Record your screen

Applies to: Photo Date Rescue for Windows, version 3.0.4. Last verified: 28 July 2026. Every statement on this page was checked against the shipping 3.0.4 build. If you are on an older or newer version, the behavior may differ — check What’s new for changes.

This page is the reference we cite from our comparison table. Each capability below has its own permanent link, so a claim about PDR can always be traced to the paragraph that supports it. Where the answer is “no” or “only partly”, this page says so in the same words the comparison uses.

One thing to be clear about before any of the detail, because it decides whether the rest of this page is even relevant to you:

• PDR is not a screen-recording product. It is a photo and video library tool that records the screen so that what you record lands in your library alongside everything else, dated and searchable.
• OBS, Camtasia, ScreenPal and Loom are screen-recording products. On most rows below they do more than we do, and where that is true this page says so rather than leaving you to find out.

If you are choosing a tool to produce tutorial videos for a living, choose one of theirs. If you want a quick recording that is filed, dated and findable next to your photos without a second application and without anything leaving your computer, that is the case PDR is built for.

On the free trial, capture is limited to 20 screenshots and 5 screen recordings. Those are lifetime counts on the device, not per-session ones.

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At a glance

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Starting, stopping and surviving a crash

Yes, and this is the row PDR is strongest on. Recording is deliberately two-stage. Pressing the record button in the title bar opens a floating bar but captures nothing; you set up your display, area, microphone and camera there, and only then press Record. A recording you set up at 9:00 and started at 9:07 is timestamped 9:07.

While recording, the video is written to disk continuously in one-second pieces rather than being held in memory until you stop. Pause and resume both work, and paused time is excluded from the clock. Pressing Stop does not immediately end anything: it pauses and offers Save, Discard, or Keep recording, so a mis-click cannot destroy a take. Discarding leaves the bar up and ready for another attempt.

If PDR quits or crashes mid-recording, the work is not lost. On quit, whatever has been written is flushed to a temporary file. On the next launch PDR finds any orphaned recordings, converts them, and files them in your library.

Two failure modes that are silent

• If the disk fills while you are recording, you are not told. The pieces that cannot be written are dropped, the timer keeps counting, and the recording looks healthy until you play it back. This is a defect and it is logged as one.
• Blur can be lost in crash recovery. Blur regions are applied when the file is converted, not while you record. If that conversion fails during recovery after a crash, the recovered file is saved without the blur, and nothing tells you. If you blurred something sensitive and PDR crashed, check the recovered file before you share it.

There is no countdown before recording begins. Pressing Record starts capture immediately.

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Choosing what appears on screen

A whole display, or a region of it. Not a window and not a browser tab. You can pick any connected monitor from a dropdown, and you can draw a region with a Snipping-Tool-style overlay. Hold Ctrl while you drag and the box snaps to the edges of the windows underneath it, which is the quickest way to frame one application neatly; let go of Ctrl and it drags freely. The overlay tells you so along the bottom. It is worth being clear that this snaps the selection box — nothing moves the PDR window itself — and that it is framing, not sourcing: the underlying capture is always the whole display, cropped afterwards.

What that means in practice

• You cannot record one application and have it stay recorded when it moves or is covered. If another window is dragged over your region, it is in the recording. Dedicated recorders capture a window as a source and do not have this problem.
• You cannot record a specific browser tab as a source.
• The mouse pointer cannot be turned off. It is always in the recording.
• The display and region cannot be changed once recording has started. Those controls are hidden as soon as you press Record.

The webcam side is the exception

The camera bubble is the one part of this row where PDR does more than the minimum. You can run up to two cameras at once, each in a circle, square or rectangle, dragged anywhere on screen and resized freely. Either camera can have its background blurred, pixelated or replaced — with a bundled scene, a color, or any picture of your own — and that runs entirely on your machine, with no service involved. A cam-only mode covers the desktop so the recording shows just the camera. The camera can be toggled during a recording; it has its own hotkey.

