Jump to content

Screencast

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 195.92.168.167 (talk) at 01:08, 21 September 2006 (→‎Commercial software and shareware - Windows only, unless specified). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, often containing audio narration. Although the term screencast dates from 2004, products such as Lotus ScreenCam were used as early as 1993. Early products produced large files and had limited editing features. More recent products support more compact file formats such as Macromedia 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 what a user sees on their monitor.

Uses

Screencasts are useful for demonstrating software features. Creating a screencast helps software developers show off their work. It is a useful skill 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 beamer.

A drawback of most commercial screencasting programs for the PC is their inability to make videos of OpenGL applications, though Demo Builder, Fraps, and Growler Guncam can cope with this.

Origin of the term

In 2004, columnist Jon Udell invited[1] readers of his blog to propose names for the emerging genre. Udell selected[2] the term screencast, which was proposed by both Joseph McDonald and Deeje Cooley.

Since then, the term has gained widespread use, and the use of screencasts has itself become more popular.

See also

Comparison of screencasting software

Articles, howtos, references and examples

Commercial software and shareware - Windows only, unless specified

Windows software from Microsoft

Apple Mac OS X only

Cross-platform, free or open source software (FOSS)

  • Wink - Freeware closed source screen recorder (Linux / MS Windows)
  • CamStudio - GPL Screen recording (Windows only)
  • Istanbul - Screen recorder for Linux with sound recording - generates Ogg Theora output.
  • FFmpeg - Streaming multimedia system - (Linux+Windows) - FFmpeg
  • ImageMagick - Convert, Edit, and Compose Images Cross-Platform (Linux, MacOSX, Windows...)
  • Xvidcap Project - Screen Capture for X-Windows, display individual frames or MPEG video (Linux, Unix, MacOSX)
  • vncrec - simple VNC session recorder and player Cross-Platform (Linux, MacOSX, Windows...)
  • vnc2swf - cross-platform screen recorderfor ShockWave Flash (.swf) format (Linux, MacOSX, Windows...)
  • pyvnc2swf Pyvnc2swf - Python cross-platform screen recorder based on vnc2swf
  • Virtualdub - Open source video capture for Windows - VirtualDub
  • VideoLAN - VLC media player - Free cross-platform - VideoLAN
  • Audacity - FOSS for recording and editing sounds (MacOS X, Windows, GNU/Linux)

Flash Flash Video-FLV resources - FOSS, Linux or cross-platform

Screencast scripting (command line) FLV, SWF, ActionScript development tools

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Screencast&oldid=76900324"