🎬 Recording

PixWit provides professional recording features: region recording and fullscreen recording, real-time annotation while recording, PIP camera, system sound and microphone recorded separately, and direct output to MP4 / MKV / GIF. By default, press F3 to start recording and press it again to stop; F4 pauses / resumes.

Starting a Recording

Three entry points

Entry point	Action
Main window	Click Record Screen on the toolbar (same as pressing F3)
Hotkey	Press F3 to start recording, press F3 again to stop
Tray	First set the left / middle / right click action to "Start/Stop Recording" (Settings → General settings → System tray click action), then click the tray icon to start/stop

Two recording scopes

Choose one in Settings → Recording settings → 🎯 Recording mode:

• Region recording (default): first drag a selection box to define the area, then click "Start Recording" on the toolbar; while recording you can still switch between the two scopes from the toolbar.
• Fullscreen recording: records the screen the mouse is on directly (only that one screen, not all screens stitched together).

Screenshot / recording switcher

The screenshot toolbar has a Screenshot/Recording switch button (hover tooltip Switch to recording mode) that lets you switch between screenshot and recording; the button is not shown in the edit window. After switching to recording mode, the toolbar shows only the recording trio: Region/Fullscreen, Video/GIF, Start Recording.

3-second countdown

After you click start there is a 3-second countdown:

• A semi-transparent black circle + digit appears in the center of the screen;
• The text "Recording is about to start..." appears at the bottom;
• During the countdown the mouse clicks pass through, so you can keep working in other applications.

⚠️ Esc does not work during the countdown. If you change your mind, press F3 again, or click the recording button in the main window to cancel.

📷 Illustration placeholder (Figure 1)

3-second countdown — showing the semi-transparent black circle with the digit in the center of the screen and the "Recording is about to start..." text at the bottom To add the image: put the file at docs/public/images/recording-countdown.webp, then delete this tip block and uncomment the next line

Status Indicators While Recording

Scenario	Indicator
Region recording	Red blinking L-shaped corner marks appear at the four corners of the recorded area (they turn green when paused); the toolbar status text goes ⚪ Ready to record → 🔴 Recording 00:00:00 → ⏸️ Paused → ⏳ Processing...
Fullscreen recording	A red blinking border runs around the screen (it turns solid green when paused), along with a floating control window
Tray	A balloon pops up saying "Region recording started / Fullscreen recording started" and reminding you to "press F3 again to stop recording"; the tray tooltip becomes PixWit - 🔴 Recording (press F3 to stop)

📷 Illustration placeholder (Figure 2)

Region recording corner marks and control window — ideally shown in one frame: the red L-shaped corner marks at the four corners of the region recording plus the toolbar status text, and the fullscreen recording floating control window (duration and FPS) To add the image: put the file at docs/public/images/recording-control.webp, then delete this tip block and uncomment the next line

Control During Recording

Pause and stop

Action	Entry point
Pause / Resume	Hotkey F4 (only works while recording), the buttons in the fullscreen control window, the region recording toolbar button, the tray menu "⏸️ Pause Recording / ▶️ Resume Recording"
Stop	Hotkey F3, "Stop" in the fullscreen control window, "Stop Recording" on the region recording toolbar, the tray menu "⏹ Stop Recording"

Time spent paused is not counted toward the recording length, and neither picture nor sound is captured while paused.

The fullscreen recording floating control window

• Shows the pause / resume and stop buttons, the elapsed time 00:00:00 and the live frame rate FPS: actual/target (percentage).
• Clicking the ✕ in the top-right corner while recording asks for confirmation first; confirming stops the recording and discards it.
• UI such as the red frame around the screen and the floating control window is not captured in the video.

Processing after you stop

Once you stop, a "Processing / Processing the recording file, please wait..." dialog appears first; after muxing or transcoding finishes, you move on to the save flow.

What Esc does while recording

While recording, pressing Esc only exits the annotation tools and restores mouse click-through; it does not stop the recording. To stop, use F3 (the recording key toggles start and stop) or click "Stop" on the recording control toolbar.

