Comments on: Screencasts Add Great Content, New Revenue Streams

By: www.ScreencastCentral.com

www.ScreencastCentral.com — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 11:10:45 +0000

Darren

Since this post – Techsmith have introduced Camtasia Studio 5 – and offer a 30 day free trial:
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

They have also introduced Jing Project – which is for ‘instant screencasts’ and can be used by Mac owners !

And is free to use (!)

http://www.jingproject.com

Techsmith are also offering a free copy of their older 3.0 version –

http://download.techsmith.com/camtasiastudio/enu/312/camtasiaf.exe

HTH your readers

TomC

By: Ashish Mohta

Ashish Mohta — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:30:22 +0000

I had been practicing putting screen shots wherever possible.Using a tool is a good idea but then again have to check the costs.Images pull people much quicker.They get the picture talks much faster than words.Thx for the great post.

By: Screencasts.ca

Screencasts.ca — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 01:16:28 +0000

Great article. I’d have to say that the best tool is probably Camtasia Studio. I’ve tried a few of the others but Camtasia was just the easiest. Here is my current site I have only made a few of my own screencasts and have indexed many others available on the web. http://www.screencasts.ca

Thanks

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:07:09 +0000

Just thought I would say thanks for the post Darren. I first had a go with Adobe Captivate but just couldn't get the microphone to work so in the end I gave up. I then downloaded your recommend camtasia, and no problems at all in fact managed to post the demo online first time if your interested follow this link. I just need to work out how to embed still I think my boss will be happy. Cheers again

By: Mike Schinkel

Mike Schinkel — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 02:24:45 +0000

@Donnie: Which example are you referring to that you didn’t like? I listed five screencast examples and 19 products.

@Amanda: Good point, but realize you don’t have to host them yourself if you don’t want to. YouTube is one option, and there are a variety other free hosting sites or inexpensive hosting solutions (sounds like that might be a future post!) Plus, if you ensure your cache settings are optimized, you can often reduce bandwidth requirements considerably.

By: Graydon

Graydon — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 01:59:44 +0000

I’m sorry… I’m sure that the first screen cast has something useful in it… but I swear that everytime I start it I hear something about Windows Vibrator…

After that, I just can’t watch any more : )

Important lesson… enunciate.

By: andz

andz — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 20:14:46 +0000

I just created a screencast the other day using Wink.
One great feature of Wink is the ability to also make your cast available as a pdf.

I was going to try Camstudio, but I note that it says under issues:
“It turns out there’s a bug which means you can’t see anything if you try watching them with Netscape or Firefox”

A workaround is provided ’till the next version is released, but I think that message was up when I visited quite a while ago and I don’t see any updates – I only really like to use programs that are being actively developed.

By: Hsien Lei

Hsien Lei — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:40:30 +0000

I just created my first screencast yesterday comparing two health search engines with Google.com. I used Windows Media Encoder, which is free from Microsoft. It was simpler to create than I expected and I think far more illustrative than if I had written it up.

By: Pallab

Pallab — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:46:47 +0000

I do use Videos in my blog posts where i find them neccesary, I use Camtasia Studio for my recording needs.

By: carl

carl — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:10:56 +0000

nice post mike! and i would like to congratulate you for being a guest blogger.:)

carl

By: James

James — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 05:23:32 +0000

I just spent a over week working on a video for my first digital product. I used Camstudio for the screen capture and then needed to find a better way to convert to flash (original file was over 1gig).
I look forward to being able to afford Camstasia but I am glad I have use of Camstudio.

By: Wizardgold

Wizardgold — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 02:54:31 +0000

You can add IshowU to the list of screen capture programs for Mac users. I was using Snapz Pro which was good enough and did the job of capturing the screen and whatever you did with it, but iShowU did the job better in that as soon as you finished recording – the quicktime movie was ready to view.

