How To Make Screencasts: My Screen Casting Gear

With over 100 videos on the Expand2Web Blog and our training site, I get a LOT of questions like: “How do you create your screen casts?”

I’ve experimented with a lot of equipment and tools, and am glad to share what I learned. Hopefully this will save you some time and money!

Here’s my setup:

Screen Casting Software

I use Screenflow on my Mac to record and edit my screen casts.

Screenflow is an amazing tool; it makes recording the screencasts easy, and has tons of great editing tools for zooming in and featuring different parts of your screen.

It also provides an easy way to export your videos to YouTube and other video sites.

I also use OmniDazzle to highlight or annotate specific areas on my screen for some screencasts. This is a really nice tool that is free!

Sound and Voice

For natural sounding voice recording I’m using the Rode Podcaster microphone. You’ll want to use a shock mount so that the vibrations from your typing and mouse-clicking don’t come through while you are narrating a screencast.

A less expensive option is the Blue Snowball microphone. I used that mic for a while before I got my Rode Podcaster and liked it.

A lot of people like the Blue Yeti mic but it didn’t work for me. I tried it out first because it is less expensive than the Rode microphone, but I returned it because all of my typing and mousing while doing screencasts transferred through to my recordings no matter how I set the sensitivity levels.

Lighting

Here’s a great way to build your own low-cost light kit. My buddy Thomas suggested this to me: get two Microphone Stands for $20 each on Amazon, and then two 4′ Flourescent shop lights from Home Depot for $15 each.

Then you have an awesome little light kit for when you want to have yourself in the video, or do “Picture-in-Picture” in your screencasts.

The “cool white” fluorescent light bulbs provide a nice soft white light and you can shine from both sides to eliminate shadows.

I still use these, but added an Interfit Lightbox to add some more lumens to the mix.

Producing Your Own Screen Casts

I hope this helps you with your own screen casts. Once you get the hang of it they are easy to create and edit. And they have done wonders for my blog. I’m moving more and more of my content to include video, and I can envision a day soon where all my blog posts are just videos with transcripts.

Be sure to Subscribe to my YouTube Channel to see my videos and get notified when I publish new ones, and let me know if you have any questions about screencasting in the comments below!

Article by » Don Campbell

Don is an entrepreneur based in Silicon Valley. He founded Expand2Web and is the publisher of the Expand2Web Blog and the SmallBiz WordPress Theme.

Don has written 248 articles on Expand2Web

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