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Choosing and controlling your audio

Both sources, mutable independently. No mixing desk. PDR records the computer’s own sound without needing a virtual audio driver or any other software installed — a genuine convenience, because on Windows that is often the fiddliest part of setting a recorder up. Your microphone is off by default and is opt-in; when it is on and you have more than one, you can choose which. The two are mixed into one track.

Once recording, system sound and microphone each have their own live mute button, so you can silence a notification chime or step away mid-take without stopping.

Limitations

• There are no level or balance controls. The two sources are mixed at equal weight and there is no gain, slider or meter anywhere in the product. If your microphone is quiet against the system sound, you fix that in Windows or afterwards, not here.
• There is no monitoring. You cannot hear what is being captured while you capture it.
• System sound is the whole desktop, not one application. You cannot capture the audio of a single program.
• If Windows blocks system-sound capture, the recording continues without it rather than failing. That is the right behavior for not losing a take, but it does mean a silent recording is possible without a warning at the time.

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Controlling the output file

You choose quality. You do not choose anything else. Recordings are saved as MP4 — H.264 video, AAC audio, arranged so the file starts playing without loading the whole thing — which is about as widely playable as a video file gets. Four quality settings are offered (Tiny, Compact, Standard, High), they can be changed while you set up, and Standard is the default.

Nothing is uploaded. There is no account, no hosting, no share link and no server involved at any point. The file is written to your Library Drive and indexed into your local database, and that is the whole journey. If your Library Drive is not connected, the recording is held locally and filed when it comes back.

Limitations

• The frame rate is fixed at 30. There is no 60 fps option, which matters for anything with fast motion.
• The resolution is whatever your display is. You cannot ask for 1080p from a 4K monitor; the Tiny quality setting scales down, but that is a side effect of the preset rather than a resolution control.
• You cannot choose the folder. Recordings always go to PDR Captures on the Library Drive, in a folder for the month. This is deliberate — it is how they end up in your library rather than lost in Downloads — but it is not a choice.
• The codec, container and audio bitrate are fixed. There is no option for another format.
• If conversion fails, you get the raw recording instead. It is saved rather than lost, and you are told — but it will be a WebM file, and if you had blur regions they will not have been applied.

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Keeping things out of the recording

You can blur a region while recording. That is the whole of it. Pressing Blur pauses the recording and lets you draw a box over the live screen; the region is blurred in the saved file from that moment. You can have several regions, and you can close one and open another as you go. PDR’s own recording bar and camera bubbles are protected from capture, so they never appear in your footage.

Blur is applied when the file is saved, not while you record. That has one consequence worth stating: the raw material held on disk during the recording is unblurred, and the blur only exists in the finished MP4. Under normal use you never see the intermediate file, but see the crash-recovery warning above.

What PDR does not do

• It cannot exclude a window. There is no way to say “never record this application”. If it is on the display, it is in the recording.
• It does not silence notifications. PDR makes no attempt to turn on Focus Assist or Do Not Disturb before recording. A message banner that arrives mid-take will be in the file. Turn notifications off in Windows yourself first.
• It does not detect anything sensitive for you. There is no automatic blurring of faces, names, addresses or on-screen text. Every blur is one you drew.
• There is no audio redaction. You can mute a source live; you cannot remove something already recorded.

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Running it repeatedly, and what it costs the machine

Only partly, and this is the weakest row on the page. What works in your favour: the bar stays up after you discard a take, so a second attempt does not mean starting from the title bar again; camera and cam-only mode toggle mid-recording; there is no limit on how long a recording can be or how large the file gets, beyond your disk; and an optional auto-zoom eases the finished video toward wherever you click.