Mouse and Keystroke Overlays (Recording Effects)

Settings → Recording settings → Recording effects:

Setting	Default	Effect
Show mouse click position while recording	On	Draws an orange expanding ring where you click — visible in the video only, never on screen
Show pressed keys while recording	Off	Pressed keys appear bottom center of the frame (blue text on a black background, up to 3 at the same time, fading out after about 1.5 seconds)
Show mouse cursor while recording	On	The video includes the mouse cursor
Show hotkey hint window during fullscreen recording	On	Shows the hotkey hint window during fullscreen recording
Show control toolbar during fullscreen recording (not captured)	On	Fullscreen recording shows the control toolbar, and that toolbar is not captured in the video

Annotating While Recording

The annotation tools are reached slightly differently on the two recording paths:

Path	Available buttons
Region recording (selection toolbar)	Restore mouse click-through (press Esc), line annotation, arrow annotation, circle annotation, rectangle annotation, undo annotation
Fullscreen recording (control window)	Pen, line, arrow, circle, rectangle, undo, style (color and thickness)

Default hotkeys (registered only while recording)

Hotkey	Function
Alt+I	Draw a line
Alt+J	Draw an arrow
Alt+O	Draw a circle
Alt+K	Draw a rectangle
Alt+Esc	Exit annotation (restore mouse click-through)

These hotkeys are registered only while a recording is in progress and stop working once it ends; you can change them in Settings → Hotkey Settings → 🎨 Recording annotation hotkeys, where "Restore Defaults" resets them all in one click.

Key points

• When no annotation tool is selected, mouse clicks pass straight through, so your work in other applications is unaffected; select a tool and you can start drawing on the screen.
• Hold Shift with the circle / rectangle tool to constrain it to a perfect circle / square; press Esc to cancel the current annotation tool and restore mouse click-through.
• The area occupied by the control toolbar is an exclusion zone — you cannot annotate on top of it.
• Mouse clicks and keystroke overlays during recording also end up in the video.
• If Allow screenshot while recording is ticked under 📸 Screenshot while recording, no annotation window is created during recording — in other words, you cannot annotate while recording (this option is off by default).

PIP Camera

• Switch: Recording settings → 📹 Camera (PIP) → Enable PIP (fullscreen recording only), off by default; ticking it automatically switches to fullscreen recording (region recording does not support PIP).
• Selecting a device: click 🔍 Detect camera first, pick the device in the dropdown (the first entry is "Do not use camera"), then verify the picture with 👁️ Preview camera.
• Position: while recording the camera picture is fixed in the bottom-right corner of the recorded screen (320px wide, with the height following the camera aspect ratio); left-drag the preview window to move it, and that position is the position in the final video. The camera resolution is picked automatically for the best result.
• Failure messages (verbatim):
  • No camera detected, so PIP recording cannot be enabled. Please connect a camera and try again
  • Camera warm-up failed, so PIP recording cannot be started
  • Cannot start the camera, PIP recording failed. Please check whether the camera is in use by another program

📷 Illustration placeholder (Figure 3)

PIP camera — showing the 320px-wide camera preview window in the bottom-right corner and the "Detect camera / Preview camera" buttons in Recording settings To add the image: put the file at docs/public/images/recording-camera-pip.webp, then delete this tip block and uncomment the next line

Audio

The audio source is a four-way choice in Recording settings → 🔊 Recording sound (there is no dialog asking you to pick one on the first recording):

Option	Description
Muted (no sound)	Records no audio at all
System sound (recommended)	The default option, records what the computer plays
Microphone	Records the microphone only
System sound + Microphone	Records both tracks at once; the "🔉 Volume control" group only appears in this case

• GIF is forced to mute: with the GIF format the sound is forced to "Muted" (GIF does not support audio); switching back to MP4 / MKV automatically selects "System sound" again.
• Volume control: system sound defaults to 100% and the microphone to 150%, with a range of 0–500%.
• Detect microphone / Recording test / Play: once a device is detected you can record a 2-second clip to listen back and confirm the microphone works.
• Permission hint: if the system has not granted microphone access, PixWit tells you to turn on access in Windows Settings > Privacy and security > Microphone and allow desktop apps to use it.

No sound in your recording?

First check whether "Recording sound" is set to "Muted"; with "System sound + Microphone" you can adjust each of the two tracks separately under "🔉 Volume control".

Output Format and Quality

Setting	Options	Description
📼 Output format	MP4 video (recommended, best compatibility) / MKV video (advanced, more reliable) / GIF animation	MP4 by default
🎬 Video quality	Sharp (larger files, best quality, CRF 18) / Balanced (recommended, CRF 23) / Compressed (smallest files, CRF 28)	Balanced by default; the group still applies to GIF, where it decides the palette size and dithering
🎞️ Frame rate	1–120 fps, 15 by default; presets 6 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 30 / 60 fps	Disable adaptive frame rate (force the configured frame rate) is off by default; while recording the FPS: actual/target readout reflects performance, and optimization advice appears when too many frames are dropped
🎨 GIF advanced settings	⚡ Fast mode (default, finishes the moment you stop) / 🎬 Standard mode (processed after stopping, better quality) / 🎨 Best quality (two-pass palette analysis)	Shown only when GIF is selected
⚙️ Encoding and performance	Prefer hardware encoding (recommended, lowers CPU usage) on by default; 🔍 Detect available encoders	Shows the recommended encoder (such as h264_nvenc (NVIDIA GPU acceleration)); when hardware encoding is unavailable it falls back to CPU encoding automatically. If you run into corrupted frames / a black screen / a failure to start, turn hardware encoding off

