If indeed a picture is worth a thousand words then perhaps a screencast is worth a million?  Your viewers get to see your application in action just as if you were giving a live demo (but without any annoying crashes or slow-downs!), they hear a friendly human voice and they get to see your tool solving their problem.  What could be more convincing?

In this series we’ll look at all the steps you need to take to make beautiful screencasts that explain your software to your users.  It is aimed at anyone selling software or web-applications who wants to increase their user-numbers and sales.

1. Why do you need to screencast?
2. Choosing your screencast software
3. Editing your screencast
4. Why adding music makes your screencast more professional
5. How and why export screencasts to .flv, .mp4, .wmv, .avi and .swf formats
6. Embedding screencasts in your site (not yet published)
7. Getting your screencast seen by more people using sites like YouTube and Vimeo (not yet published)
8. Pro tip – how to make your audio sound like it was recorded by a professional (not yet published)
9. Pro tip – using an introductory animation and PowerPoint slides (not yet published)

Our memories are keyed to different ways of perceiving sensations (called modalities or semiotics) – simply put, the more senses are involved, the more ways we have to remember something.  A site that uses video will be more memorable than one that just uses text and images as we’re adding full-motion video and audio to the usual text and images.

Smaller software companies typically have to work hard to get their message out – a screencast gives you a professional demo (so you punch above your weight) which quickly explains your proposition.

A 2 minute screencast can express pages of feature lists and screenshots.  By showing how your tool works the viewer can easily understand if it solves their problem – if it does then it makes sense to try you out rather than going back to Google to find a competitor.

Contrast this with the process of comparing feature lists between several different applications – you still don’t know which one will actually solve your issue to you keep researching until you think it is worth trying one.  Help your users avoid this process and keep them interested in your tool by using screencasts.

Ideal ways to use a screencast include:

• Adding one or more to your homepage to give ‘the big picture’ within 2 minutes e.g. LiveDrive
  
• Adding several to your main feature-tour pages to show each feature in action e.g. BackPack
• Adding screencasts through-out your site to introduce new features as the user comes across them

Do remember to use a voice-over, humans are keyed to respond to a friendly, helpful, confident voice – it puts us at ease and makes the screencast more watchable.  This does mean you’ll need a good voice and a decent microphone (more on this later in the series).

How to get started?

First, you must plan your screencast.  Know who you’re presenting to and what they need to learn, then figure out how explain your software in under 2 minutes.  Sketch out the scenes and make notes, then practice the demo a few times.  Remember that in post-production you can add call-outs and annotations, so background information can be added which you don’t need to narrate.

Next you’ll want to choose your screencasting software, then edit the screencast.  You’ll also want to add music to give it a professional feel and then you’ll have to figure out which formats to export.  Having decided on your format (probably .flv or .mp4) you’ll want to embed the screencast in your site and possibly consider spreading it further afield into sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

For further polish you’ll want to consider how you record your audio – what’s the best mic to use?  Why use an external mic over an internal one?  Finally, consider extra polish with an introductory animation (this really sets you apart from the crowd) and short slide sections.

Would you like a free eBook that covers all of this information (and more)? Our Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk

Let me say – waking up to discover that our screencast for newly-relaunched US ecommerce site Ztail is featured in their TechCrunch coverage is really rather cool.

We deliberately added the screencast into YouTube for them so it could be easily added to blogs and news-outlets for increased coverage.  Initially they used Vimeo (but strictly-speaking that’s against Vimeo’s T&Cs) and then switched to YouTube so the peak viewership was recorded at Vimeo (but that’s now deleted).

Ztail host their own copy on their home-page.

Ellen worked with us to re-write the script using AIDA and other techniques to pique the viewer’s interest and keep those that could benefit from Ztail’s service watching through-out.

I’m very proud to say that we’ve been given the Screencast of the Week (twitter) award by TechSmith, makers of the excellent CamTasia (our main screencasting tool).  The award is for our Adblock Plus video, we made it as part of our open-source advocacy drive.  It is viewed 600 times a day in the adblockplus.org website and has 39 five-out-of-five ratings.