Against that

• There is no hotkey to start or stop a recording. The title-bar button is the only way in and the floating bar the only way out. There is a hotkey for screenshots and one for the camera bubble, but not for recording itself. If you record often, this is the thing you will notice first.
• There is no countdown. Recording begins the instant you press the button.
• There is no hardware encoding. Conversion is done on the processor, at the fastest and lowest-quality setting available, deliberately — the alternative took around two minutes to convert a six-second clip on an older machine. Recorders that use your graphics card will produce a better file for the same effort.
• There is no dropped-frame reporting. If the machine cannot keep up, the recording will show it and nothing will have told you.
• The click-highlight feature is present but switched off. The button exists in the interface markup and is hidden, because the mouse hook it needed added too much lag to ship. It does nothing in 3.0.4. We would rather say that than leave it looking available.

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Operating it without a mouse, and knowing what it is doing

State is shown clearly. Keyboard-only operation is untested, so we do not claim it. While recording, the title-bar button becomes a pulsing red square and its description changes to “Stop recording”; the floating bar shows a red dot, an elapsed timer and the file size as it grows; during a pause the timer turns gold and reads “Paused”. You are never left guessing whether it is running.

Errors are shown as readable messages rather than being swallowed. If the camera cannot start, you are told to check Windows camera privacy settings and told that the recording itself is unaffected. If conversion fails, you are told the recording was saved but the blur could not be applied.

Where we stop short

• We have not tested PDR’s recorder with a screen reader or by keyboard alone, so this page will not tell you it works. Reading the code tells us the controls are ordinary buttons with descriptions on them; it does not tell us the experience is usable, and only trying it would. When we have tested it, this paragraph will say what we found.
• The floating bar is a separate always-on-top window, which is exactly the sort of thing that causes keyboard-focus trouble. Treat it as unverified.
• Recording state is visual only. There is no announcement for a screen reader when recording starts, pauses or stops.
• There are no captions and no transcript. PDR can transcribe audio elsewhere in the product, but nothing connects that to a screen recording.

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Running two cameras, and switching between them and the desktop

Yes, and the switching happens live. PDR runs up to two cameras at once, each on its own device, each in a circle, square or rectangle you can drag anywhere and resize. Both are independent: either can be turned on or off on its own, and that works while the recording is running, not just while you are setting it up. Alongside them is cam-only mode, which drops an opaque cover over the desktop so the recording shows nothing but the camera — and that too can be switched on and back off mid-take. So a single recording can move between the desktop, the desktop with one or both faces on it, and the faces alone, without stopping. With one camera showing, cam-only fills the screen; with two, they sit side by side.

To do it

1. Pick your camera device, or devices, in the floating bar before you press Record, and position and size each bubble where you want it.
2. Press Record.
3. Use the camera buttons on the recording bar at any point during the take to bring a camera in or take it out. The camera also has its own hotkey.
4. Use cam-only when you want the desktop out of the picture, and press it again to bring the desktop back. The change is animated rather than an instant cut.

Limitations

• The desktop is always the underlying source. The cameras sit on top of it, and cam-only works by covering the desktop rather than by promoting a camera to be the main picture. In practice the finished recording looks the same; it matters if you expected a true production switcher.
• You cannot change which screen you are recording once you have started. The display is chosen while the bar is armed and is fixed for that take. See choosing what appears on screen.
• There is no picture-in-picture layout chooser. Two cameras in cam-only mode always split the screen in half. You cannot make one large and one small.

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Blurring or replacing what is behind you

Yes, and nothing leaves the machine to do it. The camera bubble separates you from your room on your own computer and puts whatever you choose behind you — a blur of the real room, a stronger portrait-style blur, a mosaic for privacy, a plain or textured backdrop, one of the supplied scenes, or a picture of your own. Nothing is uploaded, and the part that does the separating ships inside PDR rather than being fetched when you use it, so it works with no connection at all. The webcam section covers the rest of what the bubble does.

To do it

1. Turn the camera on in the floating bar before you press Record.
2. Choose a background — blur, portrait blur, mosaic, a plain or textured backdrop, a supplied scene, or your own picture.
3. Check the bubble against your real lighting before you start, because this is the one setting whose result you can judge only by looking at it.

