Several folks have already mentioned that the real value of screen capture tools is to create assets that can be used by a person whose job it is to explain abstract concepts to an audience. I would go so far as to say that if you're a founder, hiring someone who is really good at product videos is something you should 100% outsource even if you're talented with storytelling and motion graphics. It's a distraction from your key priorities, and you don't have enough distance from the subject matter to be objective about what's okay vs great.
I'd like to add that it's really debatable that a video where someone rapidly zips around an interface that they haven't used is actually something people want to see. I suspect that on its own, such a video is often not the huge win that it might seem.
Also, if a process is really easy (press a button, enter a credit card) then you can bet your ass people will soon be tired of seeing the same presentation with different marketing copy.
Things that were absolutely novel at one point include: agent chat widgets in the bottom right corner, presentations that tween and zoom on every slide, infinite scroll newsfeeds, captchas. All timeless things people love more and more every day, right?
If the agent chat actually works, I like it.
But yeah, 99% of the time the bots are as useless as IVRs. "Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. For quality assurance, your call may be monitored or recorded."
I think that product tutorials are somewhat of a black art. On the one hand you have:
1. Keeping the flow moving and the video fast-paced and interesting
2. Adding aftereffects and other visual niceties
3. Pointing out the relevant bits with zooms, highlights, etc...
But on a deeper level, you also have questions of:
1. Am I using the right sample app to demonstrate my use case?
2. Is the feature I'm using bulletproof? Do I need to change something in the DOM of the application since that feature is not 100%? Do I need to not show a piece since it's irrelevant? Do I need to speed through or flip over from things while they're running / fetching / compiling / generating etc...?
3. And, maybe most importantly, what is the message I intended to deliver? Is that a product overview? A documentation-oriented video? A demo for a conference or a customer? Who's my audience? Am I speaking to them?
I've been doing videos for a while, and I found that the second part of the problem is actually not as easy as one would assume.
I applaud great YouTubers for that - they cracked how to do walkthroughs of products that are not only technically interesting, but also visually pleasing.
I'm a bit of a video nerd, I guess. I started out way back when doing these little nuggets of absolute terribleness (oh my god the thumbnail) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlM7w0mARnn4ytxM6s-0b...
And happy to say I improved a little bit from then :)
(that website's pretty new, comments more than welcome)
Some point before we've bargained on the pricing, or after? :-)
that looks super neat and I'd love to do those for people. if there was a way to get those kinds of jobs, one-off, I'd give it a try. RIP taskrabbit.
I treat these more as discovery sessions than anything else. It’s also how I’ve landed on the exact pricing points I have - talking to people, especially when early, is a great experience.
There’s also something to be said about showing prices only in calls - people hate it here (or in general), but there is value to showing the price at the end of the call and not at the start. You get to show the thing to the person, get them excited, and then the price point looks a little different.
The trick is tailoring the sales call to the person - if I can convince them that they should keep me around since I provide a good service, they might pay the price.
Also, there are always discounts as the guy above mentioned;)
Many do! And the ones who don’t still get a taste of how I think like and perhaps want to talk some more about other things - this is a side-business productized service; I mainly contract with technical startup companies to do their GTM.
It’s actually looking like it’d be a pretty decent lead funnel for that too!
Man, going out on my own was a great fucking decision.
Because the first person to say a number in a negotiation tends to lose.
Because maybe they aren't selling five minute videos. The point is not ever to create five minutes of video. The point is to clearly explain what a product does, and that process is going to be wildly different depending on whether the product makes any fucking sense. You usually don't know if you're going to be able to work with a client until you talk to them.
If someone is sexy and charming, you'll probably go home with them for free. If someone else is neither sexy nor charming, they better be prepared to put something pretty amazing on the table or you're going to pass.
Yeah, yeah, scrap what I said - let's go with Pete.
All of what Pete says is true. I'm just putting forth that having a ballpark number is useful frame of reference because you don't know how many people aren't calling because they don't want to engage with the unknown so I think you're losing more business than you think. But, it doesn't sound like you're short business in the first place, so what I'm saying isn't relevant.
As the greatest singer in our generation said so succinctly in one of her latest hits:
Yeah, my receipts be lookin' like phone numbers If it ain't money, then wrong number
It's kind of like that for me, if phone numbers were five digits!
Your site looks great. Your service is very needed.
My only advice is to stop apologizing for not offering pricing on your website, both here and on your website. Seriously: cut it out. Go right now and remove those <10 words that imply you have something to explain. It's completely normal to have a conversation about something like this before you commit to building it because if you don't have chemistry, you're not going to take the gig.
What you do is the literal best-case scenario for value based pricing. After having read "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" by Blair Enns, some of the comments on this thread feel like mosquitoes trying to get in between your toes.
If you absolutely must, you can say something that alludes pricing that won't get you fired by your board. However, even that is too much word, because what you do only "costs" money until it either a) launches the company or b) keeps a failed company from having spent way, way more.
