Welcome to my second installment of screen casting. This week I chose to look more in depth at Club Penguin as an interface for parent supervision and child interaction. Sorry about the very start of the video where I give you a couple-second shot of my dashboard. I forgot that we were following my cursor this time…
I was about to write a tutorial for you guys but found existing ones to be much better. This one is pretty extensive with tips and references. Some tips I found here:
- Write a script. The public firebug screencast was probably take fifteen or so – the first ten of which I tried to do without a script. Let’s just say those ten takes included a good bit of French (in the “pardon my French” sort of way) as a result of my frustration. After I wrote a script, printed it out in large type, and set it by my monitor, things went much smoother.
- Memorize the script. The next five tossed takes were the result of me not looking at the screen while I was recording the screencast, but rather looking at the script. Once the script is memorized, you’re free to focus on what’s happening on the screen.
- Enunciate. If you’ve never recorded your voice for any published work, take a look at Ryan’s Training Your Voice for Podcasting guide. His tips are right on the money, especially this one: “Overcompensate. You’ll probably think you sound weird, but that’s when you’re doing it correctly.”
- Go for it! Enable Mouseposé, invoke Snapz Pro X, and give it a whirl. Expect to repeat this step several times until you’re happy with the end result.
- Publish. Compress your final take using Quicktime Pro, upload it to your favorite (preferably un-metered) webhost, and blog about it.
For the more ambitious, here are some more tips: How to Master Screencasts in Seven Step.
Some tools:
I recommend you start getting into it, and share your experiences (in the comments or in individual posts).
Enjoy!
The New Media Embed Program