Limitations

• The edge between you and the background is good, not perfect. Hair and anything translucent can show fringing. Awkward lighting or an extreme pose can defeat the separation altogether, and when that happens the bubble quietly shows the plain camera instead — so a background you were relying on for privacy can drop away without a warning.
• It is real work for the processor, on every frame. An older machine may struggle, and the cost lands at the same time as the recording itself. See what it costs the machine.
• Blur strength is not adjustable. You choose between blur, the stronger portrait blur and the mosaic; there is no slider between them.
• Backgrounds are flipped to match the mirrored camera view. That is right for a face and wrong for writing, so a picture of your own with any text in it will appear reversed.

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Drawing the viewer’s eye to part of the screen

Only partly, and there is one tool rather than a set of them. You can zoom during a recording, either by pressing zoom yourself or by turning on the automatic zoom, which pushes in towards wherever you click and eases back out again. That is the whole of it. There is no spotlight, no highlight box and no dimming of the rest of the screen. A click ripple exists in the product but is switched off and does nothing in 3.0.4, so do not plan a recording around it — see running it repeatedly.

To do it

1. Set the zoom level before you start. It cannot be changed once the take is running.
2. Turn on the automatic zoom if you want it to follow your clicks, or press zoom yourself at the moments that matter.
3. Play the finished file back to check it landed where you meant, because you will not have seen it during the take.

Limitations

• The zoom appears only in the finished file, not while you record. It is applied when the recording is converted, so what you see on screen during the take is the whole screen at normal size. You are aiming blind and checking afterwards.
• There is no spotlight and no highlight box. Zoom is the only attention tool that works in this version.
• The zoom level is set beforehand. It cannot be changed mid-take, so a recording that needs a close look at one thing and a wide view of another needs two takes.
• If the conversion step fails, the zoom is lost without telling you. Because the zoom is applied during conversion, a recording that cannot be converted is saved in its raw form instead — which is the right call, since you keep the recording. But that copy has no zoom in it, and nothing says so. PDR does warn you in the same situation when a blur is pending, because unblurred content is a privacy problem; it does not warn you about zoom. So if a recording comes back looking untouched, check whether you got the converted file before you re-record.

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Landing a finished recording in the dated library by itself

Yes. Press stop and the recording is converted, filed into its own dated area of the library, and indexed. There is no import step and no folder to choose. It is dated from when you started recording rather than when you finished, so a long take sits in the right place in your timeline, and it is searchable straight away alongside your photos. Controlling the output file covers exactly where it lands.

To do it

1. Record as normal, then press Stop and choose Save.
2. Wait for the conversion to finish. Filing and indexing follow it without being asked.
3. Find the recording by searching your library. Nothing further is needed to make it appear there.

Limitations

• Recordings always go to the same place. You cannot send one somewhere else at the time, and there is no per-recording destination.
• The filename is generated and cannot be set at the time. If you want a meaningful name you rename it afterwards.
• A disconnected library drive delays the filing. If the drive is not connected when you stop, the recording is held safely and moved in when the drive comes back — but while it is waiting it is not in the library and not searchable.

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Keeping the recording on your machine, with no account

Yes. Recording, converting, filing and indexing all happen on your computer. There is no upload, no cloud processing, no rendering service, no share link and no account — not disabled, not planned, absent. The footage exists only where you put it, and the only way to get it to anybody else is a route you choose yourself. The one thing that touches the network is the free trial allowance, and it is described below and at running with no account.

To do it

1. Record. Nothing is transmitted at any point in the process.
2. Let the file be converted and filed on the same machine.
3. Share it, or do not. That decision is entirely yours and PDR takes no part in it unless you ask.

Limitations

• Starting a recording on a free trial needs a connection. The trial counts how many recordings you have made and checks that allowance before it will start one. The recording itself is still entirely local — nothing about it is sent anywhere — but on a trial, beginning one is not an offline action. A paid license does not have this problem.
• There is no server edition and no hosted version. “On your own machine” is the only way PDR runs, which is a limitation as well as a promise.
• Nothing is backed up for you. No copy exists anywhere else, so a lost drive is a lost recording.

