Creating screencasts
Posted in Tech/Development on: Thursday, June 12, 2008 by Paul Boag
Video is becoming an intrinsic part of the web and not just dumb ass videos on YouTube. Video can be used to show off products and provide online presentations. But how do you create a high quality screencast on a budget?
I seem to be creating a lot of screencasts lately. Whether it is recording a keynote presentation or demonstrating some web work, it is a useful way of communicating information.
Here are a few tips that I have picked up along the way.
Add talking head video
Most screencasts are either a powerpoint style presentation or video of your desktop. However, if you want more impact and to better engage with your users, add yourself talking to camera. This really grabs attention.
Have a clean background
If you are recording yourself in-front of a busy background it looks unprofessional. Think carefully about what is behind you. If in doubt record against a plain wall. Also, remove all unnecessary icons from your desktop and make sure your wallpaper is simple and appropriate.
If it’s important, script it
If you are demonstrating an idea to a work colleague then by all means record it spontaneously. However, if it is something more important, write a script that you read. It is surprisingly hard to record live to camera and a script helps a lot.
Try an online teleprompter to prevent your eyes continually flicking down to read your script. I have the following setup to ensure my eye line is as close to the camera as possible.
Use decent equipment
Do not rely on your laptops inbuilt mic and webcam. The quality will suffer. Instead, I plug in my camcorder via firewire and record from that. Audio I capture through a Samson C01U mic.
Check out screenflow
By far the best screen recorder I have found is Screenflow for the mac. It is amazingly easy to use and can capture full screen video. If you are a Windows user then take a look at Camtasia. Unfortunately it is considerably more expensive and not as good but it is the best I have found for Windows.
Normal presentation techniques apply
As with any presentation it is important to be enthusiastic, clear spoken and engaging. Avoid becoming monotone as you speak and make sure you don’t sound as if you are reading.
Choose your player wisely
Think about how you are going to add the video to your website. Not all online video services are equal. Personally I like Vimeo. It places few limitations on file size or length. That said, all of these services compress the hell out of your video. If the quality is poor I suggest hosting the file yourself and using the JW FLV Media Player. Despite the name can play a variety of video formats.
That is what I have learnt so far. Do you have any additional tips you could share? I would love to hear your thoughts.
9 Comments
Comments are for the discussion of this post. If you have other questions / comments then post them to the forum or send me an email
How would you go about recording yourself as well as your screen like the example without screenflow? At £65 I think that is a bit steep for a screencast program, also Leopord only.
@James… steep? The Windows program I mentioned is $299! £65 is a bargain! As for how you would achieve this without a program like Screenflow; I don’t think you can. That is why its a bargain.
What timing! We just recently did an episode about screencasting on the Mac on our podcast. (I think Paul is spying on us ;) )
Thanks for the post. I’ve been giving some thought recently to doing some screencasts, but I never really got around to researching the best screencasting software. After reading your post I read over at MacWorld that Apple awarded ScreenFlow “Best Mac OS X Leopard Graphics and Media Application” and “Best Mac OS X Leopard Application.” I’ll definitely have to give it a try. Thanks again and keep up the good work!
Nice post. Myself I have always used camtasia to create my screencasts as I am a poor old XP user. Why don’t we get the same price as our americans get on apple hardware? :’(
Andrew
Hey Paul, I want to first of all thank you for some of the helpful resources and tips I have found on your site, real cool. About Screen capturing, this small program might be useful for what you want to achieve. It has worked for me on several projects. I am not sure if it works for Mac. It is free too.
http://camstudio.org/
For screen capture, check out the (free?) Jing:
http://www.jingproject.com/
I’ve always used Snapz on my mac, but I’m giving this program a try.
Hey thanks for the Jingproject link. It has a great tutorial video and looks like it works well. I love that we can get a whole of good stuff these days for free.
Richard
Some time ago I used Cam Capture Pro for screen casting; the smoothness, ease of use and audio quality was superb. I haven’t used it for a while but here is the link http://www.capturecampro.com/