We’ve been testing and testing different ways to do screencasting. We’ve looked into different technologies, used different tools, and read about many different best practices. We tried Jing, used many resources at screencast.com, looked at what other higher-eds are doing, and evaluated where the industry is headed. Based on the information we’ve gathered, we’d like to contribute our piece of the pie as we are trying to create a screencasting repository for our community.
Focus
We can go into details in a future post about what tools we have decided to use for which application in the distribution of screencasts. For now, we’re going to show you what we do and how we do it. Then demonstrate an example.
Screencast Tutorial in Vimeo
Screencasts: A Best Practice from Academic Technology on Vimeo.
Tools in Use
- Any Mac running Leopard
- Screenflow (v. 1.1.3) | http://www.flip4mac.com/screenflow.htm
- MobilePre M-Audio USB Preamp | http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/MobilePreUSB.html
- M-Audio Nova Class A FET Mic | http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Nova.html
Step by Step Process
- Resize our screen resolution to 1024×768
- Upload the 760×420 desktop background with cross-hairs Download Bkgd
- Bring browser into the screen and center it on the desktop over the cross-hairs
- Record screencast and end [Apple Shift 2]
- In Screenflow, click the “crop” icon in the lower-left corner of the canvas
- Enter 760 in the width and 420 in the height parameters. Move the box on top of the desired recording
- Click “Apply”
- File -> Export -> Customize
- In Video Settings: Select “Framerate” drop-down and select 15 fps (frames per second)
- Keyframes: Automatic
- Data Rate: Automatic
- Faster Encode, (single-pass)
- Click “OK”
- Click “Sound” and “Settings”
- In “Channels” pulldown, change from stereo to mono
- Target bitrate needs to be 64 kbps
- Click “OK”
- In “Dimensions”, make sure it is selected to “100%”
- Click “Export”
At this point, the video will export to whatever folder you desire. Your video should average around 1.3-1.5 mb/min, depending on what kind of screencast you are making. Below, click on the image to see one of these screencasts in context, made exactly the way we have outlined. It’s about three minutes long and around 3+mb. | Play Movie
Watch an Example
Like what you see? Give us some feedback. Have other ideas of systems and workflows that you have used and want to share them? Contact us, post comments, and let us know. We see this site as a way to collaborate and share to help take teaching and learning to the next level.