Screening Tools (Windows)
Hello, friends!
So, in recent days I was very interested in screening as a genre of podcasting. To be more precise, I would attribute screencasting to video podcasting. Very peculiar.
What is a screencast? (Foolish cliché - to ask yourself questions and answer! I will not do this anymore ...) Screencast - from English. screen - screen and cast as in the case of podcast - the root of the broadcast - broadcast. That is literally - screening. A screencast is a video of what is happening on the screen with sound or text comments. As if the broadcaster was sitting next to you and showed the action on a real computer and at the same time explained something.
')
Here is an example of a screencast - screencast “Just add water” about Internet startups (2nd edition):
(I certainly did not find another example of screencast, except my own ...)
I think the point is clear.
Screencasts are certainly not filmed with video cameras, but with a special program. Now you understand that screencasting is truly unique - it is a kind of video podcasting that does not require material costs to create a video! You do not need a video camera, you do not need a paid program (although there are also paid ones, about them below).
In addition to such personal-analytical screencasts, there are a huge number of types. Most probably the most popular are the lessons. There are a lot of programming languages, games, programs and interfaces in the world - and you can tell about all this! As an example (not the best), I can show my screencast again - this time the tutorial, about installing Windows XP with a flash drive . Why not the best? Because the quality is just awful! Since then, I post screencasts only on vimeo.com , I even bought a paid account for this.
In general, in short - screencasting is such a broadcasting genre, in which there are very wide possibilities of application and creation and, at the same time, there is low activity in it. Screencasts are a rather specific thing, while the majority are still people connected with IT.
Well, I think with theory enough, let's finally get down to business and consider several tools for recording and editing screencasts.
http://www.utipu.com/app/
TipCam program greets us with such a small, pretty window. This program is popular for many reasons, and one critical moment is literally the cornerstone. Someone, it will be a clear plus, someone - a minus :) That's such a mystery. Let's understand now.
The program interface is simple to disgrace, by running it, you just need to press the Record button and the recording will start. Of course, it is desirable to first understand the settings, for this we press the center button at the very bottom.
The Basic tab, program download settings, the working folder where the video will be saved, the interface language and the choice of microphone for recording. Well, the volume test to boot.
The Login tab is the very place where the cornerstone of the program opens. TipCam is only part of the uTIPu screencasting kit . By registering on the site, you can download your screencasts directly from TipCam to uTIPu, which already has a small community of people, for free. The latest version also had the opportunity to upload videos to YouTube, but no matter how hard I tried, it was not possible to get the notorious “high quality”. But the final video, laid out on utipu itself, is pretty good and you can watch it. Here is an example .
The service gives you only 250 megabytes of disk space for your creations. Not very much ...
And here, on the one hand, of course, it’s convenient, the service program in one thing, no need to steam. But on the other hand, you are tied to a not very popular site, moreover, an English-language one.
Let's finish watching the other tabs of the settings, and then see what to do with our “stone”.
One undoubted plus of this program is zoom. Easily adjusting the hotkeys and the size of the zoom (in the next tab), we get the opportunity to zoom in or out of the “camera” while recording. Given the average video quality, this feature becomes very useful.
Also, a very interesting feature is the ability to draw on the screen. Anywhere! (Annotation function).
And finally, the last tab:
Frame rate, that is, the number of frames per second, cannot be set above 15, which is basically enough for a screencast. The average frame rate of a video is about 30 fps.
Compression, to be honest, does not really affect the quality, but higher quality is still noticeably better. You can put a tick on “Use alternate encoding (.avi)”, but then you will need to download a special codec that will allow you to save files in avi-format. As much as I did not try, I followed all the instructions, but this feature did not work for me. As a result, the program issues only a flv file of average quality, which can not be uploaded everywhere (on vimeo.com, for example, it cannot be done recently). Youtube, of course, will accept such a file as native.
You can record video from the screen both from a local computer and from a remote computer, access settings are also located here.
