Screencasting

I've been making what I call movies for a while now. They have usually been biggish software demonstrations. Last year, American Journalist John Udell christened this type of recording a 'screencast. It's where computer screen activity is recorded with a voiceover. His term is so good, I've just changed all my references to movies on my BrainStorm website and user forum.

In the past week or so, I have created a couple of tiny screencasts in response to support emails. For both parties, these things are a Godsend. They take just a few minutes to make and, best of all, they can be shared. I am slipping all screencasts I make into the Screencasts topic of the user forum.

Although I create screencasts for technical support and demo's at the moment, I can see that I might be tempted to create screencasts with PowerPoint as a backdrop.

I use Blueberry Consultants' Flashback software to make the recording and squirt out a Flash or .exe file. It is possible to create other formats but they (.avi, .wmv) tend to be quite large. (I've just noticed I can squirt out a PowerPoint file as well. Hmmm. More investigation needed here.)

Small support type queries can be done in 200-300k if you choose low frame-rate Flash output.

Here are some filesize comparisons for a 17.5 minute program demonstration:

Flash full frame rate - 8.6MB
Flash quarter frame rate - 6.4MB
.exe - 10.2MB.