Tips for Recording Engaging Screencasts

> 1. Start with an Outline

It's not a bad idea to have a rough draft of your script ready that outlines what you're going to say for each slide or during the coding sessions.

> 2. Focus on the Audience’s Needs

Be as practical as possible. Theory may be necessary of course, but a screencast is an excellent medium to SHOW rather than simply tell someone how to do things. That's the whole point behind screencasts.

> 3. Get a Good Mic

The cheapest microphone that could possibly get the job done is the Logitech Desktop USB Microphone (under $30). If your budget permits it, the next step up would be the Samson C01U with a stand, shockmount and pop filter. We've found it delivers the best bang for your buck.

> 4. Lock Out the Noise Makers

You'll hate ambulances, trust me. Two quick tips regarding that: 1) Pick the quietest room in the house; 2) If you hear a temporary sound, keep recording while repeating what was interrupted by the loud sound. Cutting the undesired part of the audio/video is far easier than stopping and restarting the whole recording session.

> 5. Consider Separating Audio and Video

Doing both simultaneously saves time, but it's really hard and the best results are usually obtained when audio and video are not recorded together. In my experience, most authors have found that recording the two things separately takes longer, but it's far easier. In the beginning, you can expect an hour of work for every one minute of production quality screencast. With experience and a well tested workflow, this number can be drastically improved upon.

> 6. Clean Up Your Desktop

Use a white background or a solid color, and be consistent about it. Some programs, like ScreenFlow for Mac, have a "hide desktop" option that automatically hides all the icons on your desktop.

> 8. Plan a Dress Rehearsal

If you record fragments of video without too much care for the audio the first time around, you'll get the timing right and it will act as a rehearsal. Once this is done, you can discard the audio track, and go for the polished recording of the audio as the video rolls.

<shameless-plug>My startup, http://ThinkCode.TV is doing pretty well in the Italian market, and we plan to go live with an English catalog by the end of March. If you are interested in recording engaging screencasts about programming, feel free to drop me a line at antonio@thinkcode.tv.</shameless-plug>

As the tips say, audio is really important, and setting the levels correctly is also important. You want the loudest you're going to be to not quite top out the level meter. In OS X, the system prefs show you the levels, as do most sceencasting apps. Even with levels set properly, I usually run my audio through Levelator, http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator, which does a really good job of automatically adjusting levels and smoothing out clips and chirps.

If you're on OSX, using Universal Access and making the mouse cursor larger is a great and easy way to call out where you are on screen. I tried working with OmniDazzle to get mouse halos and such, but it's just not worth it.

I'm usually pretty lazy and don't want to go into after effects or a bigger program to edit my videos afterwards if I need to show text, so I usually just prepare a text edit window or two ahead of time with any text I'll need. Drag them on screen, talk about whatever, and edit out the second it took you to drag it on later on.

Editing, I usually just use Quicktime Pro. My stuff doesn't need to be overly polished, so this works great.