The most important thing for us is the video settings on the right. Recording resolution is the size of the final file. It’s impossible to install above 800x600, which is why I refused this program - it is impossible to make an HD screencast. Zoom level - this is up to what resolution the “camera” will approach when using the zoom function. This value is set relative to the resolution of your screen, not relative to the size of the record. Therefore, if you have a resolution of 1024x768, then the zoom at 640x480 will zoom in almost twice.
Resize while recording (change the resolution of the screen when recording) - I had to use this tick, because this program writes a wide-screen screen in “square” resolution and the video is drawn out. We had to change the resolution to "square" (1024x768), use such a scary look and record, after which the video came to its normal form. I didn’t find a solution to this problem either, the program doesn’t want to record widescreen screens correctly.
If you have Windows Vista, then Tipcam will automatically change the theme to Windows Basic when recording. Why does she do this - it is not entirely clear, the documentation simply states this fact without any explanation. Also, regardless of the operating system, when recording, the wallpaper from your desktop will disappear and they will be replaced by a solid monophonic background. This is just as absurdly stated in the documentation, and it also makes no sense in view of the absence of any logical explanation.
Otherwise, the program is nice. Does what should, is easy to manage and understandable.
http://camstudio.org/
One of the most popular, open source programs CamStudio meets us with a slightly less minimalistic main window. Go through the menu quickly to get to know the functionality of the program.
Menu file has only four items - record, pause, stop and exit. The Region menu allows you to select a recording region. You can select any area of ​​the screen, you can - one specific window, and of course you can record the entire screen at once.
The Options menu keeps all the settings in it, which I think is not very convenient, especially at the very beginning, when the program is not tuned for you at all, you have to climb in and out of the menu ten times.
The settings here are the most common and most logical - the sound, the microphone, you can also set up the synchronization of sound and video if it suddenly happens that one is behind the other. This, by the way, happens with CamStudio ... Any program actions you need when recording can be assigned to hot keys, as in the previous program from uTIPu. I think with these settings you will figure it out yourself, everything is extremely simple. Let's now take a look at Video Options.
CamStudio program without any questions and problems saves video in any video format, would be the desired codec in the system. Additional video settings for those who understand what is happening. Anyway, everything can be left by default. Yes, by the way, you see, in this program, a video can have a frame rate of 30!
Separate conversation deserves a window setting the cursor. Since your hand in the screencast is the mouse cursor and most often you tell them what to do and how to do it, its setting should interest you.
The cursor in CamStudio can be selected from any system or even third-party from a file. You can also turn on the backlight so that the pointer is surrounded by a colored translucent circle, an ellipse, a square or a rectangle. The size of such an area can be chosen by oneself; it is also possible to choose the blinking of this figure in different colors depending on the pressing of the left or right mouse button, which increases the information content for the final viewer.
Another interesting feature of the program lies behind the Tools menu: Screen Annotations!
Scary, but still useful sometimes arrows, clouds and other symbols.
If you have a webcam, you can also record video annotations. In the same Tools menu there is a SWF Producer item, this is an additional utility with which you can convert the resulting avi-file into the swf format, which can be inserted into any web page and viewed.
In the Effects menu, you can add automatic insertion of the current time, any caption (for example, the name of the creator of the screencast or a link to its website) and watermark - a watermark, any logo in bmp format.
In general, the program is good, for good reason is one of the most popular. It has many interesting features, but there are also disadvantages. As mentioned above, CamStudio often for incomprehensible prins records sound with a lag or ahead of the video. There were also problems with saving the video, but here I suspect a codec rather than CamStudio.
If you want to try screencasting, then start with CamStudio. It is possible that you will not need to try anything else.
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
I liked this program much more than others. One glance at the screenshot is enough to understand that Camtasia is a little more than a video capture tool:
This is a fully functional video editor, customized for screencasting. Before recording you will see this window:
Here you can connect and configure a microphone and a webcam (to record from it in parallel with the screen recording), select a recording area or use the area used last time. In effects - already familiar points of signatures, watermarks, cursor settings, etc.