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Cutting a short clip out of a long video

Yes, and the original is never touched. A twelve-minute recording is rarely what you want to send somebody; the thirty seconds that matter is. Open any video in the PDR viewer, switch on trim mode, drag the in and out handles along the seek bar — an audio waveform is drawn along it so you can see where the talking starts and stops — and save. PDR writes a brand-new video file next to the original containing only that stretch. The original stays exactly as it was. The clip is added to your library straight away and inherits the original’s date, so it sits alongside its parent in Memories and in Search & Discovery rather than appearing as something that happened today. This works on any video in the library, not only on recordings you made in PDR.

To do it

1. Open the video in the PDR viewer and choose Trim clip… from the gear menu on the control bar.
2. Drag the two handles that appear on the seek bar to set the in and out points. The bar above shows the exact in time, out time and resulting length as you drag.
3. Press Save clip. PDR confirms the new filename, which is the original’s name with _T added to mark it as trimmed.
4. Press Show in File Explorer to jump straight to the new file, or Done to carry on.

Limitations

• It is one continuous stretch, not an edit. You choose a start and an end. You cannot remove a section from the middle, join two pieces together, add a title or change the order of anything. It is a trim, not a video editor.
• The clip lands next to the original, not somewhere you choose. It is written into the same folder with _T on the end of the name. If a clip of that name already exists the number is bumped rather than the file overwritten, so you never lose an earlier clip.
• The clip is re-encoded rather than copied. This is deliberate — copying without re-encoding snaps the cut to the nearest keyframe, which puts the start in the wrong place. Re-encoding lands the cut where you actually put it, at close to the original quality, at the cost of a few seconds of processing.
• Videos only. There is no equivalent for stills, and no way to build a clip out of a sequence of photos.
• A free trial allows ten saved clips in total. That is a lifetime count on the machine, not a monthly one. A paid license removes the cap.

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Known gaps in 3.0.4

Collected in one place, so you do not have to read the whole page to find them.

• No window, application or browser-tab source — whole display or a crop of it.
• The mouse pointer cannot be excluded.
• The display and region cannot be changed once recording has started.
• No audio level, balance or monitoring controls.
• No per-application audio capture.
• Frame rate is fixed at 30 and cannot be changed.
• Resolution is not selectable.
• The destination folder is not selectable.
• No hotkey to start or stop a recording.
• No countdown before recording begins.
• No hardware-accelerated encoding, and no dropped-frame reporting.
• The click-highlight button is hidden and does nothing in this version.
• No window exclusion, no notification suppression, no automatic redaction.
• No captions or transcript for a recording.
• Keyboard-only and screen-reader operation are untested.
• A full disk during recording silently drops footage without warning you.
• Blur can be silently lost when a recording is recovered after a crash.

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How to check any of this yourself

• Window source: open the record bar and look for a list of windows or applications to record. There is only a list of displays, and an Area button.
• Frame rate and resolution: look through the bar and Settings → Capture for either control. Quality is the only one there. Then check a finished file’s properties — it will be 30 fps.
• Destination: record something and look for a Save As dialog. There is not one; the file appears under PDR Captures on your Library Drive.
• Start hotkey: open Settings → Capture. There is a hotkey for screenshots and one for the camera. There is none for starting a recording.
• Notifications: record for a minute and send yourself a message. The banner will be in the recording.
• Crash recovery: start a recording, end the PDR process from Task Manager, and reopen PDR. The recording should appear in your library. If you had blur regions, check them.
• That nothing is uploaded: disconnect from the internet entirely and record. Everything works.

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If something on this page does not match what your copy of PDR does, that is a defect in one of the two and we want to know which. Tell us on the support page.

Related: the step-by-step guide to screen capture walks through doing this rather than describing what is possible. Organize covers what happens to a recording once it is in your library, and Back up covers getting a copy of it somewhere else.