Directory of Screencasting Resources

Updated Nov 13 2006: added a piece on screencasting in Linux which looks helpful, albeit complicated.

This week’s WSJ.com column, out Friday, is about screencasting (you can find all my columns here; subscription only, I’m afraid):

Screencasts are really simple to grasp. And in some ways they're not new. But I, and a few thousand other people, think they represent a great way to leverage the computer to train, educate, entertain, preach and otherwise engage other people in a very simple way. Something the Internet and computers have so far largely failed to do.

Screencasts are basically little movies you create on your computer. In most cases, they are movies of your computer. You use special software to capture what keystrokes and mouse clicks you make on your screen - demonstrating how to use Google, say (the screen bit of screencasting -- and then, once you've edited and added a voiceover, upload it to your Web site and let everyone else watch it (the casting bit.) It's as simple as that.

Here are some links that may help. Not everyone calls what they do screencasting, but most do. There’s tons more stuff out there, but most of these sites will take you there too.

Introductions

• Jon Udell’s primer at Digital Media
• Wikipedia entry on Screencast
• Good review of available software
• Guide from Bill Myers
• Reviews from Amit Agarwal
• List of screencast software
• How to make screencasts in Linux

Software

• BB FlashBack Screen Recorder
• ScreenCam
• Wink
• Camtasia
• Microsoft’s Windows Media Encoder
• mdm Capture
• Replay Screencast
• Adobe Macromedia Captivate
• vnc2swf a cross-platform screen recording tool for ShockWave Flash (swf) format
• Qarbon Viewlet Builder
• Snapz Pro X (Mac)
• TurboDemo
• infoStrider
• WildPresenter
• ScreenAction Studio (Mac)
• ScreenRecord (Mac)
• Screenography (Mac)
• iShowU (Mac)
• Istanbul (Gnome, KDE, XFCE and others)
• Display Eater (Mac)
• Screen Movie Recorder (Mac)
• Bulent's Screen Recorder + BSR Movie Lab
• uvScreenCamera + uvVisualizator
• Screencast-O-Matic:         Uses a Java applet to do the screen capture and playback so theoretically it should support all major platforms and browsers. That said there are some issues with certain combinations of platforms/browsers.

Screencasts

• One of Jon’s on using Jot
• ScreenCastsOnline: tutorials for the Mac
• How to play soccer
• BlogBridge
• A Google search of screencasts made with Camtasia

Uses of screencasts

• Wayfaring

Comments

[Amit Agarwal]

Thanks Jeremy for the links. I am big screencasting fan myself.

Would you consider vidcasting different from screencasting ?

Both can have video as well has software screenshots but vloggers never use the term screencast to describe their content.

What's your opinion on this ?

[JW]

Amit, good question. I think I'd make a difference between something that is a video of a person talking, or any kind of real world footage, and a screencast, which captures (or largely captures) action on screen -- whether it's mouse movements, drawing, or images. I also tend to think of screencasting as a sort of demonstration, rather than a show. But I guess it blurs.

[JL]

Amit,

One thing we are doing is embedding flash based TTS characters into our presentations and either playing pre-recorded audio or triggering Text-To-Speech using Java events built into our software. Email me and I'll send you some samples.

[Peter]

There are more examples here:
http://mefeedia.com/tags/screencasts/
and
http://mefeedia.com/tags/screencast/

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[sabrina]

Hi there,

Great post ... I thought you might be interested in another free Screencasting program to add to your list ...

DemoCreator: http://www.sameshow.com/demo-creator.html

Records your screen activities and can export it into SWF, email, auto run CD/EXE with LMS compliance ...

More details on the website ...

Cheers

[paper machines]

Thanks so much for the information and tutorial. I saw your video on Photojojo and yesterday made three books using more photos within the books mixed with different papers. They are fantastic! Because I wasn’t sure about the glue (I just used Elmers’), I applied 3 coats of glue. My daughter loved hers (with photos of our cats) and started using it as a story book (to write her own) right away.
Thanks again! :-)