As soon as the recording is stopped and the file is saved, the program will ask, what do you want to do next? You can go to video editing, you can immediately save it in the final format, or start the next recording.
The most interesting thing, of course, is to edit the record.
And the very first thing you need to specify before editing is the size of your video. There are presets for any purpose, but I use the size that I had when recording, this is how I get HD video with a resolution of 1280x800 - this is the resolution of my screen!
In the upper left part of the screen - various actions on the recording: you can add any media file (audio, video, images), add titles (titles), record voice guidance for the finished video, or finally record video from a webcam and paste it into project.
In the Edit menu, you can adjust the sound (there is even a primitive noise “eliminator”), camera zooming in and out, video transitions, and captions. In this program it is very easy to add subtitles on the fly! You can also add questions for the user. Yes, yes, questions that the viewer will have to answer while watching a screencast. Of course, for this feature to be available, the video must be saved in flash format (swf).
Finally, when you have finished editing the video, you just have to save it. Produce Video As and go through the settings!
We again see the preset selection window, you can create your template, or you can manually select the format and parameters, which I do. There are a lot of formats to choose from:
For successful posting on vimeo.com, I choose Window Media Video. On the following pages, you adjust the quality and size of the video and audio, select the background color, add a watermark and fill (optionally) information about the video (almost like tags in mp3 files). If you save the video in flash format, then you will have the opportunity to add content where the viewer can select individual fragments of the video.
Well, in the end, the video can be automatically uploaded to screencast.com , which is owned by the same company.
Well, well, I hope you can choose the right tool. Of course, this is not a complete list, here are some additional links:
Next time I will focus on Camtasia Studio and talk about processing and editing in more detail. Thank you for your attention and good luck in screencasting!
Original on Podkastim.ru
So, in recent days I was very interested in screening as a genre of podcasting. To be more precise, I would attribute screencasting to video podcasting. Very peculiar.
What is a screencast? (Foolish cliché - to ask yourself questions and answer! I will not do this anymore ...) Screencast - from English. screen - screen and cast as in the case of podcast - the root of the broadcast - broadcast. That is literally - screening. A screencast is a video of what is happening on the screen with sound or text comments. As if the broadcaster was sitting next to you and showed the action on a real computer and at the same time explained something.
')
Here is an example of a screencast - screencast “Just add water” about Internet startups (2nd edition):
(I certainly did not find another example of screencast, except my own ...)
I think the point is clear.
Screencasts are certainly not filmed with video cameras, but with a special program. Now you understand that screencasting is truly unique - it is a kind of video podcasting that does not require material costs to create a video! You do not need a video camera, you do not need a paid program (although there are also paid ones, about them below).
In addition to such personal-analytical screencasts, there are a huge number of types. Most probably the most popular are the lessons. There are a lot of programming languages, games, programs and interfaces in the world - and you can tell about all this! As an example (not the best), I can show my screencast again - this time the tutorial, about installing Windows XP with a flash drive . Why not the best? Because the quality is just awful! Since then, I post screencasts only on vimeo.com , I even bought a paid account for this.
In general, in short - screencasting is such a broadcasting genre, in which there are very wide possibilities of application and creation and, at the same time, there is low activity in it. Screencasts are a rather specific thing, while the majority are still people connected with IT.
...
Well, I think with theory enough, let's finally get down to business and consider several tools for recording and editing screencasts.
TipCam 2.0 - Free
http://www.utipu.com/app/
TipCam program greets us with such a small, pretty window. This program is popular for many reasons, and one critical moment is literally the cornerstone. Someone, it will be a clear plus, someone - a minus :) That's such a mystery. Let's understand now.
The program interface is simple to disgrace, by running it, you just need to press the Record button and the recording will start. Of course, it is desirable to first understand the settings, for this we press the center button at the very bottom.
The Basic tab, program download settings, the working folder where the video will be saved, the interface language and the choice of microphone for recording. Well, the volume test to boot.
