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Evangelism Reps Training Program/How to prepare a screencast: Difference between revisions
Evangelism Reps Training Program/How to prepare a screencast (view source)
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==Preparation== | ==Preparation== | ||
*Get yourself a headset | * Get yourself a headset: the main reason is that your voice will be much clearer and you don't have the issue of the mic recording feedback or outside noises like keyboard clicks. I use the [http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/audio-655-dsp Plantronics 655], which is affordable and comfy to wear. Mozilla can provide headsets to employees. | ||
*Turn off any social media channels and email clients on your computer | * Turn off any social media channels and email clients on your computer: you don't want any instant notifications popping up on the screen. When you are recording, that is all that should go on. | ||
*Have a script ready that you want to follow | *Have a script ready that you want to follow: this includes what you want to talk about and to have all the things open that you want to show. Loading times of apps and sites you want to show in your screencast is wasted time. | ||
*Be prepared to record a few times | * Be prepared to record a few times: you will get stuck from time to time. You can stitch together one screencast from various steps. | ||
*Take breaks | * Take breaks: don't try to record everything at once. When you have finished with one section, pause recording, have a sip of coffee or a walk and then come back — you'll sound much fresher. | ||
*Speak | * Speak clearly and at a moderate pace: There is nothing more frustrating than a screencast where the presenter mumbles or is too fast to follow. | ||
*You can record the screencast and then record your audio | * You can record the screencast and then record your audio: in a lot of cases this will have better results. | ||
*Plan your screencast and show only what is needed. Screencasts should follow a few rules | * Don't wave the mouse around. It's natural to gesture with the mouse while you talk, but it's very distracting to watch. Only move the mouse when you need to do something with it. | ||
**Be short | * Plan your screencast and show only what is needed. Screencasts should follow a few rules: | ||
**Be indexed | ** Be short: nobody wants to listen to hours of talk. If you can keep it under 3 minutes — win. You can also cut up longer topics into several screencasts | ||
**Be easy to watch | ** Be indexed: you should offer time stamps for people to jump to when covering a few topics so that more advanced viewers can, for example, skip basics | ||
**Be relevant | ** Be easy to watch: remember that not everybody will see the screencast fullscreen, but embedded. Thus use a larger font size in your editor and make examples that don't rely on low contrast or pixel-precision. Especially video conversion will blur a lot | ||
** Be relevant: show what can be done, not what people need to set up to get there - this could be accompanying text info. | |||
==Recording tools== | ==Recording tools== | ||
There are a few tools to do screencasts. Many are free, but it makes sense to spend some money as you avoid hosting issues and watermarking or limited features. | There are a few tools to do screencasts. Many are free, but it makes sense to spend some money as you avoid hosting issues and watermarking or limited features. | ||
See Wikipedia's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software Comparison of screencasting software] to help you pick a tool. | |||
===Screenr=== | ===Screenr=== | ||
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===Screenflow (recommended)=== | ===Screenflow (recommended)=== | ||
[http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/ Screenflow] is very much worth the $99 it costs. As you can see in the [http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/demos.htm demos on how to use it] it records the whole screen and you can then crop to what you need. You have several tracks to edit and shift and you can annotate your screencast and have effects to transition in between sections of it. Screenflow exports to YouTube or various local formats. I really got to like screenflow as it also allows you to edit other video and images into your screencasts easily. | [http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/ Screenflow] (Mac only) is very much worth the $99 it costs. As you can see in the [http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/demos.htm demos on how to use it] it records the whole screen and you can then crop to what you need. You have several tracks to edit and shift and you can annotate your screencast and have effects to transition in between sections of it. Screenflow exports to YouTube or various local formats. I really got to like screenflow as it also allows you to edit other video and images into your screencasts easily. | ||
External Links: | |||
*[http://sandbox.wcu.edu/?p=5074 Getting Started with Screenflow] | |||
===Linux tools=== | |||
If you are on Linux, [http://www.linuxhaxor.net/5-ways-to-screencast-your-linux-desktop/ here is a good article introducing various tools] you can use. | |||
===Windows tools=== | |||
* [http://www.techsmith.com/snagit.html Snagit], ~$50, for Windows and Mac. | |||
* See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software here] for a comparison of screencast software on all platforms. | |||
==Typing== | |||
Typing can be one of the most difficult parts to get right. You will often need to type code or commands on screen as part of the screencast, but typing quickly and accurately is not a skill everyone possesses, and doing it while talking is harder still. | |||
To make this easier you can: | |||
# write scripts that send keystrokes to the application you're demonstrating | |||
# bind these scripts to keyboard shortcuts so you can quickly and accurately "type" with a single keypress | |||
The exact tools to do this are platform-specific, but on Mac OS X you can send keystrokes to applications using [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/AppleScriptX.html AppleScript] scripts. Here's a script that switches to the TextMate editor and sends it "the string you want to write", followed by a carriage return: | |||
write_string("the string you want to write") | |||
carriage_return(1) | |||
on write_string(the_string) | |||
tell application "System Events" | |||
tell application "TextMate" to activate | |||
repeat with the_character in the_string | |||
keystroke the_character | |||
delay 0.1 | |||
end repeat | |||
end tell | |||
end write_string | |||
on carriage_return(how_many) | |||
tell application "System Events" | |||
tell application "TextMate" to activate | |||
repeat how_many times | |||
key code 36 | |||
delay 0.1 | |||
end repeat | |||
end tell | |||
end carriage_return | |||
To assign a keyboard shortcut to the script, so it runs when you press the shortcut, you can use a tool like [http://www.red-sweater.com/fastscripts/ FastScripts]. | |||
You can also automate reading a file and printing it out to the editor. Sublime Text/Textmate is a bit too clever with auto-indenting and closing of curly braces, so I am using Brackets for that. The script is: | |||
set fileContents to read POSIX file "/your/script/location/script.js" as «class utf8» | |||
set the text item delimiters to (ASCII character 10) | |||
set mylines to text items in fileContents | |||
repeat with currentline in mylines | |||
write_string(currentline) | |||
end repeat | |||
on write_string(the_string) | |||
tell application "System Events" | |||
tell application "Brackets Sprint 15" to activate | |||
repeat with the_character in the_string | |||
keystroke the_character | |||
delay 0.05 | |||
end repeat | |||
key code 36 | |||
key code 123 using command down | |||
end tell | |||
end write_string | |||
You can see this in action here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTkZug-6hPY | |||
==Publishing== | ==Publishing== | ||