Screencasting Tools

One of the most rewarding things in life is sharing knowledge and experience. Years ago this took place in schools or guilds but now anyone can learn online with how to guides and tutorials. If you want to join in the global knowledge swap, then a good place to start is with screencasting tools. Learning to shoot, edit and produce a video takes time and a wide range of skills, but a screencast can be filmed live and easily published. There is a growing demand for knowledge shared online both paid for and free, and you may even find a new income from publishing your expertise.

A Screencast is a recording of the output of a computer screen, and usually contains an audio voiceover. Wikipedia states that, 'Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on his monitor.'  Making a screencast is a great way to help with distance training, sharing advice, giving a guided tour of your website, or showing your work off worldwide. A screencast can be created using a variety of tools, some of which will record the whole and some a portion of your desktop, and many new software services use screencasts to show how they work.

If you have a You Tube channel then you can use 'Quick Capture' to record a You Tube video instantly from your webcam. If you want to produce screencasts to host on You Tube using other tools, then the maximum file size is 1GB or 10 minutes in length. For one click recording and hosting Screencastle has a simple record button, and provides a variety of links and embed codes to your content. For developers they offer an Applied Program Interface (API) to a tool called Skoffer, which allows you to build screencasting software into your own website. Jing Project is another tool that hosts your files as well as adding annotations.

Wink is available as freeware and is aimed at making tutorials on how to use software. Windows Media Encoder is a free tool made by Microsoft for converting and capturing video and screencasts. For the truly geeky FRAPS is the system that game reviewers use for benchmarking and producing broadcast quality clips for TV review shows, and Taksi is another Open Source tool that allows recording of games and 3D graphics. Mashable has a further list of 12 Screencasting Tools for Creating Video Tutorials to explore for both Mac & PC.

The tool that I am most excited about right now is Procaster from the streaming service Mogulus, which I wrote about in Be a Webstream Superstar. Procaster is free and allows you to broadcast a camera, webcam, desktop, and games with 3D effects & High Definition (HD). We tried out Procaster on the Radio Wammo breakfast show this week for a live to air interview with Chelfyn on the Kiwi TV channel. Best of all Mogulus records your live shows and adds them to your Video On Demand library for when you are off air.

One of the most useful tools for screencasting is a good quality webcam. Newer models clip onto your monitor or laptop screen, come with a microphone, good autofocus and will adjust to a range of lighting levels. If you don't want to appear on camera yourself, they can add filters or use basic facial recognition for driving avatars. We are using a Logitech Quickcam Pro 9000 that comes with a microphone, and has replaced our need for a separate video camera. If you can't afford a new webcam then just start with a simple microphone and focus on showing the contents of your desktop.

In How to do Everything I wrote about sites where you can find or publish tutorials and how-to guides on almost any subject.