Video is blurry, stutters or drops frames EN

If your recordings are blurry, blocky, choppy or drop frames, your computer's video encoder is struggling to keep up with the settings you have chosen. Four settings control how much work Rekorder asks of it, and they live together under the Rekorder toolbar icon, in Settings, on the Video tab: Encoder preference, Quality, Frame rate and Resolution.

Change them one at a time, in this order, and test a short recording after each change before moving to the next:

1. Encoder preference. If this has been changed away from Auto (recommended), set it back to Auto. Auto lets Rekorder pick whichever supported format your computer can encode fastest; forcing a specific format (WEBM or MP4) can push your computer onto a slower, software-only path even when a faster one is available. This costs nothing in visual quality, so it is worth ruling out first. See Encoder preference and when to change it.
2. Quality. Lower it from High to Medium or Low. Quality controls the video bitrate, and on a computer that encodes video in software rather than in hardware, a lower bitrate directly reduces the work the encoder does for every frame - often the single biggest fix for stutter, for a comparatively small drop in picture quality.
3. Frame rate. Lower it (for example from 60 to 30, or from 30 to 24 or 15). Fewer frames per second means less work for both the capture pipeline and the encoder each second, at the cost of less smooth motion.
4. Resolution. Lower it last (for example from 1080p to 720p). It has the most visible effect on clarity, but it also cuts the number of pixels the encoder has to process for every frame.

For a full explanation of what each of the resolution, frame rate and quality options does, see Resolution, frame rate and quality explained.

If a camera effect is on

A blurred or virtual camera background is handled by a separate setting, Effects quality, which is unrelated to the four settings above and only matters while a camera effect is active. See Effects quality, the device benchmark and CPU fallback.

Related articles

• Resolution, frame rate and quality explained
• Encoder preference and when to change it
• Effects quality, the device benchmark and CPU fallback
• Make Rekorder fast on an older laptop