This was one of the first screencasts I’d seen uploaded to YouTube using HD, even though it is mute and with annotations you still get a lot of information on how the product works:

The Good:

• Short, just 27 seconds long
• High Def so the visuals are crystal-clear
• Easy to follow – the Windows are joined and separated, it all looks very easy
• Easy embedding – YouTube is used so I, as a reviewer, can easily embed the screencast here (great for wider exposure)
• Public statistics – over 1,080 views at YouTube in under 2 months so Mo is obviously getting exposure (the fact that others are paying attention gives me confidence)

The Bad:

• No narration – so no explanation of what’s going on and the benefits to the end user
• No music – music is nice to set the scene on a marketing screencast
• No call to action – I get to the end of screencast and I’m interested…but what should I do next? What if I have a question?

Improvements:

• Add narration! Tell a useful story, explain the benefits, tell the user why this is great for them
• Add a call-to-action – you’ve got their interest, tell them how to get started right now and what to do if they have a question
• Answer any fears – remind the user about the money-back guarantee (this could just be in a text call-out) and the fact that it is both easily tried and easily removed
• Add testimonials into the video – let me see Social Proof that other people are using WindowTabs and that they find it beneficial

Our screencast tutorial series gives tips on all the above points.

If you’d like a private review of your own screencasts and advice on improving their quality, we offer this as a service, just get in Contact.

The Good:

• The video is short (2:30) and moves along at an OK pace
• The demo works fine and the product looks easy enough to use
• The video is hosted by YouTube in HD so the visual aspects are very clear
• YouTube is used so external sites can embed the video to drive extra traffic like this one.

The Bad:

• Background hum, probably from the mains electricity, this is really distracting.  There’s also some street noise near the end
• Non-native English narration – I can understand it but I’d imagine other international users might have trouble which will reduce the audience
• No call-to-action – if your viewer watches right to the end then they’re probably interested – tell them how to try your tool and how to get their questions answered
• The videos aren’t embedded in the product page but are hidden behind a red ‘Watch Product Video’ link

Possible Improvements:

• The audio must be fixed, I’ve written about how bad audio can really reduce a viewer’s perception of the quality of your product.  Always use a good mic in a quiet environment and perform an audio clean-up step in post-production if necessary
• Many frames could have been cut in post-production to cut out 15-30 seconds of dead footage
• A call-to-action at the end will remind interested users how they too can try your product (remember: Don’t Make Me Think!)
• Embed the videos on the Product page, possibly using a javascript pop-up box (like here in ProCasts), so the user doesn’t have to visit other pages to find the videos

If you’d like a private review of your own screencasts and advice on improving their quality, we offer this as a service, just get in Contact.

Andy wanted to demonstrate the app to his site’s visitors so he created his own screencast.  Currently it is shown here (YouTube), Andy has engaged us to work on a replacement, now shown here (also see our write-up for the new screencast).  Here’s the original:

The Good

• Short video (1:42)
• Clear and well paced audio
• Even without zooms the video is very clear (thanks to YouTube’s HD option)
• Clear demo, the app looks easy-to-use
• Shareable (thanks to YouTube player)
• Transcript provided for extra Google Juice and accessibility

The Bad

• Andy sounds bored!  This leaves the viewer unengaged
• The video forgets to sell the main USPs of the product
• Lots of wiggly-mouse action when a zoom and highlight would make the point more clearly

The use of YouTube is interesting – the HD option keeps the video’s quality high and Andy has access to the Insigh analytics that YouTube provides.

I spoke to Andy about the audio, this was his first screencast and he narrated whilst recording the screencast which made it difficult to concentrate on the tone of what was being said.  A Twitter user remarked along the lines of “Could this guy sound any less interested?” (tweet since deleted), thankfully Andy saw the tweet and was able to start a conversation:

@nicepaul – I appreciate your candor regarding my voice-over at http://orchestrateapp.com/tour, I’m working on an improved track (twitter)

@andykiteman hope i wasn’t too frank! just seemed not to do the site (which is great, btw) justice. (twitter)

@nicepaul No, your honesty is greatly appreciated and was echoed by others. I was screen-casting & reading the script at the same time – v. bad idea (twitter)

The fact that the video doesn’t mention the Unique Selling Points (qualifications are constraints, locations are integrated, write-ups are required for Compliance reporting) is a big mistake.  From the inside, it is easy to forget that you have to spell everything out to the first-time visitor.

We are working on an improved screencast for Andy that addresses these issues and walks you through A Day In The Life of Orchestrate, I’ll link to the result once it is ready.

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

The screencast itself however has some flaws, here I’ll give a critique.

The Good:

1. Wow – lots of interesting information is covered and the tool looks really interesting
2. Nice charts, clear visuals
3. Clear, well-paced voice (Steven’s own)
4. Nice summary in the last minute to tell me what to expect in the future

The Bad:

1. No story – lots of examples but they jump between many subjects so I don’t have a narrative to hang-on to
2. Too long!  13 minutes in total, generally we keep our introductory/tour videos to 2-3 minutes for maximum retention
3. Too many subjects covered – this is of interest to biologists, fact-seekers, cross-word puzzlers, engineers and, well, everyone
4. No way I can embed a copy in my site for viral distribution

The Ugly:

1. Video dimensions are way too big, rather than widescreen or 4:3 it is closer to a square so on my MacBook I can’t see the top and the bottom of the video at the same time.  Since the queries are typed at the top and the results fill the whole screen this meant I had to keep scrolling up and down to view everything.  UPDATE on my 1680×1050 Ubuntu Desktop inside Firefox I still can’t see all of the video, a thin section is still lost.  Was this recorded using an upright display (with the thin edge at the top) rather than a conventional display?
2. The file is an SWF rather than FLV or MP4 video, this meant that when the download stalled (and it had to – it was so large) I had to reload it from the start rather than having a progressive download resume from the cache

Thoughts for improvement:

1. Fix the video size – make it 640×480 (this fits 99% of viewer’s screens) so we can see it all at once and use FLV rather than SWF
2. Tell a story – rather than show many facts instead think about building up an interesting story that shows the power of Alpha
3. Make several screencasts focused on appropriate disciplines so the stories are really relevant to me and my tribe