ShowMeDo Blog

Now that we have reached 50 ShowMeDo videos, Kyran and I have learned a great deal about making screencasts (or podcasts as they are sometimes known). Here are my Top 5 Tips for recording your own screencasts:

1. Plan each video to be 5-10 minutes on one subject - longer videos can be split into a series
2. Know your subject - to be authentic you have to know what you’re talking about
3. Have a rough plan and run through it several times - if you know your subject then you can record almost off-the-cuff with just a rough plan in mind
4. The ‘pause’ button is your friend - take a breath, clear your throat, drink some water, then unpause when you’re ready to continue
5. Start with a quick introduction to yourself and the subject, say what you’ll be covering, run through your presentation (umms and errs are fine) and conclude at the end with a ‘thanks for listening’.

That is all there is to it. If you know what you’re talking about, then making a video is terribly easy on Windows with free software, is very easy on MacOS with some paid software, and easy-enough (if you’re ok at the command line) and free under Linux. We handle all the post-production, transcoding and hosting, all you need to do is share your knowledge and we can do the rest!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 8:15 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.