Previously we’ve looked at choosing your screencasting software, editing the screencast and adding music in this screencast tutorial series, now let’s look at exporting the finished video.  Later we’ll consider embedding the screencast in your site and spreading it further afield into sites like YouTube and Vimeo.  We’ll finish with a discussion on narration recording and how to add extra polish.

In times gone past the choice of video format was rather murky for screencasts.  Now the choice is rather simple – .flv works well (but is old and produces large files), .mp4 isn’t quite well-accepted enough but will soon be the right choice (it produces much smaller files).

Previously we had to worry about which platform the viewer was on – .mov for Mac users, .wmv for Windows, maybe an old .avi for Linux.  Right now the smartest choice for maximum cross-platform viewership is .flv.  Almost all ProCasts screencasts are delivered as .flv.

According to our research approximately 98% of Internet users have Flash 7 or above (for .flv) and about 90% have Flash 9.0.115 (for .mp4). Only use .mp4 if you know that most of your audience have Flash 9.0.115 or above else you could lose 10% of your viewership.

In the upcoming Firefox 3.5 we’ll see in-browser support for the new <video> tag which enables us to embed any video type easily in a webpage.  This opens a new option as we could now use the open-source .ogg theora format (based loosely on the .flv-like Sorenson 3 codec).

Will Theora be a better choice?  Probably not (note – I am an open-source advocate!), it uses old technology (equivalent to Sorenson 3) and whilst we can make nice videos that are crisp (see our .ogg export at AdblockPlus.org) the files are large.  .ogg support is less widespread than .flv and the videos have equivalent visual quality.

If you are curious about Theora and you’d like to encourage more support for open-source codecs (particularly important if you’re dealing with the FOSS movement) then checkout ffmpeg2theora.

To convert your videos to .flv (or .mp4) you will see export options in all the regular screencasting tools like CamTasia and ScreenFlow.  ffmpeg 0.5 has is great if you like the command line (ffmpeg flv tutorial).  Quicktime Pro also has great exporting tools and there are a wide range of commercial tools that focus purely on exporting video.

Personally I use CamTasia, ScreenFlow and ffmpeg (open-source), feel free to leave a comment with alternate suggestions.

Next – learn how to embed the screencast into your own website using tools like the JW FLV Media Player and FlowPlayer.

Do you want more of your visitors to use your software? Get in Contact and we’ll help you convert more visitors into users, sell more of your software and reduce your support costs.

Become a better screencaster – read The Screencasting Handbook.  We’re distilling 4 years of experience into our book, this blog series you’re reading was the first inspiration that we should write everything we know into a book to make you a better screencaster.

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Looking for a professional screen cast? Get in touch today via www.procasts.co.uk.

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