that while some audio still takes one trip through the DA-AD and back, working this way does speed up workflow by negating the use of a field recorder. If your DAW audio has to navigate a minijack connection with this setup (as mine does), running the signal at full level is comparable with a balanced connection for signal-to-noise performance on my system. This is the only potential snag nicely eliminated. In the video I show you how well this can work.