Camera and microphone

Both are pills on the toolbar, and both are off until you turn them on.

The microphone

Click the microphone pill to turn it on. The pill then shows which device it will use. To choose a different one, open the settings menu and use Microphone Device, which lists everything Windows has, with Default microphone at the top.

Enhance microphone audio, on the same menu, runs a light clean up while recording: it takes out the steady hiss of a room and the low rumble a desk makes, and it evens out the loud and quiet parts a little. It starts off. Switch it on for a headset or a cheap microphone in a normal room, which is most people. The same clean up can be applied later in the editor instead, so nothing is lost by leaving it off here and deciding once you have heard the take.

The microphone goes to its own track, separate from the system sound. You can change or mute either one afterwards.

The camera

Click the camera pill and pick a device. A small preview window appears so you can see yourself and frame the shot before recording, and it does not end up in the recording.

Two things about that preview. It shows you unmirrored, meaning what the camera actually sees, so writing on a shirt reads the right way round rather than backwards. And on some older Windows builds the preview window cannot be reliably kept out of the capture, in which case Cilevi hides it automatically while recording rather than risk it appearing in your video.

The camera is recorded as its own file alongside the screen. That is what lets the editor move it, resize it, crop it and put it anywhere on the canvas afterwards, none of which would be possible if it had been burned into the frames.

Phones and other odd devices

Anything Windows lists as a camera works, including a phone plugged in and acting as a webcam. A phone's microphone usually does not come through the same way, because Windows exposes the video but not the audio for most of those connections. Use a separate microphone.