How to Create Screencasts You Can Be Proud Of » The Rapid eLearning Blog - 4 views
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Record the best audio you can by using a good microphone. You can get a decent microphone for less than $100. And if you do a lot of recording, it makes sense to invest in a good one. Here’s an example of two different microphones on the same laptop in the same room: $30 headset and $72 desktop (with no pop filter or any other type of adjustment).
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Turn off the A/C and fans. Turn off the office machines. Sometimes you’ll pick up some noise or humming when the microphone is too close to the computer, speakers, or other electronic devices.
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Have some water handy. I find that I do a lot of retakes on that opening line, so I tend to start and stop my screencasts. This causes my throat to get dry really fast. It’s easy for me to go from sounding like a smooth rapid elearning coach to Lauren Bacall in just a few takes.
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Try to use less than 5 minutes. Screenr gives you 5 minutes. That doesn’t mean that you have to take all 5 minutes for the screencast. An ideal screencast is 2-3 minutes. If you find that the screencast is long, just break it into chunks.
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Sometimes I’ll change the resolution of my computer and do a full screen capture at a lower resolution. When I bring it back up, it looks great and I was able to leverage a full screen for the capturing. Play around with some techniques that work for you.
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It’s easy enough to follow the mouse, but make sure to point out what they should be looking at when you change screens or focus on a new area. This is especially true if you’re doing things they can’t see like using a keyboard shortcut.
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If you have to do full screen videos where you show your desktop, try a product like Stardock’s Fences. It’s free and can quickly hide your icons while you do your recording. Here’s a tutorial to show how to use Fences to hide your desktop icons.
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When you do screencasts from this account you don’t need to worry about hiding personal information like folders or toolbars in your browser. I’d also make your desktop image a solid color rather than a distracting background image. You can also try a virtual desktop. Set one up just for screencast videos. Here’s a demo of how to use a virtual desktop.
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One trick is to start with the final output. Tell the viewer that this is what you’ll create and then jump to the tutorial and a different screen.
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Screenr does come with some default settings that work well in your rapid elearning courses. For example, 720×540 is the aspect ratio for a PowerPoint slide. 980×560 is perfect for videos in the no sidebar view mode in Articulate Presenter.
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If you find that you have to click on buttons and open other screens during your demos, then you want to use Alt+D to pause your recording between mouse clicks.