Readable BIOS video is mostly geometry. Get the phone the right distance from the monitor, dead square to the screen, and the text arrives large and straight — no editing rescue needed later.
Two people can film the same BIOS screen with the same phone and get completely different results. The difference is rarely the phone. It is where the phone sits: too far away and the text is tiny; off to one side and the menu becomes a trapezoid; tilted and every line leans. This page covers the three framing decisions — distance, height and angle — with a simple way to check each one before you press record.
Text size in your video is decided by how much of the frame the monitor covers. A 1080p recording where the screen fills the frame gives every BIOS letter plenty of pixels. The same phone across the room records a small glowing rectangle, and no resolution rescues letters that were only a few pixels tall. Move the phone until the monitor nearly fills the frame with a slim margin on each side. On a typical desk that is roughly 40 to 80 cm from the screen, depending on monitor size and the phone lens. Always crop with distance, never with pinch zoom — digital zoom just enlarges pixels.
A level lens keeps vertical lines vertical. That is what makes the footage look recorded rather than filmed.
The ideal position is exactly in front of the monitor: lens axis at a right angle to the screen, so the top and bottom edges of the screen appear the same length. Check with the camera grid: the screen edges should sit parallel to the frame edges. If reflections force you off centre — it happens — keep the move small, a few centimetres to one side, and re-square by rotating the phone slightly. A small offset with parallel edges looks far better than a big offset corrected later. Editors can fix a trapezoid crop, but they crop away picture to do it, and BIOS menus use their edges.
If the BIOS shows on a different monitor than Windows uses, film the one that shows POST — check with a restart before setting up. On cramped desks, a phone clamp on the monitor's own stand or a shelf behind the keyboard often beats a tripod competing for desk space. Whatever holds the phone must not share a surface you will bump: a keyboard tray or desk edge you lean on transmits every touch straight into the frame.
Before recording, run this ten second drill: open the camera, read the four corners of the frame, confirm the edges are parallel, tap and lock focus on the text, and record a few seconds. Play it back zoomed in. Only then restart the PC. Framing errors are invisible at arm's length on a small preview and painfully obvious on a viewer's TV — the playback check is where you catch them while fixing them is still free.
Watch the full video to see the framed setup in place before the recording starts.
Watch Full VideoClose enough that the monitor nearly fills the phone frame with a small even margin — often 40 to 80 cm depending on screen size and lens. Judge by the frame, not by a fixed distance.
The phone is angled to the screen — off to one side or above or below it. Square the phone to the monitor, with the lens level with the screen centre, and the edges become parallel again.
Cropping later throws away resolution, so small text turns soft. Cropping with distance keeps all the phone's pixels for the screen itself, which is what readability needs.