Okay, maybe I do have a 2nd suggestion. It's not as urgent: consider morphing the 3/5/7 minute "products" into "products" that reflect the typical reason those lengths work eg. "The Product Video", "The Explainer" and "The Demo". Even in this thread, people get hung up on the length instead of the goal of the outcome.
It's much more useful for all parties to think of them not as lengths, but formats.
TL;DR: stop apologizing, consider doubling what you charge
Thanks brother!
I'm a founder at Yarn (YC W24) – we're building in this space and launching on HN soonish.
We often see teams combining ScreenStudio with products like iMovie, AfterEffects, or Veed. Other products in the space to check out are Tella.tv, Kite, or Descript.
For more advanced motion graphics, you'll often need a freelancer or agency.
Feel free to drop me a message (email in bio) to talk through options!
For product demos specifically, best bet might be a Chrome-extension-based product like Arcade!
I really don't like these demos, they are really nauseating to me.
As I generally don't like videos with many/fast transitions like many popular YouTube videos and movies are, I'm probably a minority in this regard.
It's browser-based, but there's a Mac (and Windows I think) companion app that records the screen with click-tracking for zooming (as it's not possible with browser screen sharing just yet). It's somehow limited compared to ScreenStudio, and the interface feels cheaper compared to a native Swift app, but for my needs it gets the job done.
+1 to that being ScreenStudio.
Sometimes people import ScreenStudio videos into Arcade to add branching, annotations, and get analytics about who is engaging with the tool.
We're about to announce a big release on May 17th which will be very relevant - we're going to show how you can capture beyond the browser and get even more powerful analytics (https://www.linkedin.com/events/7189307779977818112).
Happy to answer any questions here as well.
I basically exclusively build extensions because I strongly believe most startups and devs overlook the space
P.S. It's ms. ceo ;)
https://tiffzhang.com/startup/
It semi-randomly creates the site of a recently-launched startup. It is nine years old now, and completely nailed the overused style of the time.
The company names are also excellent. I wonder how many accidentally became real.
It was my first time using all these tools. It took me a couple days to make the video. Premiere is a bit of a beast, but by just asking ChatGPT how to do everything, I was able to get up to speed with it pretty fast.
Like Screen Studio, Kite lets you record your screen and automatically zoom in on the action.
But with some key upgrades:
- Combine multiple recordings
- Add text scenes with animations
- Place your recordings on a 3D device like a phone or laptop
- Add music and AI voiceovers
With lots more in the works.
It's still early, but we have lots of startups using Kite regularly for feature-launch videos. We're live on Mac OS and have a waitlist for Windows.
Get in touch if you have pain points in this space. Happy to chat any time!
What does this mean?
Do these tools provide HMI automation, where you script the mouse movements/clicks/scrolls during the recording?
We use this for really nice terminal only demos. Highly recommend even though there are some minor rendering issues if you are using special fonts.
https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs
I have a gitlab CI job to update my demo .gif's every time I update my application; always ensures that things are up-to-date and provides gif/video recording that I've ran specific commands (perfect for auditors!)
Examples you may know:
- https://sandwich.co/work/playdate/
- https://sandwich.co/work/auth0-2/
- https://sandwich.co/work/slack-wfh/ScreenFlow is also good.
But it's still a lot of hard work, making these. I suspect that AI tools can help, but, in the aggregate, it still needs a skilled eye and hand, to make stuff look good, and not obnoxious.
One way to do it completely free is OBS + Kdenlive. The interface for both leaves something to be desired but both open source and have all the features you would want (though sometimes buried in menus)
Yarn - Make Videos Like The Best (W24) https://yarn.so Kite - Product Videos Made Easy (S23) https://kite.video
It's sort of crazy YC is backing so many hundreds of companies that there's this level of overlap. I assume one pivoted into this?
Still, crazy to imagine all the YC companies competing with each-other these days. I've even seen YC-backed 'incumbents' being disrupted by new YC-backed startups.
You can do similar with more effort video editing software like DaVinci Resolve
1: https://medium.com/hackernoon/adding-visual-effects-to-your-...
I haven't used Journey, but it seems promising for product Tours: https://www.william-troup.com/journey-js/
For more sleek promo videos, I would work with a professional.
For example this one is probably better for ad etc:
Added benefit is that I think Camtasia is relatively easy to pickup compared to other tools I've tried to use.
We use Loom + Davinci Resolve - it's nowhere near as smooth as screenstudio
how can this be done? if the monitor resolution is say 1600 x 900, how can it record the frames and/or mouse movement in higher resolution than this?
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemmini/techspecs...
And some hdmi cameras
Easy to make these videos, edit, match music to it, etc.
But if you want a nice 90s edit of every 1h sales demo meeting check out DemoTime.
We are looking for tools that can generate fake data(may be based on our small set of data) for live demo setup.
Full disclosure, I'm the maintainer, but it's not like it'll cost you anything.
smdh.