“I liked this screencast for several reasons. Ian made great use of Camtasia Studio’s SmartFocus feature – he used it to focus your attention on certain areas of the screen and show greater detail.

The audio quality is great on this screencast which is important as viewers are generally intolerant of poor audio. The background audio music was a great touch and added polish to the screencast. And, Ian has a great voice for narration! The screencast runs 1:32 and is short and to the point. Perfect!”

Our video has also been given 3 awards by YouTube for making highly-popular content.

Rudy Viard of the web-based screencasting tool ScreenToaster (@screentoaster) kindly answered my questions about why they’re building a free on-line screencasting service and how the company started.  This interview is one of many in our screencaster interviews collection.

The company is 8 months old, based in Paris with 5 employees and uses the experience gained during 2-years of development on a previous (still growing) web-app company.

Can you provide some background about ScreenToaster and yourself to set the scene?

ScreenToaster was launched by Marco Fucci, our CEO, about 9 months ago using technology and knowledge developed by Iteria (CrunchBase), his previous company (still active), using its peer-to-peer remote assistance service called WizHelp.

We had the knowledge to develop a web-based screencast service and we felt there was a space for a new competitor in this market.

From September to January, we launched and tested our Beta with really good responses in the press (Techcrunch, Download Squad, Digital Inspiration…) then officially released the public version of ScreenToaster in February step by step adding new features.

Building a cross-platform web-based screencasting tool must be rather hard.  Why make it?

The main concept of ScreenToaster is to be able, at every step of the process, to reduce the time it takes to create and distribute videos online.

Only a web-based screencasting tool allows you to capture, upload, stream, share, embed and spread your screencasts in a couple of minutes.  Screencasts were only for specialists, we think people shouldn’t focus on technical aspects but on the contents.

We also tried to keep ScreenToaster as simple as possible. Advanced functionalities (editing tools, new player…) are being and will be implemented step by step.  We don’t want these functionalities to bother users who only want to create good screencasts. Additional functionalities are hidden, e.g. users will be able to choose to “Show more edition tools” or not.

We don’t want beginners to get lost and we want advanced screencasters to get all the functionalities they need. Last but not least, we are working on the user-design for all of the service.

As it’s more accessible, free, faster and easier to use, ScreenToaster opens screencasting to a larger community of users that have never used software such as Camtasia.  This is the most exciting part of the job.

What’s different (good and bad) about ScreenToaster compared to Jing and ScreencastOMatic?

ScreenToaster is simpler than Camtasia: To record a screencast with ScreenToaster, you just need to register then click “Record” and you are ready.

You don’t need to download (and understand) any software to start recording. We’ll never be Camtasia and do not want to copy what they are doing.  Camtasia is a really good tool made for specialists. It includes lots of editing functionalities that you’ll probably never use if you are a simple user.

ScreenToaster is faster than Jing: You don’t need to be in front of “your” computer to publish your screencast with ScreenToaster (Jing needs to be downloaded).  Once you published your video online, the video is immediately online on screentoaster.com, ready to be streamed, uploaded on YouTube in HD, shared, embedded, tweeted…

ScreenToaster is free: Jing Pro costs 15$ (more or less) and Camtasia 300$.  ScreenToaster is free and offers more than Jing and less than Camtasia.

What’s your business model?

Partnerships (thanks to our API) and Premium accounts will be the basis of our business model. I’ll let you know more about it soon as we are still working on packaging the commercial offers.  You can already Beta test the API simply asking us at contact@screentoaster.com

What sort of editing features do you provide?  How powerful is the editing compared to CamTasia or ScreenFlow?

ScreenToaster offers the possibility to capture your screen, add subtitles, audio and an embedded webcam.  For the moment, we do not offer advanced editing tools such as Camtasia.

ScreenToaster enables downloads in .swf and .mov to export your video in third party editing tools. This will be the next step (rework audio, cut, add some music…).

Can videos recorded in ScreenToaster be used commercially to demo web-apps and desktop software?

Bloggers in our community love to use ScreenToaster to review a service or a software.