The Login tab is the very place where the cornerstone of the program opens. TipCam is only part of the uTIPu screencasting kit . By registering on the site, you can download your screencasts directly from TipCam to uTIPu, which already has a small community of people, for free. The latest version also had the opportunity to upload videos to YouTube, but no matter how hard I tried, it was not possible to get the notorious “high quality”. But the final video, laid out on utipu itself, is pretty good and you can watch it. Here is an example .
The service gives you only 250 megabytes of disk space for your creations. Not very much ...
And here, on the one hand, of course, it’s convenient, the service program in one thing, no need to steam. But on the other hand, you are tied to a not very popular site, moreover, an English-language one.
Let's finish watching the other tabs of the settings, and then see what to do with our “stone”.
One undoubted plus of this program is zoom. Easily adjusting the hotkeys and the size of the zoom (in the next tab), we get the opportunity to zoom in or out of the “camera” while recording. Given the average video quality, this feature becomes very useful.
Also, a very interesting feature is the ability to draw on the screen. Anywhere! (Annotation function).
And finally, the last tab:
Frame rate, that is, the number of frames per second, cannot be set above 15, which is basically enough for a screencast. The average frame rate of a video is about 30 fps.
Compression, to be honest, does not really affect the quality, but higher quality is still noticeably better. You can put a tick on “Use alternate encoding (.avi)”, but then you will need to download a special codec that will allow you to save files in avi-format. As much as I did not try, I followed all the instructions, but this feature did not work for me. As a result, the program issues only a flv file of average quality, which can not be uploaded everywhere (on vimeo.com, for example, it cannot be done recently). Youtube, of course, will accept such a file as native.
You can record video from the screen both from a local computer and from a remote computer, access settings are also located here.
The most important thing for us is the video settings on the right. Recording resolution is the size of the final file. It’s impossible to install above 800x600, which is why I refused this program - it is impossible to make an HD screencast. Zoom level - this is up to what resolution the “camera” will approach when using the zoom function. This value is set relative to the resolution of your screen, not relative to the size of the record. Therefore, if you have a resolution of 1024x768, then the zoom at 640x480 will zoom in almost twice.
Resize while recording (change the resolution of the screen when recording) - I had to use this tick, because this program writes a wide-screen screen in “square” resolution and the video is drawn out. We had to change the resolution to "square" (1024x768), use such a scary look and record, after which the video came to its normal form. I didn’t find a solution to this problem either, the program doesn’t want to record widescreen screens correctly.
If you have Windows Vista, then Tipcam will automatically change the theme to Windows Basic when recording. Why does she do this - it is not entirely clear, the documentation simply states this fact without any explanation. Also, regardless of the operating system, when recording, the wallpaper from your desktop will disappear and they will be replaced by a solid monophonic background. This is just as absurdly stated in the documentation, and it also makes no sense in view of the absence of any logical explanation.
Otherwise, the program is nice. Does what should, is easy to manage and understandable.
Camstudio - Free
http://camstudio.org/
One of the most popular, open source programs CamStudio meets us with a slightly less minimalistic main window. Go through the menu quickly to get to know the functionality of the program.
Menu file has only four items - record, pause, stop and exit. The Region menu allows you to select a recording region. You can select any area of ​​the screen, you can - one specific window, and of course you can record the entire screen at once.
The Options menu keeps all the settings in it, which I think is not very convenient, especially at the very beginning, when the program is not tuned for you at all, you have to climb in and out of the menu ten times.
The settings here are the most common and most logical - the sound, the microphone, you can also set up the synchronization of sound and video if it suddenly happens that one is behind the other. This, by the way, happens with CamStudio ... Any program actions you need when recording can be assigned to hot keys, as in the previous program from uTIPu. I think with these settings you will figure it out yourself, everything is extremely simple. Let's now take a look at Video Options.
CamStudio program without any questions and problems saves video in any video format, would be the desired codec in the system. Additional video settings for those who understand what is happening. Anyway, everything can be left by default. Yes, by the way, you see, in this program, a video can have a frame rate of 30!
Separate conversation deserves a window setting the cursor. Since your hand in the screencast is the mouse cursor and most often you tell them what to do and how to do it, its setting should interest you.
