Screencasting Tips and Tricks
Tips and Tricks to make good screencasting - Screencast demonstration

The Right Way to Make Videos of Computer Screen

U.S. Internet users watched 13.5 billion online videos during October, marking a 45 percent increase compared to a year ago, according to comScore Video Metrix. Lots of YouTube users are keen on making video tutorials and sharing them on YouTube. Do you know how to make videos like this and share them on YouTube?

Record computer screen with a DV or a Camera?

?How to record my computer screen with a camera or DV? I would like to record things happened on my screen with a camera. But the video come out is blurring.? ?Ask Yahoo!

I saw questions like this for times on Ask Yahoo! Recording computer screen with a camera or DV is not a good idea. To get it done, you have to settle your DV in the precisely right position in front of your computer screen. Frankly speaking, it is a thankless task. And the recording quality is disappointing.

Record computer screen with screen recording software!

There are various applications help you record computer screen by a few clicks. Even more, they could produce videos with standard video format for online sharing and on demand delivery. Here I reviewed two applications for you to consider.

Screen recording software - DemoCreator

DemoCreator creates software video tutorials and website demos just by three steps: Record, Edit and Publish.

Step 1: Set up the recording option and record your screen

Select the Capture area and Recording mode. Start your recording and press F10 to stop it when your recording is over.

Step 2:Edit your recording slides (Optional)

When finishing the recording, you can go to edit the recording slides. There are music, narration, annotations, images, interactivities and even animations for you to enhance your recording, thus making the demos more animated and interactive.

Step 3: Publish as the format you like

Publish the video format you like. This screen recorder enables users to publish diverse format of video such as SWF, AVI and EXE.

Screen Recording Software - Camstudio

As a free streaming video software application, it is able to record screen activity and audio on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and Streaming Flash videos (SWFs).

Pros and Cons of Camstudio:
Cons: Free software; easy to use; Audio recording; SWF and AVI output;
Pros: No interactivity; No video editing feature; No sound editing feature.
Final Verdict:
CamStudio can be learned in a matter of minutes and comes with a comprehensive built-in help file. It is easy and quick to make videos from your computer screen. The weakness of Camstudio is the editing feature and interactivity. But as a free screen recorder, it is an outstanding one.

Pros and Cons of DemoCreator:
Pros:
1. Integration of multiple screen recording scenes
2. Automatically add annotations for screen recording
3. Callouts to highlight your important content
4. Interactive elements to enhance your demonstration
5. Background music and audio rerecording support
Cons: Shareware of $99.95;

Final Verdict:
The powerful editing feature makes DemoCreator an easy screencasting tool to make nice-quality videos that you will likely be quite satisfied with. DemoCreator is a commercial software application, but the function and quality of this software do deserve the reasonable price, considering most of its competition is in the range of $100 to $200 (and more).

Most users are recording what they do on the screen, such as the software tutorials and website demos. Software vendors/providers are making video demos of computer screen to initiate the sales cycle and improve marking ROI. Website master are looking for the solution to promote the website features and reduce customer service costs, usually they would record compelling guide demos of the website operations to enhance user experience.
For example, you are making a video demonstrating a product or service. You can add the URL you want to redirect at any part of your Flash video to guide the viewers to your affiliate link and they may immediately buy. This can increase your conversion rate. Then screen recorder like DemoCreator is in need.

Posted at 06:34PM Dec 16, 2008 by Chinier Fu in presentation  |  Comments[11]