Does it record at a lower frame-rate compared to desktop tools like CamTasia?

ScreenToaster records high quality screencasts and optimizes the frame rate for the best ratio “fluidity/quality” for  optimal streaming online.

Are users able to collaborate on-line, for example one might make video, one might add audio, another might edit the result and a fourth might add subtitles?

This functionality doesn’t exist yet. Thanks sharing it with us.

Do you have any plans for the future that you’d like to share?

What’s hot ? Our API is being Beta tested, it will be useful for collaborative projects, professional tutorials, users’ support and feedback management, bug tracking and reporting.  We are preparing a new player with new functionalities (rewind/fast forward, gadgets embedded on the video itself…).

Rudy – thanks for your participation.  If you provide something interesting in the world of screencasting and would like to be interviewed, get in contact.

Would you like a free eBook that is all about how to make better screencasts? Our Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk

We’re rather chuffed to say that our screencast that explains the open-source Adblock Plus plug-in (Washington Post) is the 15th most popular video in YouTube’s Sci/Tech category this month.  We created this screencast with Wladimir (Adblock’s author) to explain how the plug-in works, how to get it and how to get support.

This screencast is second only to a screencast by Google on Privacy which puts us in with rather forward-thinking company.

With 600 views a day (we’re guessing 16,000 views for this month) and 36 feedbacks of 5/5 this screencast is a great way for us to give back to the open-source community and to help explain this very useful plug-in to potential new users.  It also reduces Wladimir’s support burden as more users know what to expect when they install it and how to get help in the forum if they have questions.

We’re also honoured in two other categories, in total:

• #15 – Most Viewed (This Month) – Science & Technology
• #64 – Top Rated (This Month) – Science & Technology
• #57 – Top Favourited (This Month) – Science & Technology

Previously we’ve looked at choosing your screencasting software, editing the screencast and adding music, 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.

Would you like a free eBook that covers all of this information (and more)? Our Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk

We’ve already looked at choosing your screencasting software and editing the screencast, now let’s look at adding music.  Later we’ll look at exporting the finished video, embedding the screencast in your site and spreading it further afield into sites like YouTube and Vimeo.  We’ll also cover narration recording and how to add extra polish.

Background music helps to give pace to your video – you can choose a fun and fast track for a homepage intro screencast and soothing, gentle music during longer tutorials.

Typically you buy a track (cost: $10USD – $50USD) and add it to your screencast using a screencast editor (e.g. CamTasia or ScreenFlow).  Generally we alter the volume envelope of the track before we add it to the screencast so it is louder at first, quiet during narration and fades out at the end.

Sites we’ve used for background music include LoopSound and StockMusic.net.  Browse through their catalogues and preview the tracks.  When you purchase a track generally you get a few days to download the .wav and/or .mp3 and then you have to keep it locally (the sites don’t store your purchase for long).

If your narration is problematic (e.g. you have background noise, coughs, street-noise, breathing) then you will find that a backing music track is a cheap fix.  It won’t remove the problems but it will hide them.

Note that we always suggest fixing your source recording.  Here at ProCasts we always record the voice-over separately, remove background noise, remove any artefacts and apply range compression and normalisation as a matter of course.  We’d never release a problematic audio track and you shouldn’t either!

Audacity is a great audio editor.  You can open the volume envelope tool to change the volume throughout the track, first cut the music to the precise length of your screencast and then start loud, fade down for narration, then fade out at the end.

This process is fiddly and will take multiple attempts but the results are well worth it!

For good examples of possible end results see our screencast examples page and watch the LiveDrive, Adblock Plus and BrandWatch examples.

An alternate approach to manually changing the volume on a music track is to use side-chaining:

Side-chaining uses the signal level of another input or an equalized version of the original input to control the compression level of the original signal.

The technique is known as ducking, when you speak your voice’s presence is used to lower the volume of the music track.  This means that the music track’s volume will raise and lower (which might sound odd in places) but the process is going to be simpler than manually adjusting the volume levels.  Thanks to Gasto for the tip.

What next?  Well, you’ll want to export your screencast in the right format for the widest possible distribution.

