How to Record Your Desktop with VLC

How to record your desktop with VLC is the tutorial for your PC. Check it out and you will see!
All right…enough of bad poetry. Here’s how to record your desktop or a part of your PC desktop. The same method will unfortunately not work with Macs and computers other than PC.


Step 1. Open your VLC player and click its “Media” menu. Select “Convert/Save”.

selecting „Convert/Save” from VLC player’s „Media” menu

Step 2. Click the “Capture Device” tab and, from the “Capture” mode box, select “Desktop”.

selecting „Desktop” from „Capture” mode box of VLC player

Step 3. The default frame rate is one frame per second. It’s clearly not enough. If you want a decent screen recording, change this rate to anything above 15 frames per second.

changing the frame rate of screen recording in VLC player

Step 4. Now click the “Convert/Save” button and, in “Destination” section, set a destination of the saved file. For instance, we’ll want to save our ready file on our desktop.

setting the destination for VLC player’s screen recording

Step 5. Click the “Edit” button on the right of the “Profile” box. Now you can adjust your video resolution. Pick your video codec.

choosing the resolution of screen recording in VLC player

Step 6. VLC will allow you to do only video recording of your desktop, without audio. If you want to use audio, you have to check other HowTech tutorials on using Camtasia.
Step 7. Click the “Save” button to save your setting and click the “Start” button to start recording the video. Also you can select the profile from the “Profile” box and use it.

saving the screen recording settings in VLC player

Step 8. You can proceed with performing the actions that you wanted to record – your VLC is doing the recording job.
Step 9. When you’re through, click the “Stop” button.

clicking the „Stop” button to stop the video recording   process

Result: Let’s open now the saved file to check our recording. Great! You’ve just learned how to record the desktop of your PC with VLC.