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Rebuilding Fedora Indexes Screencast contributed by Chris Wilper from DuraSpace 

How to Create a Screencast for KnowledgeBase

Introduction

Guidelines:

A screencast is a video of someone showing how to do something on a computer.  The screencast Screencast software captures what is happening on the computer screen along with an audio recording of the speaker explaining what he or /she is doing.  Many people enjoy learning online procedures from screencasts, and the KnowledgeBase makes frequent use of the screencast format for teaching people how to use or deploy our software.

You can create your own screencast and contribute the resulting video to KnowledgeBase.  There are four parts to creating screencasts:   1. Planning what you are going to present,  2. Choosing screencast recording software, 3. Making the recording, and 4. Producing the final screencast video. This guide will walk you through those steps.

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Screencasts are an effective way of providing the user communities quick tutorials on specific tasks or functionality. 

This guide will help you through the five easy steps to creating a screencast:

1. Planning a screencast
2. Choosing screencast recording software
3. Making the recording
4. Producing the final screencast video
5. Posting the screencast video

Planning a screencast

First, select the topic of your screencast.   Good topics for screencasts are ones that show people clear steps for completing a task specific tasks online.  The The viewer will be watching a recording of your computer screen, following your mouse movements, and listening to your explanation of what you are doing.  To To the extent that your recording is clear, interesting to watch, and instructive, your screencast will be a success.  Here Here are some guidelines suggestions for planning your screencast:

• Pick a topic from the KnowledgeBase table of contents for DSpace or Fedora.  Make sure you give  and give your screencast the same name as the KnowledgeBase topic you've chosenselected.
• Limit what you tackle. An effective screencast lasts in the neighborhood of about five minutes.  It might be If it is necessary to go longer if you are describing a process that needs to be presented in one piece.  On the other handthan five minutes, you may want to divide consider dividing your topic into two or more screencasts, if appropriate (e.g., "Getting Started with DSpace Access Controls, Part One" and "...Part Two").
• Do Decide if you need to write out a script for your screencast?  Perhaps, but not necessarily.  A simple outline might do, or just some reminders on a page.  Informal, extemporaneous screencasts are not at all uncommon on the Internet.  You may find it easier not yourself or perhaps jotting down a simple outline or some reminders will be sufficient. It may be easier not to juggle a written script while you're navigating through the flow of screens.  In any case, you will probably want to rehearse your presentation a couple of times before recording it. There is no need to go overboard on the formality, but the audience should be able to easily follow your points.
• Download/configure your computer software Make sure your computer software is configured for the screencast.  In In addition to the screencast software (more on that nextsee below), you will need to have an application environment set up for whatever you are going to demonstrate (e.g., Internet internet connection, if required; applications installed; , test data pre-configured, etc.)
• Rehearse your presentation a couple of times before recording it to optimize your instructional points, mouse movements, timing and how to use your selected screencast capture software (how to start, pause, un-pause, stop, etc.)
• If possible, plan to use an audio headset with a microphone for the best quality audio recording. Your best bet for quality audio is to use a headset with microphone.  We have found that the Logitech USB headsets work very well, but most any USB headset should do nicely.
• The optimum video resolution for your finished product is 1280 x 720, also known as widescreen, 16/9, or High Definition (HD) video.  Try to record at this resolution and define your video output the same way when you save your recording to maximize the viewable details by the viewer
• Save your screencast output as MP4, AVI, FLV, M4V, or MOV. 

Choosing Screencast Recording Software

There are a number of software products that are suitable for creating screencasts.  Some Some of them are open source or otherwise freely available for download, others are licensed for a fee.  Techsmith's Camtasia Studio is a very full-featured commercial product for Windows or Mac. We have had good results with Screencast-O-Matic, which features a free online product for all platforms and is fairly simply to learn and use.  Quicktime, as available on the Mac, will record screencasts, though you will need a video editor like iMovie if you would like to do post-production edits.  There are a few Linux-only products that may be used. as well.  Consult our charts of Video Tools below for more information. 

We recommend the following tools:

Additional options include (in no particular order):

What ever product you use for your screencast, we recommend the following:

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Making the Recording

Here are some guidelines suggestions for making a successful screencast recording:

• Do a quick test first.  Fifteen Fifteen seconds or so will give you a good indication of whether your audio recording level is fine.  You may need to tweak it.sufficient.  
• Pause a few 5-10 seconds before you begin speaking.
• Speak slowly in a natural voice.
• Begin with a one-sentence introduction of yourself and your subject (e.g., "Hi, this is........and I'm going to show you.......").
• Viewers will be focused on your mouse pointer.  Try , try not to make extraneous movements or move around too fast.
• With each on-screen action, tell people what you are doing to make sure they are following you .   (e.g., "Next I'm going to..." , "Now we will look at...").
• Small flubs or pauses are not necessarily reasons to restart the entire screencast! You don't need to deliver an award-winning performance, just one that effectively conveys what you are trying to teach.  If If you are using a screencast product that includes editing capabilities, you can usually cut out the portions you don't want to be in the final recording. 
• No need for a concluding sentence if it's clear where your lesson ends, but a brief recap of what you have shown is fine.
• When you are finished speaking, pause a couple of seconds before stopping the recording.
• Be sure to save your recording right away!

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Your screencast will require some post-production work before it is ready for "prime time".  It's not a lot of work, but it does require learning some more features of the screencast software.  MinimallyMinimally, we need go through the following steps:

• Create Creating a title slide
• Fade Fading from the title slide to the recorded lesson
• Fade Fading from the end of the lesson to a closing slide (which can be a re-use of the title slide)

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If you prefer not to do this part yourself, that's fine.  We DuraSpace will do it for you.  Simply Simply send the video to jjmarkow@duraspace.org along with the title, your name, and your organization for the credits.  If

If you do want to try the post-production work, and your screencast software allows you to do this, here are some guidelines.

Title Slide:

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Please use the DuraSpace Screencast Slide Pack to create your Title, Closing and optional Organizational Slides.  This slide pack is available here.

Title Slide:

• Duration:  5 seconds

Transition From Title to Lesson:

• Insert a fade to black
• Duration:  2 seconds

Closing slide:

• We reuse the title slide for this purpose.  
• Insert another 2 second fade to black before the closing slide
• Duration:  2 seconds

Optional:  Organizational Slide. You may add an Organizational Slide right after the initial Title Slide using the slide pack if you wish to add organizational branding to your screencast.  Please Please use the following guidelines if adding an Organization Slide:

• Begin with "Screencast Contributed by"
• Logo no greater then 20% of screen dimensions
• Corporate tagline and three or four services (optional)
• URL optional

Remember, if you prefer, we are happy to do your post-production work for you!

When finished, post your screencast to the specific KnowledgeBase subject page your screencast is about or you may notify jjmarkow@duraspace.org. 

• Duration not to exceed 3 seconds

Posting the Screencast Video

Once you have finished the recording and post-production of your screencast video you can post it to a publically accessible location (local repository, YouTube, etc). The screencast can then be inserted into the relevant KnowledgeBase page by using the following syntax in the wiki markup view:

To insert a link to a video or presentation slides, use the following code:

{widget:url=http://www.insertyourlinkhere.com}

If you prefer (or don't have a place to store a publically accessible video), DuraSpace can store them on our YouTube.com account. For help please contact Valorie Hollister at vhollister@duraspace.org.We are looking forward to receiving your work!