Features That Definitely Deserve Your Attention
If you google something like “best video recording software” or “best screen recording software”, you will find multiple listicles that provide pros and cons for every application they list.
That does not make your choice easier as more often than not they compare apples with pears.
Before we started to develop dadan, we sat together and went through the most popular screen and video recording features. We asked ourselves how to select the essentials. In this blog post, we want to share with you a few insights.
Simple or Feature-Rich: Think of Your Use Cases
If you only need a video recording software for a single purpose, look for simplicity. Especially, if you need it to produce video messages. In other words, video communication requires rather a fast response and interactivity than a functionality for making Hollywood movies.
Indeed, a feature-rich video recording software is not necessarily complicated and unintuitive. However, most of the time, a big amount of features per se imposes some complexity. At some point, this amount may become an overkill.
Webcam Recording
Nowadays, the main operating systems – Microsoft Windows and macOS – offer an integrated screen recording feature. But they do not allow you to record your webcam. Indeed, you want more than just an anonymous video of your screen. Thus, make sure your new tool can do it.
Traditional Video Editing
Under traditional video editing we understand several basic features that directors used to use on the analogue footage: cutting, trimming, glueing footage together. The last one is not essential for recording your screen as you are not shooting outside in stormy weather or engaging professional actors for a difficult scene.
Screen recording happens in a cozy office where you know what to expect and do not require advanced editing afterwards. However, basic video editing is essential to prevent you from recording the same piece more than once.
Zoom-In and Out
Quite often, you realize that an important detail must stand out but do not want to re-make the whole recording. A feature that allows you to zoom in and out spares you this. Just enlarge a space on your screen to provide your viewers with a closer look.
Selecting an Area to Be Recorded
Instead of editing your screen recording afterwards, look for the software that allows you to select a certain area on your screen before recording it.
This feature also comes in handy if you do not want to record in the full-screen mode for the sake of resolution or privacy reasons. It spares you the necessity to trim your screen recording.
Annotation (Screen Write) Feature
Sometimes, zooming in may be not enough to draw the attention of your viewers to certain things. That’s where annotation tools come into play.
These features allow you to add new layers to your video recording. Video annotation tools vary in their complexity. Most of the time, with a screen write feature, you want to emphasize some details or enable your viewers to interact with the video to hold their attention longer.
Interactive Features
A simple screen recording is not worth installing a new tool. But with such a video recording tool as dadan, you can enrich your video with interactive elements. These can be questions or quizzes that need to be answered or CTA buttons.
Smileys and other ways to provide feedback and express emotion are great for video communication and a must for your screen recording tool.
Integrated Cloud Storage for Collaboration
Many tools will just generate a video file with your recording. That means that you either bear a risk of data loss by storing it on your hard drive or have to arrange a cloud storage.
Look at the tools that directly save your video into a managed cloud.
Only a video recording software with a managed cloud can be used for collaboration as you cannot provide access to any files stored locally on your hard drive.
Access Control
Apart from sharing, you want to be able to restrict access, too. When you have a lot of collaborators or want to share your recording only with people who subscribed and paid for your content, role-based access control is a very helpful feature. It allows you to assign control rights to groups, saving you a lot of time.
Desktop or Browser Extension
A browser extension has the major advantage of not being bound to a PC. On the other hand, a lot of people love desktop applications as they do not want to get lost among multiple open tabs in their browsers.
Remember that a desktop application needs more CPU than a browser-based one. However, with dadan this should not be a problem at all as it consumes just a tiny bit of your computer’s power.
Your Budget and Payment Commitment
As many apps are subscription-based, you should decide if you want to commit yourself to long-term payments. Once you cancel your subscription, your cloud-stored videos may become inaccessible. Even if you manage to store them locally before quitting from payments, some editing, sharing, and other features may obviously stop working.
Try out Dadan for free and decide later if you want to upgrade it to the power use plan.
