I’m very pleased to say that Release 7 of The Screencasting Handbook is almost ready for release (it’ll be out within the week).  At over 90 pages it feels like a real book even though it isn’t yet finished, I’m also getting some great feedback and reviews:

“The Screencasting Handbook then is just such a guide, a comprehensive introduction to the world of screencasting with exploration of many of the fundamental concepts and practical advice on the production of screencasts with a variety of leading screencast development applications.” – Paul McGovern

The Handbook is being updated monthly, Release 7 comes out in a few days, Release 8 will follow early in February.  Release 8 will include many screencasts showing how to use common screencasting tools on different platforms.

Currently the Handbook contains information that is useful to absolute beginners through to intermediate screencasters.  Experts may find useful ideas, more expert knowledge will be added to future versions.  Release 7 will be the last major text update for a while, once that’s out I want to make a set of screencasts that show screencasting in action (these will be added to the PDF as links in future updates).

Do remember that the eBook is published as a PDF and it is being updated every month.  You can buy your copy here and if you’re unhappy for any reason there’s an unlimited time refund option.

Here’s the release history:

• December Release 6 – Merged “A deeper look at the techniques behind screencasting” into “Making a screencast in 1-2 days”, added checklists to the three “Making a screencast in…” chapters, added two new examples to “What’s the value of screencasting?”
• November Release 5 – Wrote “Make a screencast in 2 hours” chapter, added “Distribution” chapter to talk about YouTube, Vimeo, Screencast.com and ShowMeDo.com.  Handbook is approximately 13,000 words.
• October Release 4 – Added ‘Making a screencast in the next 30 minutes’ chapter and screencast, started an outline of the “Make a screencast in 2 hours” chapter
• September Release 3 – Second release, added examples recordings to Microphones section, expanded the Other Resources list, expanded “What’s the value of screencasting”
• August 2009 Release 2 – First release, chapter outlines and early chapter draft

Yesterday I was interviewed by Andy White (author of Podcasting Unleashed) on the hows and whys of screencasting for marketing software products. Some of the links mentioned are listed here.

We discuss:

• How to get started at zero cost (using Jing (Win/Mac), QuickTime Pro (Mac), BBFlashBack (Win) and RecordMyDesktop (Linux))
• Professional screencasting packages (Camtasia and BBFlashBack Pro on Windows, ScreenFlow and Camtasia on Mac)
• Tips for structuring the demo
• Tips for audio production
• (briefly) The Screencasting Handbook
• (briefly) my ProCasts for professional screencasting

My interview runs for the last 20 minutes (from 0:37:00 to 0:52:00):

You can download the mp3 for offline listening.

One of our more challenging jobs has been the construction of a homepage demo video for a top five independent alternative fund administration company.

We worked with Butterfield Fulcrum via their London office to create this homepage demo video that explains their services to first-time website visitors, you can see the video on their homepage and below.

The challenge was to communicate the integration of their processes, people and technology without getting bogged down in detail.  We also needed to tell a high-level story that would be relevant to possible clients and their investors since investors increasingly want transparency in the managing of their money, even though they may not use the system themselves.

“We believe that screencasting is a compelling new way of marketing our company and the team at ProCasts were true professionals and a pleasure to work with.” – Sheona Griffiths

We ran a workshop with Butterfield Fulcrum to fully understand their software, their clients and the needs of possible viewers.  From there we constructed several story ideas and concepts for the animated segments.  Richard created animation concepts, the story formed and after several draft videos we settled on the correct story.  You can see the finished video below:

If you’d like a homepage demo video that explains your product then just get in contact.

ApexAuctions now have a set of four support videos which teach new users how to perform common tasks when they’re bidding for used machinery and industrial equipment :

1. Creating an account
2. Registering for an auction
3. How to change your password
4. How to bid

The videos are there to help more users help themselves.  Currently some new users get frustrated and have to phone the tech-support line at ApexAuctions at the end of each auction.  The videos address the most common questions that are asked and they will be embedded at the most sensible places in the site.

Adam has blogged about the videos on their blog.

Creating an account:

Registering for an auction:

Changing your password:

Bidding:

Ian has just finished work on two new tutorial series for ShowMeDo which teach the viewer how to use OpenOffice Impress and OpenOffice Base.  The introduction videos are free and shown below, the rest of each series is only available inside ShowMeDo to paying Club members (or existing authors).

OpenOffice 3.1 Base

This series teaches the new user how to create a complete database with two tables, a relationship, forms, a query and it discusses deleting data.

