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Screencast

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A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration. Although the term screencast dates from 2004, products such as Lotus ScreenCam were used as early as 1994.[1][2] Early products produced large files and had limited editing features. More recent products support more compact file formats such as Adobe Flash and have more sophisticated editing features allowing changes in sequence, mouse movement, and audio.

Just as a screenshot is a picture of a user's screen, a screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on his monitor.

Uses

Screencasts are useful for demonstrating and teaching software features. Creating a screencast helps software developers show off their work. Screencasts are a useful tool for ordinary software users as well, to help report bugs (the movie takes the place of potentially unclear written explanations) or to show others how a given task is accomplished in a specific software environment. Screencasts are excellent tools for learning how to use computers, and several podcasts have started to teach computer users how to use software through screencasts.

Considering the high cost of instructor / faculty led training and the relative ineffectiveness of typical computer based training (CBT) systems, screencasting is likely to become a very popular technique for imparting high-quality knowledge at a low cost.

For example, organizers of computer related seminars may choose to routinely record complete seminars and make them available on DVDs to all attendees for future reference and/or sell these recordings to people who cannot afford the fee of the live seminar or don't have time to attend it. This will generate an additional revenue stream for organizers of seminars and make the knowledge available to a broader audience, so generating a win-win situation for everybody.

This strategy of recording seminars is already widely used in fields where using a simple video camera or audio recorder is sufficient to make a useful recording of a seminar. Computer-related seminars need high quality and easily readable recordings of screen contents which is usually not achievable by using a video camera to film the desktop which is usually projected onto the wall by a projector.

A drawback of most commercial screencasting programs for Microsoft Windows is their inability to make videos of OpenGL applications, though Demo Builder, Fraps, and Growler Guncam can cope with this. Another problem is that many screen video capture programs can not keep video and audio in sync, especially when recording for hours. Also most screencasting programs for Windows can't record video with audio on computers with disabled Stereo Mix / Wave-Out Mix, though Replay Video Capture and WM Capture can cope with this.

More recently, the popularity of inexpensive desktop screencasting software has created a cottage industry among internet marketers claiming that their screencasting techniques will increase sales for online businesses like eBay and monetized blogging. Many free video tutorials, demos of products and services are created with screen video capture software and posted onto Youtube as well as other video sharing web-sites.

Streencasting software is also used to record online videos. While Stream recorders give lossless quality videos, screen video capture software has it own advantage - recording videos of any stream format and protocol.

Educators are now using screencasts as another means of integrating technology into the curriculum. Students can record video and audio as they demonstrate the proper procedure to solve a problem on an interactive whiteboard.

Origin of the term

In 2004, columnist Jon Udell invited[3] readers of his blog to propose names for the emerging genre. Udell selected[4] the term screencast, which was proposed by both Joseph McDonald and Deeje Cooley.

The term screencast has established use in publications as part of Internet and Computing vernacular.[5]

Hardware

An alternative solution for capturing a screencast is the use of a hardware RGB or DVI frame grabber card. This approach does not have the OpenGL limitations mentioned above, and places the burden of the recording and compression process on a machine separate from the one generating the visual material being captured.

Software

Several screencasting software applications with varying capabilities are on the market.

For Windows

For Mac

For Mac and Windows

  • Jing, free and Pro versions

For GNU/Linux and Windows

For GNU/Linux

See also

Look up screencast in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References

  1. ^ "Lotus ScreenCam? - comp.groupware". Google. {{cite web}}: Text "accessdate-12" ignored (help)
  2. ^ "Screencam - comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.multimedia". Google. Retrieved 2008-06-12.
  3. ^ Udell, Jon (2004-11-15). "Jon Udell: Name that genre". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2008-06-12. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  4. ^ Udell, Jon (2004-11-17). "Jon Udell: Name that genre: screencast". InfoWorld. Retrieved 2008-06-12.
  5. ^ See e.g., Braun, Linda (2007). Listen up! Podcasting for Schools and Libraries. Medford: Information Today, Inc. ISBN 9781573873048., Notess, Greg (2006). Teaching Web Search Skills. Medford: Information Today. ISBN 9781573872676.
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