Other Recording-Related Behavior

• Segmented recording: long recordings are split automatically into 10-minute segments and merged when you stop; there is no switch for this in the UI. If merging fails you get Video segment merging failed, and the post-stop processing simply takes longer.
• Low-spec mode (Settings → General settings): caps the recording frame rate at 10fps and turns off the mouse click and keystroke overlays.
• The first time you record, PixWit prompts you to download the video encoding component (about 94MB); it is a one-time download and works offline afterwards.

Finishing a Recording

1. A save dialog opens (titled Save Video or Save GIF).
   • The default file name is built from the prefix (default PixWit_Recording) in Saving settings + the separator (default _) + a timestamp;
   • The default directory is the last folder you saved to, or the desktop.
2. When saving finishes, a Recording complete dialog appears with the full path and three buttons:
   • ▶️ Open (🖼️ Open for GIF, which also copies the path to the clipboard)
   • ✂️ Edit
   • 📂 Open folder
3. Clicking ✂️ Edit opens the Edit audio/video window for a video (6 tabs: ✂️ Trim / 🗜️ Compress / ⚡ Speed / 🔄 Convert / 🎙️ Dub / 🔪 Audio split) and the Edit GIF animation window for a GIF (4 tabs: Trim / Speed / Resize / Frame editing).
4. If you click Cancel in the save dialog, the temporary files from this recording are deleted.

Further reading: Complete video editing tutorial.

Recording Settings Quick Reference

Entry point: right-click the tray icon → Settings... → 🎥 Recording settings (11 groups in total).

Group	Main settings	Default
🎯 Recording mode	Region recording / Fullscreen recording	Region recording
⚙️ Encoding and performance	Prefer hardware encoding, detect available encoders	Hardware encoding first
Recording effects	Mouse cursor, mouse click position, keystrokes, fullscreen hotkey hints, fullscreen control toolbar	All on except keystrokes
📹 Camera (PIP)	Enable PIP, select camera, detect / preview	Off
📸 Screenshot while recording	Allow screenshot while recording	Off
📼 Output format	MP4 / MKV / GIF	MP4
🎨 GIF advanced settings	Fast / Standard / Best quality	Fast mode
🎬 Video quality	Sharp / Balanced / Compressed	Balanced
🎞️ Frame rate	Frame rate value and presets, disable adaptive frame rate	15 fps
🔊 Recording sound	Muted / System sound / Microphone / System sound + Microphone	System sound
🔉 Volume control	System sound, microphone (shown only when both are recorded)	100% / 150%

Don't forget to click "Apply" or "OK"

Changes on the Recording settings page are only saved after you click Apply or OK at the bottom of Settings; clicking "Cancel" discards them.

📷 Illustration placeholder (Figure 4)

Recording settings page — showing the groups for recording mode, encoding and performance, recording effects, camera, output format, GIF, frame rate, sound and so on To add the image: put the file at docs/public/images/recording-settings.webp, then delete this tip block and uncomment the next line

Clarifying Outdated Tutorial Claims

Outdated claim	What the manual actually does
"The first recording prompts you to choose an audio source: microphone only / system sound only / mixed / muted"	❌ No such first-run dialog exists. The four options are Muted / System sound (default) / Microphone / System sound + Microphone, chosen in Settings → Recording settings → 🔊 Recording sound
"Recording has no 3-second countdown"	❌ Clicking start gives you a 3-second countdown (semi-transparent black circle with a digit in the center of the screen, "Recording is about to start..." at the bottom, mouse clicks pass through)
"Esc cancels the countdown"	❌ Esc does not work during the countdown; to back out, press F3 again or click the recording button in the main window
"The camera cannot be used while recording"	❌ The PIP camera is supported (fullscreen recording only); it is off by default and ticking it switches to fullscreen recording automatically
The entry point is written as "tray → Recording settings"	❌ It is always Settings → Recording settings (right-click the tray icon → Settings...)
"The pause / stop hotkeys are F6 / F7"	❌ The defaults are F4 pause / resume (only while recording) and F3 start / stop; change them in Settings → Hotkey Settings

Related Pages

• Complete video editing tutorial — edit audio/video, compress, change speed, convert formats, edit GIF animations
• Hotkey reference — all global hotkeys and recording annotation hotkeys