Screencast

Draft

Definition

“A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration.” (Wikipedia, retrieved 20:22, 30 July 2007 (MEST).

See also Screen capture tutorial and Podcast.

Software

Free Recording software

• CamStudio for Windows is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)
  • SourceForge site
  • CamStudio, the Official Blog.

• Wink. Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users. (Windows and Linux).

• Jing (MacOS, Windows)
  • widget that hides in the corner until clicked
  • image or video capture of selected area on screen
  • sound or mute
  • save to clipboard, locally or share
  • basic version free, added instant sharing and screencasting features for pro version

Video software

You also may just film some user interaction (i.e. via a webcam) or with a camera. But mileage is not so good in most cases. See: video streaming, multimedia container format, etc.

In education

Screencasts are very popular in so-called rapid e-learning. "Rapid" refers to production cost, i.e. it is cheaper to produce screen casts than good written manuals or online interactive contents.

See also:

• multimedia animation

Links

Overviews Screen casting

(capture of user interactions)

• Video Captures (Wikipedia)
• Screencast (Wikipedia)
• List of screencasting software (Wikipedia)
• J Udell's del.icio.us entries

Tutorials

• Capture a Screencast with a Mac by Miraz Jordan.

• What Is Screencasting, by Jon Udell, 11/16/2005

• How to Make Flash Tutorials With a Free Program Called Wink (Wink is a free program that you can use to create Flash tutorials on Windows or Linux).