Dealing with end-users or simply beginners is not always a pleasant and easy experience for tech jerks. I personally sometimes get irritated when I have to explain for a thousandth time a simple concept I have already clarified in layman’s terms a day or two ago. While I was working as Technical Support and I dealt with users all the time, one of the intricacies of helping people over the phone or via e-mail was the lack of picture – if only I could show them what I wanted, or see what was on their screen, then it would have been much easier to find the problem and solve it.
Lack of picture was also a problem when communicating with my developer colleagues, who were thousands of miles away from the office. And in one of those moments, when we were excitingly discussing a bug that appeared on my machine but the developers did not understand what it was and could not reproduce it on their machines, a small movie that captured what appeared on my screen was exactly the solution we needed to understand each other. This wasn’t my first encounter with screencasting but was one of those cases when one sees the practical benefits of a technology that sounds so distant and difficult.
I do not yet consider myself an expert in screencasting. Actually I have done no more than 5 or 10 short movies and I do not think they will get an Oscar, if there were Oscars for screencasts but I know a lot about screencasting and I am afraid that I am getting addicted to it. And believe me, making a simple screencast is not difficult at all but it can be so useful and impressive for others! While making a screencast to answer every support ticket is hardly worth the effort, making a couple of screencasts for the most common questions makes sense and pays off in the long-run, especially when 50% of the issues in the tickets are the same.
But maybe it is time to explain what screencasting means. Do not get stressed by the name “screencasting” – although it sounds complex, actually it is very simple. Screencasting (also screen casting or screen captures and varieties) is creating demo movies for software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screencast). The movie is created by recording the screen activity of a piece of software program – either by capturing sequences of screenshots, linking them to each other and (optionally) adding audio narration, or by directly filming the activities onscreen as a continuous movie.
I bet you got scared by the definition and already think that only the equipment for a screencast might be worth thousands of dollars but in reality you need only special software (and there are some good programs that are free) to make a decent screencast. If you want to add audio narration, you might need a microphone that is not on the cheaper end but most microphones on the market are OK for the purpose. There is a newer trend in screencasting – to add movie frames in addition to screen activity and if you decide to follow it, for instance to include offscreen scenes, then you might need a camera but still traditionally a screencast is a demo movie, not a full-length film with people and places in it.