Would you like a free eBook that covers all of this information (and more)? Our Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk

Sadly JoltMagazine.com seems to have fallen off of the internet.  Back in September 2008 they interviewed me, I’ve reprinted it below as the background should be useful to new screencasters:

I’ve been screencasting for over three years.  Within ProCasts.co.uk I create professional screencasts for companies and provide training, I’m also the co-founder of ShowMeDo.com.  ShowMeDo is a sort of YouTube for training screencasts on open-source software.  The site has a monthly audience of 100,000 world-wide users and over 100 authors, there I’ve personally created over 130 screencasts ranging from Python programming to Firefox to how-to-screencast.

To my mind the most important roles of the professional screencaster are to understand:

1. Who will watch the screencast and what they want to know (why does this tool make their life better than someone else’s?)
2. What the client wants to show (probably their main tool and unique-selling-points)
3. What the client wants to achieve (usually ‘more conversions’!)

Once you know the needs of the viewer and their background you can craft a presentation that conveys the client’s message.  The client probably wants more users to sign-up and try their service or buy a license.  There should be one clear message which is backed by supporting points.

If the client wants more users to sign-up to try a service, that should be the main point.  The supporting points are probably demonstrations of features that make the viewer’s life easier, these all build the viewer’s confidence towards the goal ‘this is the tool for me’.

I prefer to demonstrate the tool working with live action rather than to talk over a static presentation with screenshots, seeing the tool working sticks far more strongly in the mind.  It also shows the user what to expect when they try it, this gives them greater confidence and removes a barrier that might have formed in their mind.

The screencast can end with a call-to-action.  All interested users will want to know what they should do next – if you point them in the right direction after they’ve given you several minutes of their attention then there’s a high chance that they’ll follow that action.

I choose to guarantee my work – if it doesn’t achieve the desired action (e.g. increasing conversions) then I’ve not done my job and I don’t deserve my fee.  Generally speaking multiple screencasts get a discount compared to just one as less time is required overall, complex demos with polished graphics take more time and cost more than simple walkthroughs.  I’m always happy to give feedback on how and why screencasting might benefit a site and help increase conversions.

Professional tips?
Use great tools – on Windows get CamTasia, on a Mac get ScreenFlow.  For Linux you can use tools like ffmpeg or recordmydesktop to make a video but you’ll be stuck for decent screencast editors, I’d suggest exporting back to Windows or Mac for editing.  You could also try using a virtual Linux instance inside Windows or a Mac.

Try to use a good voice microphone.  Built-in laptop mics won’t do.  A quiet environment with a decent mic should give a good result, pro-audio equipment will be much better.  In post-production use an audio editor (Audacity is great and free) to remove breathing, compress the volume levels and remove noise.  If you breathe on the mic a lot, remember to breathe separately from speaking so it is easier to remove the whooshing sounds.

If you have strong sibilants (‘esses’) then play with the microphone’s location, this usually solves the problem, angling it can be very helpful.  If you have plosives (‘p’s and ‘b’s), try a pop-shield.

For the video I’d always plan the entire script.  For new presenters remember that the pause key is your friend, you can cut dead scenes in post-production and pausing lets you get your breath.

Be careful if you’re doing an off-the-cuff presentation, ‘ums’ and ‘errs’ can appear at awkward moments during key scenes and they’re harder to edit out if you’re speaking at the same time as all the sounds cut into each other.

I aim for 2-3 minutes for a marketing demo for first-time visitors and up to 8 minutes for a tutorial when the user is prepared to watch for longer.  Long videos for first-time visitors will make them bored so keep it snappy.

(Jolt) What are the worst mistakes you’ve seen?
Most people can create a credible demo if they plan and practice, have a quiet room and a decent mic.  Always get feedback from someone else before releasing the result to an unsuspecting world.

Some of the worse audio I’ve heard comes from cheap mics which are humming due to electrical interference.  The user then knocks the microphone a few times causing loud thumps and they breathe on the mic causing constant Darth Vader-like sounds.  Add in line-noise and street-noise and you’ve got a presentation which is really hard to listen to, it certainly won’t sound professional.  Post-production on the audio can only treat some of this, a good mic in a quiet room is always to be preferred.

