Screencasting:Best Practices

Screencasting is fun if you know it well else it can cause some embarassment for creators.

When creatng a screencast, one great tip is to close any other aplications which are running.Presence of browser windows or folders not only cause clutter, but also can release some information about you which you may not want to share.I would also suggest clearing the address bar and not allowing autocomplete to fill in forms.

Another tip I learnt last week is related to script narration. For Jing , since the videos were 5 minutes or less, I narrated my scripts impromptu.However; for another class this week,I tried doing a screencast with camtasia and since it was a long script, I wrote down and read it.The final product was much better than what came out through Jing.

A final tip I would say would be to anticipate actions which seem to be normally paced while working on a screen, but in a screencast, it seems like ages have past by.An example is deciding where to move mouse pointer.Espeically while playing games, i noticed my cursor moving back and forth for no reason.This seemed awkward in a screencast whereas it would look normal in aday to day situation.