I also use Visual Hub to make versions of the movie in different sizes. I record at 1280 by 720 and then Visual hub gives me that size but with a smaller file size and then I make versions at 920 by 540 and 640 by360.

I make the small size available direct and then the larger sizes are there for members of the Wizardgold.com web site to buy if they wish. This helps take care of the bandwidth problem.

I also use Libsyn to host my Wizardcasts, both the audio podcasts and the video podcasts which also solves the bandwidth problem.

By the way my Wizardcast videos are about how to trade forex or Betfair, basically step by step guides and the audio podcasts cover how I am doing personally with the systems that I use. I also have another site which is dedicated to digital photography and selling the photos online, I have a project on the go to record a “How to” for that site also.

The other tip would be to get your Screencasts syndicated in iTunes. Most of my Wizardcasts are downloaded by subscribers using iTunes.

Wizardgold

By: jhay

jhay — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 01:02:48 +0000

I’m on Amanda on this one, bandwidth is of a growing concern for me. But I love screencasts so much I’m willing to take risks.

By: LearningNerd

LearningNerd — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:07:45 +0000

I make lots of screencasts and videos on my blog(s), and so far I’ve gotten nothing but great feedback!

And to reply to Amanda’s comment about bandwidth — that’s a good point, which is why I highly recommend uploading your screencasts to a free video host. I use blip.tv for mine.

By: Brandon

Brandon — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:21:10 +0000

There are also two screencasting software products from Blueberry Software you can add to the list: Flashback Express ($40) and Flashback ($199). Flashback Express works pretty well, but you can’t edit the screencasts you make. You CAN export them into various file formats though (not all those you list can). Flashback lets you do all the editing you want, upload images to incorporate, etc.

They’re at http://www.bbsoftware.co.uk/

I bought Flasback and love it. Not using it for screencasts I post at my site yet, though, so I don’t have any samples to show…

By: Marcin

Marcin — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:05:40 +0000

I can definitely vouch for using screencasts as a good way to attract traffic to your site. I’ve tried it recently to illustrate one of the free tools I am offering and the response (i.e. incoming links) was much better than ever before.

BTW, thanks for the list of tools. I was aware of several of them but I’ve also found some new in your list and I am going to try them.

I’ve tried Camtasia but my trial has expired and I just don’t think that spending $300 on it would be such a great idea. I’ve also tried CamStudio but its lacking any editing tools which is a real pain because your screencasts are almost never production-ready without some editing. There’s a work-around, but it really takes a lot of time. I like Wink for presentations without any audio but when I tried using its audio feature, the quality of sound was terrible

As for bandwidth, if you want to use any video sharing site, I would recommend http://www.veoh.com – my latest discovery. The quality of video is much higher than in case of Youtube which is very important if you want to show some details in your presentation.

By: Jaya Schillinger

Jaya Schillinger — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:58:15 +0000

Thank you for that detailed article. I’ve been wanting Camtasia for 2 years now, but I just can’t justify the price. I would not want to see it split into a $69 one, if that meant the full one went up to $500+

Frankly, I’d just like to see them drop the full price version down to $129 and be done with it. They’d sell a LOT more.

Now I’m off to check out your other resources! Thanks for those!

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:59:11 +0000

Excellent Post. I just wrote a primer on screencasting yesterday!
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/03/screencasting_p.html

and invite you to check out my screencast on tagging
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/02/the_making_of_s.html

By: Gene

Gene — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 19:57:34 +0000

You know, when Darren wrote this morning saying he was going on vacation I expected the quality of information in the posts to drop off signifigantly. Or at least prove only mildly interesting. But this post on screen casts was great! My god, I love reading this site, every day I come away in a fever about all the new tips and information I want to implement on my upcoming blog! Fantastic!

By: Amanda

Amanda — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 18:39:11 +0000

Screen casts are great, but you have to make sure to remember your bandwidth. My site has barely any images and uses up a gig of bandwidth a month on almost zero images.