With video I’ve seen people choose not to use audio (because they didn’t like their voice) and to compensate they’ve used a number of visual fade effects  and unhelpful annotations.

Rather than using 1 or 2 short fades, they’ve used a set of the whizziest ones for 5+ seconds each – this produces an inconsistent result with unhelpful graphical effects.  Unhelpful annotations might ask questions of the user which aren’t answered or present feature lists rather than showing benefits.  Leaving the user *more* confused is about the worst crime you can commit with a screencast!

Some presenters also forget about their screencast tool’s highlight effect and instead choose to whizz the mouse around in circles, this just looks odd.

Useful Links:
Examples at Procasts – http://procasts.co.uk/examples.html
ShowMeDo – http://showmedo.com/
Over 130 tutorials by the author at ShowMeDo – http://showmedo.com/videos/?author=2
Screencasts about screencasting – http://showmedo.com/videos/screencasting

Contact:
ian@procasts.co.uk

Bob and Pat of Startup Success were kind enough to interview me last week on the subject of how and why you should make screencasts to demo your software product.  At first we reached out to the readers of the Business of Software forum to ask ‘Screencasts – what would you like to know?‘.

The Art and Science of Screencasts (mp3) is interview #21 at Startup Success, the mp3 runs for 42 minutes:

“In show #21 Bob and Pat interview Ian Ozsvald, founder of ProCasts on the art and science, mystery and drama of creating great screeencasts for your startup’s product or web site. Ian generously shares his expertise about how to target your screencast, techniques that make a huge difference, a range of free and non-free tools, ways to improve your video communication abilities and more. If you want to know how to create a screencasts that shines, this is the show for you!”

Would you like a free eBook that covers all of this (and more)? Our Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk

We’ve discussed why you should screencast, how to choose your screencast software and adding music in this screencast tutorial series, now we’ll look at editing your recording.

Your goal when editing is to create the shortest, snappiest and cleanest screencast that’s possible.  If it is fast-moving and interesting then your viewers will keep watching, if it is hard to watch, boring, slow or with rough audio then the viewer is likely to click away – you want to avoid this!

A nice clean audio track makes a slower screencast tolerable, even a nice snappy screencast is hard to watch if the audio is bad (i.e. noisy/hummy, clipped, full of coughs, horrid music, anything harsh on the ears).

To make your screencast easy to watch, the first thing you should do is edit out any slow sections (e.g. when a web-page is loading) and remove any errors (e.g. you wiggled the mouse around and then started that sequence again).

Once you’ve removed the dead wood, next you want to enhance the video.  Use zooms and highlights to focus the viewer’s attention exactly where you want it.    Zooms are especially useful if you’re recording a large resolution and presenting it much smaller – the final text might be hard to read so a zoom makes everything legible.

For software, I tend to recommend CamTasia on Windows – it is an excellent package with a lossless codec and a full screencast editor.  On a Mac I use ScreenFlow, it also has a great editor (I think not quite as powerful as CamTasia’s but I’m hoping to be proved wrong).  On a Mac you also have iMovie which gives you an extra box of tools.

If you’re on a budget on Windows and you’re using HyperCam or CamStudio, you can try VirtualDubMod.  VirtualDubMod is a bit of a pain to use but does let you cut sections out, even though you can’t use it to add zooms or text annotations.

Finally, consider making an intro title and an exit screen.  CamTasia makes this easy, you can also  create something in a graphics package – include your logo, a title and maybe a date (if your video gets old, the end-user has a chance to see that it is out of date!).

An animated introduction is nice – you can easily engage an animator on e.g. eLance to add a simple effect so you get a 4 second animated sequence.  It’ll really make your screencast stand out from the competition.

Next step – adding music to your screencast.

Would you like a free eBook that covers all of this information (and more)? Our Little Book of Screencasting is in the works, to receive a notification when we release it send an email to: ebook_notify@procasts.co.uk