Screencasting Tips Please

July 26, 2006 5:01 PM

I'm looking for screencasting tips.

I'm thinking about doing a great deal of screencasting in the near future. I'd love some tips on the following:

(1) I'm familiar with Camtasia, but are there some other apps you might suggest? Any free apps? I much prefer Windows software.

(2) Is there any way possible to host a screencast on a site like YouTube or JumpCut.com without it getting compressed to the point where the video is no longer clear? If not, what are the best file formats to export as? Any hosting tips? Also, how in the hell does a site like Lynda.com offer such high quality screencasts that load so quickly?

(3) How much should I spend on a microphone? Do you have any general audio tips?

(4) Any broad screencasting advice? The basic do's and don'ts?

Thanks in advance.

posted by JPowers to technology (3 comments total)

I can't answer your hosting related questions, but I can vouch for a microphone:

It's a Samson USB Condensor Microphone, you don't need a pre-amp to use it. I do screencast type instructional videos, but they end up on CD or on our network fileserver. So I don't worry much about compression.
posted by voidcontext at 6:19 PM on July 26, 2006

I guess since no one else is chiming in, I'll add a bit more.

1) I'm on a Mac, and use Snapz Pro X. Camtasia is for Windows I think, so I can't offer much advice there. Flash video is a good format to end up with though, since so many people do have Flash installed.

2) Avoid YouTube. If you're doing a great deal of this, it's either a serious hobby or you are going to try to make money off it. You want to present this in a manner of your choosing. You can find a place that does high bandwidth hosting like this ASO package (no affiliation with me), and that should take you pretty far. Do you have any technical skills to set up something like that? It's not terribly hard, don't be intimidated if you've never looked into it before.

3) Already covered in my previous comment. You can get an excellent mic for not too much money these days (sub $100). I like the USB mic's, since that gets you right into where you need to be with no intermediate steps. Be wary of mics for doing VoIP or gaming, they are good enough for highly compressed on-the-fly communications, but don't give you a high enough baseline quality (at least none of the ones that I've tried).

4) Write an outline, don't worry too much about the details. Then, do practice run throughs to find out what you missed. Rewrite the outline, then do some more trial runs.

Get comfortable to the point where you do not need the outline any more. Also, you should be familiar enough with the material at this point that you're not um'ing and ah'ing. Record a few takes, and then either pick the best one, edit the best sections together from the various takes, or do more takes.

Other tips:

Short and sweet is best. Break long topics in shorter sub topics.

Sound quality is more important then perfect video quality. If there is any buzzing or distracting background noise, it'll turn viewers off. Make sure you've got quiet to record in. It's easier to put up with visual noise then aural noise. When you are recording: close windows and doors, move the microphone away from the computer you are at so you don't get fan noise, and sit up straight.

That does not mean you need end up with CD quality audio tracks, just that if you start with a clear recording with no background noise, you can compress and process without worrying much about cleaning things up.

Video compression - It's better to reduce the dimensions then to introduce horrible jaggies from overly compressed full size screen shots. Many things can be demonstrated with the screen capture set to a 75%, 67% or 50% of full size. Try that out before jacking up the compression settings or reducing bit rate.
posted by voidcontext at 7:36 PM on July 26, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

As for an answer to #1 there is a free program that I have been using with a lot of success. The application is called wink and you can find it here. It's easy to learn and use and you can add a lot of features to your presentations that will come in handy.

As well there is a strong forum with plenty of users to assist you if you have questions.
posted by jonshadow at 1:29 PM on July 27, 2006