The cursor in CamStudio can be selected from any system or even third-party from a file. You can also turn on the backlight so that the pointer is surrounded by a colored translucent circle, an ellipse, a square or a rectangle. The size of such an area can be chosen by oneself; it is also possible to choose the blinking of this figure in different colors depending on the pressing of the left or right mouse button, which increases the information content for the final viewer.
Another interesting feature of the program lies behind the Tools menu: Screen Annotations!
Scary, but still useful sometimes arrows, clouds and other symbols.
If you have a webcam, you can also record video annotations. In the same Tools menu there is a SWF Producer item, this is an additional utility with which you can convert the resulting avi-file into the swf format, which can be inserted into any web page and viewed.
In the Effects menu, you can add automatic insertion of the current time, any caption (for example, the name of the creator of the screencast or a link to its website) and watermark - a watermark, any logo in bmp format.
In general, the program is good, for good reason is one of the most popular. It has many interesting features, but there are also disadvantages. As mentioned above, CamStudio often for incomprehensible prins records sound with a lag or ahead of the video. There were also problems with saving the video, but here I suspect a codec rather than CamStudio.
If you want to try screencasting, then start with CamStudio. It is possible that you will not need to try anything else.
Camtasia Studio - $ 49.99
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
I liked this program much more than others. One glance at the screenshot is enough to understand that Camtasia is a little more than a video capture tool:
This is a fully functional video editor, customized for screencasting. Before recording you will see this window:
Here you can connect and configure a microphone and a webcam (to record from it in parallel with the screen recording), select a recording area or use the area used last time. In effects - already familiar points of signatures, watermarks, cursor settings, etc.
As soon as the recording is stopped and the file is saved, the program will ask, what do you want to do next? You can go to video editing, you can immediately save it in the final format, or start the next recording.
The most interesting thing, of course, is to edit the record.
And the very first thing you need to specify before editing is the size of your video. There are presets for any purpose, but I use the size that I had when recording, this is how I get HD video with a resolution of 1280x800 - this is the resolution of my screen!
In the upper left part of the screen - various actions on the recording: you can add any media file (audio, video, images), add titles (titles), record voice guidance for the finished video, or finally record video from a webcam and paste it into project.
In the Edit menu, you can adjust the sound (there is even a primitive noise “eliminator”), camera zooming in and out, video transitions, and captions. In this program it is very easy to add subtitles on the fly! You can also add questions for the user. Yes, yes, questions that the viewer will have to answer while watching a screencast. Of course, for this feature to be available, the video must be saved in flash format (swf).
Finally, when you have finished editing the video, you just have to save it. Produce Video As and go through the settings!
We again see the preset selection window, you can create your template, or you can manually select the format and parameters, which I do. There are a lot of formats to choose from:
For successful posting on vimeo.com, I choose Window Media Video. On the following pages, you adjust the quality and size of the video and audio, select the background color, add a watermark and fill (optionally) information about the video (almost like tags in mp3 files). If you save the video in flash format, then you will have the opportunity to add content where the viewer can select individual fragments of the video.
Well, in the end, the video can be automatically uploaded to screencast.com , which is owned by the same company.
...
Well, well, I hope you can choose the right tool. Of course, this is not a complete list, here are some additional links:
- AviScreen (Windows, free, does not record sound)
- Copernicus (Mac OS, free, does not record sound)
- JingProject.com (Mac OS, Windows, freeware)
- Screencast-O-Matic.com (web service)
- Wink (Windows, free, specializes in creating tutorials and documentation, export to flash, pdf, html, exe)
- Adobe Captivate (Mac OS, Windows, Paid)
- AllCapture (Windows, paid)
- HyperCam (Windows paid)
- iShowU (Mac OS, Paid)
- ScreenMimic (Windows, paid)
- ScreenRecord (Windows, paid)
Next time I will focus on Camtasia Studio and talk about processing and editing in more detail. Thank you for your attention and good luck in screencasting!
Original on Podkastim.ru
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/44322/
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