How do you make a great video demo?

3 pointsbcater3 comments

What should you do? What should you not do?

Are you talking about a screencast of your product or are you talking about video footage cut with other things?

For screencasting: keep it under 5 minutes, use a script, read the FreshView Post: http://www.freshview.com/thoughts/2007/05/how_we_create_walk...

In terms of presentations, you can imagine combining live-action with infographics and a product demo. This is an involved process and requires production and editing knowledge. Fuel for thought--imagine taking Jonathan Harris' presentation of 20 minutes and editing it down to less than 10 with a focus on facial close-ups, infographics, and product demonstrations. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/144

Can anyone recommend screen-capture tools? Ideally, I'd like to zoom in on certain areas easily -- and post processing would be the most convenient.

Camtasia seems pretty good.

Camtasia is the de facto one for PC. I use iShowU on the Mac and produce it in iMovie. The default settings in iMovie hose it (i wrote a short tutorial here with the settings I've found to work best-> http://www.scrollinondubs.com/2007/06/12/produce-a-clear-scr...) I've also heard that Snapz is good on the Mac but have not used it personally.

sean

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