Ben tweeted a few days back to announce a new screencast at FreshBooks (the on-line invoicing and time-tracking tool) which gives an update about their new Invoice and Estimates page.  The screencast runs for 1:26 and takes you through the new features they’ve added.

The Good:

1. The screencast is short and to the point, it moves along at a good clip
2. FreshBooks have a nice opening animation that shows they care about the visual look of their screencasts
3. It is clear (for a first-time viewer like me!) that FreshBooks makes it really easy to add new items into an invoice (it is obviously less of a fuss than using Word or Excel)

The Bad:

1. My main worry is with the audio.  Ben’s mic is accentuating the plosives (burst of air from ‘b’s and ‘p’s), a pop-filter might help and moving back from the mic should reduce their incidence.  The Pro Audio for Screencasts entry in our tutorial series has more tips including lessons on editing, producing and presenting
2. You can hear general office background noise, this is a bit distracting
3. Visually it would be easier to see what’s going on if a zoom was used, currently the text is very hard to read because it is so small (but you do get the general idea of how it works)

Thoughts for improvement:

1. Add a pop-filter and/or move the mic about 10 cm above the face (so it points down at your nose) – these two tips can greatly reduce the level of plosive noise that gets recorded
2. Record the audio in a quiet room, run it through a de-noiser to remove any background hum – our Audacity tutorial shows you how to de-noise, range compress, de-sibilant and more
3. Use an editor that allows zooming so we can clearly read the text that’s showing the meat of the story, CamTasia and ScreenFlow both have this feature

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