1. Series Overview in 3 minutes (OpenOffice 3.1 Base) (Free)
2. Make Database and Tables
3. Add Relationships & Data
4. Create a Patient Form
5. Adding Appointments (1/2)
6. Adding Appointments (2/2)
7. Deleting Data
8. Querying Data

OpenOffice 3.1 Impress

The Impress series teaches new users how to create their first Impress presentation, it works just like PowerPoint.  Ian shows them how to create three pages (Title, Bullet Points, Image with Text), use the built-in Layouts, add images, transitions and animations.

1. Series Overview in 2 minutes (OpenOffice 3.1 Impress) (Free)
2. Making slides
3. Images & Transitions

These screencasts were recorded using BBFlashBack Pro on Windows XP using an sE2200A condenser mic.

Recently we delivered four demo videos to Macmillan Publishing that explain their new mindOnline language-learning product to teachers and students.

We worked directly with their product lead and script writer to create four screencasts from 2 minutes to 5 minutes that show various aspects of their product.  The videos are now hosted on their main landing page and component list page.  Here’s an example:

The process included prototyping the initial screencasts, iterating with the scripter and working with a new American narrator.  Much of the material was static so we developed ways of calling out and zooming in to the material to focus on the key visuals.

The four videos are also available in our YouTube account:

• mindOnline demo video
• openMind Students Book demo video
• openMind Teachers Edition demo video
• openMind Workbook demo video

If you are interested in having demo videos like these for your product just get in contact.

We’re very pleased to deliver another homepage screencast, this tour explains Remi Delon’s excellent WebFaction web hosting system.  Also see Remi’s announce.

In this screencast we tell the story of a new user who is looking for hosting:

• He knows that he wants a powerful hosting system with shell access
• He knows that it needs to be easy to learn
• He wants assurance that others have found it easy to use

We accomplished the above by recording the necessary scenes and playing them back at a higher speed (necessary because a lot of slower actions are performed), we also added 4 custom animations and used Andy for the professional voice-over.

The speed of the screencast is critical – given the mass of ISPs a person might survey when trying to find the right one for them we wanted to convey the entire message without having any of them get bored and click away.

If you want a screencast like the following for your site, do get in contact.

This is a follow-up to my January post Less than 90% adoption of .MP4-compatible Flash 9+10? The short story is that the mp4-compatible Flash installations number just over 90%, up from about 86% back in January.

This means that if you solely use .mp4 to present screencasts to the world, you’re missing out on 10% of your viewership because they won’t be able to view mp4 content (they can view .flv content just fine though).  The critical version number is 9.0.115 – if their Flash version is 9.0.115 or above then they can view .mp4 videos.

As before I’ve used three sites that I have control over – ShowMeDo with a large, international audience, my own blog and the main ProCasts site.

The monthly visitor counts are:

• ShowMeDo.com 100,000 (4 years+)
• IanOzsvald.com 1,800 (4 years+)
• ProCasts.co.uk 2,300 (1 year)

Counting the percentage of visitors who have Flash Player 9.0.115 or better we see:

• ShowMeDo.com 93% (it was 86% back in January)
• IanOzsvald.com 86% (it was 84% back in January)
• ProCasts.co.uk 93% (it was 96% back in January – but this was from a smaller data set that was more likely to show a big variance in monthly figures)

Across the three sites the average number of players that have version numbers definitely below 9.0.115 were 1.75%.  The number inbetween (approximately 7.5%) didn’t reliably report their version number – either these were not real Flash players or they may have been very old versions.

As I stated before – if you’re thinking of just using .mp4 videos to show your screencasts then you risk losing 10% of your potential viewership.  If all your viewers are on the Mac or iPhone then it might make sense to go with .mp4 but otherwise I’d suggest either staying with .flv (that’s what we do in ProCasts) or using a player than can support both file types.

Bob Walsh of StartupToDo.com needed a way of explaining his innovative new site to entrepreneurs.  He turned to us (he’d interviewed me before for his show) and we created the following screencast for him.

Currently his site is in closed-beta, you’ll get a good idea of what’s on offer by watching the screencast.  The aim is to show the entrepreneur that his to-do lists will help them move their business forwards more quickly than if they had to do all the research themselves.

I am most chuffed to say today that our screencast for the Firefox plug-in AdblockPlus has been viewed over 100,000 times since March!  That’s 566 per day – cripes!

I’m also rather pleased with the 289 positive scores and lovely comments.  Ok, ok, I’ll stop feeling so pleased!

We created the screencast with Wladimir Palant (AdblockPlus’ maintainer), the goal was to show how useful the plug-in is everyday and to show even Firefox newbies just how easy it is to get started.  In the meantime we won a few awards with TechSmith and YouTube which is rather nice too: