Ask HN: Best tool stack for Laracast-type instructional videos? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best tool stack for Laracast-type instructional videos?

15 pointstomcam11 comments

Need to produce some tutorial videos for a web framework. Would like them to be as high quality as possible. Should I just go Camtasia or something similar? ASCIIcinema? Scrimba? This will be mostly VS Code interspersed with screen renders of the resulting HTML, ideally with portions of the screen highlighted or with callouts from time to time. Preferred platform is Mac.

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I make screencasts [1] about Vue.js. I get a pretty good quality recording with a simple setup:

- Blue yeti mic

- QuickTime on Macos for screen recording

- any editor

- no editing what so ever

When I need to show the browser I just cmd tab.

From my personal experience a lot of what makes a high quality recording is a clear voice, clean pronunciation etc. I would not recommend spending a ton of time or money on equipment or software without practising a lot - you can get pretty good quality with a simple setup like I described. If your content is good, you can get away either some slight imperfections. Spend time on your content as much as possible as opposed to post production.

[1] https://vuejs-course.com/screencasts

Belated thanks! This was the kick I needed!

I use the following.

Software Stack:

ScreenFlow for recording/editing. iMovie is garbage. ScreenFlow has a really robust set of keyboard shortcuts that makes editing easy. It's also very explicitly built for screencasts, exactly what it sounds like you want to accomplish. I tried starting with imovie to be cheap but the tool is just awful.

Google Slides (of all things) for generating very basic images/video thumbnails

OBS for any live streaming.

Physical Recording Tools:

- Blue Yeti mic (can be anything though)

- iphone XS Max + tripod + white wall (to record things that look more like talks - you probably don't need this)

Happy to answer any questions. Have been meaning to put together a basic how-to guide for a while. There are surprisingly few people talking about how to make great software screencasts.

edit: formatting

I did not see this until too late. Thank you very much, it’s right on the nose. Keyboard control is essential for me too in this case.

was also surprised how hard it is to find a good easy setup.. researched for some time only to end up resulting to imovie an quicktime. obs just was to much for what i wanted to do. but if i was really going to spend time on it, i would record using obs, the pick you favorite video editor, imovie can get you 70% there.

the hacky thing i ended up doing was a screen and audio recording simultaneously then edit to picture in picture, you must sync the two tracks.. worked fairly well, imovie is decent enough and really quick to get around. though really do not get why you can only crop to a fixed aspect ratio.. recently got a mmhmm beta invite, so will give that a shot instead of obs, should then be able to record only one track.

if you are going to be recording straight through a webcam add a webcam controller app so that you can config the brightness etc and not leave the webcam on auto.

obviously set yourself up with a decent mic in a well lit room with no echo. its worth investing a bit on lighting and sound quality.

Thanks for the detailed info. I'm in this for the long haul so I'll learn OBS. No picture-in-picture needed because believe me, no one wants to see my mug. Already have good audio but thanks for the reminder.

You can check out Loom too. https://www.loom.com/

Loom looks good. I have Camtasia though so I may not need Loom? Open to more info as to its goodness.

You can try sharex. It is a very good and open source screen recording software that allows voice input from external sources like mics.

mmhmm?

No really it's an app, beta only though

If you mean mmhmm.app, thanks. Looks like a great product but I'm looking for a way to share code, mostly, not my damn face ;)

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