Screencasting Strategies

Jon Udell outlines his steps for creating a typical screencast in Screencasting Strategies.  Personally I still think he’s working too hard at it.  I learned to screencast with Qarbon ViewletBuilder (also available for the Mac, though they still seem to have that sound problem), which only allows the user to take a series of sceenshots and then provides the appearance of animation by stitching those shots together and animating the mouse movement.  As a result, even when using Macromedia Captivate I still prefer  taking the shot when I want, rather than record the entire session, with the potential for extraneous mouse movement, page loading issues, etc. that Jon notes. 

The other thing I can’t believe Jon does is narrate as he’s capturing!  I always capture first and then go back and narrate.  This way if I screw up a capture I can grab another shot, or if I screw up a narration I can just re-voice, but never do I have to start from scratch or have several takes to get a job done.

I’ve got a copy of Camtasia Studio on my desk and am waiting for time to try it.  Maybe different tools invite different approaches (probably).