Steve Dotto here.
How the heck are you this fine day?
Me?
I am in a sharing and giving mood.
In the YouTube channel, the most requested demo or the question I’m asked the most
is how I create these Screencasts, what’s my technique and style for creating the screencast
like the one you’re watching right now.
So I thought I would take a few minutes and share that with you.
Now to be fair, I do have a full one hour webinar where I go through all of the techniques
and all of the tools that I use to create the screencast.
This is going to be kind of the Reader’s Digest condensed version.
I’m going to quickly walk through all of the different things that I do and the tools
that I use to create the screencast that you are watching.
Does that sound like something worth viewing?
I believe it does so screencasting today on DottoTech.
I believe I’ve been screencasting for the better part of 20 years.
Back in the early ‘80s or early ‘90s—why am I saying the early ‘80s?—in the early
‘90s when we first started doing our TV show, one of the basic tenets that we tried
to produce our TV show with was showing the menus and the screens.
So we went through all of these hoops in order to record the computer screens on television,
which is a nightmare with the Hombard [phonetic 00:01:15].
Do you remember that with interlaced TV, all the challenges?
So I’ve been actually doing screencasting for pretty much my entire career.
It’s never been easier than it is right now.
So let’s walk through the basic setup that I use to create my screencast here on the
DottoTech channel.
I record this all on a Mac.
Now currently I have a Mac Pro, which I installed.
It’s an early version Mac Pro.
I wanted a little more horsepower.
Almost every video you’ll see me produce, I produced on a standard old iMac, a 2009
iMac if I may be specific and it did just fine for this sort of recording because we
don’t really push things too hard when we record these sorts of screencasts.
So I use a Mac with lots of memory and a good hard drive.
So now I have a Mac Pro The camera that I use is very important.
I don’t think that the eyesight in and of itself is all that great a camera.
I’m sure that Apple will argue but I use a Logitech C930, which is a wonderful high-definition
camera around $100 - $120 on Amazon.
And then I use a piece of software called Webcam Settings in order to do color correction
because you have to white-balance your camera and set it up for the light and the color
of the room that you’re in.
It’s a $7 program at the Apple store called Webcam Settings.
Then as far as the rest of the physical setup, I’ve got a great mic.
See my mic?
It’s an awesome mic.
It’s Electro Voice RE-20.
Spend money on your mic.
Buy one of the good Blue Yetis or a really good quality mic if you can afford it.
Now I’ve got mine.
It’s an XLR mic so it’s actually designed for radio type work.
I’ve got it plugged in to a soundboard into a mixer which you can see here.
It’s a Behringer mixer and basically got a USB out that allows me to take the audio
from the analogue audio and convert it into digital before it comes into the computer.
So that’s my mixer.
You can pick them up used for $150 – $160, about $300 new.
You can get away with it a lot less.
You can get away with just a USB mic but it’s nice to have a proper quality, a proper audio
setup.
I’m big on the sound.
As far as lighting goes, one of the things that you do want to spend money on is getting
a good lighting kit and making sure that you have a nice quality light on you that’s
the proper color and temperature, especially if you’re going to be doing what I’m doing
which is keying out the background, which requires a little more control over the light.
So I just bought a set of lights.
CowboyStudio, you can find them on Amazon, anywhere from $100 - $150, $175 and you get
all the lighting you need to do this kind of screencasting, not to do full television
shows but to do this type of screencasting.
No problem with that quality of lighting system.
The real secret though, the real key I think for me is the tool that I use, the software.
Now I use an app on the Mac called ScreenFlow and I am somewhat enameled of ScreenFlow.
It’s $97 software pack.
When I first bought it, I think it was $300.
So they dropped the price to $97.
It’s the best $97 you can spend if you’re into this.
I use it.
It’s a multi-track video editor.
It captures all of my different sources.
So you see it here on the screen in front of you right now.
Now on this screen, this is actually the output or the editing file for a video which I posted
a couple of weeks ago.
You can see the multiple tracks.
Now this track at the top here has my animated opening.
This one here is the video track and this is the screencaptured track.
So it’s capturing the screen, it’s capturing the video, it’s capturing the audio, it’s
capturing everything altogether and then combining it in and bringing it in together.
We can see here in my media area here that I’ve got all of the different stuff that
I recorded plus other graphical elements and other video elements that I’ve imported
into the file in order to output the final video.
So from the time I start recording till the time I’m finished is a couple of hours.
I first of all lay down all of what I’m doing right now.
I do my talking through and then I pull the different pieces together.
I’ve got like this opening that I created in Fiver.
It cost me $15 to create this animated little opening in Fiver so I dropped that in.
It has the music mixed in together.
Similarly, I’ve got my old school closing from the TV show days which looks like this
thing here.
Once I’m finished talking, I do my whole “Have fun storming the castle” sign off
and I’ve got a little animated background that was a file that I had from when I did
my TV show.
I bring that together and I basically edit the whole thing together.
Now one key, and I think one thing that’s unique about the way that I produce mine,
is keying out the background, the green screen behind me which allows me to be in front of
the computer screen as I’m showcasing whatever it is that I’m talking about.
Now this is a big deal to me.
I think that having the green screen and having my face on video creates a much better connection
between myself and the audience and I’m always surprised that other screencasters
and other people that are producing content don’t think it’s quite as important.
Seeing my face, just the raise of an eyebrow or a wry expression conveys so much extra
information.
It’s a big part of I think honoring the content and honoring you the audience and
honoring my work that I put into it.
Doesn’t it create more intimate connection between us?
Is it just me?
Are you feeling the same thing that I’m feeling?
Too much?
I hope not because I think that this connection that happens, having my face on the screen
is well worth the extra effort.
Now it does take time.
Now here’s how it comes together.
If we take a look here—I’m going to pop up the video track here—in ScreenFlow in
the video filter area, if we go into that, we can see that we have the Chroma key put
in.
Let me turn it off, not on the video that I’m delivering but on this video here and
you can see—oh my goodness, I don’t know what set I’m on—now the green screen.
You can see the background if I take it out.
If I turn it back on, it then key’s out the background again.
Do you see that?
That is to me a process that is well worth while as far as putting these videos together.
Once it’s all done, I package it up, I export it, I upload it to YouTube and then I go through
a publishing process which I’ve actually got webinars on where I talk about my publishing
process, which is a big part of the overall YouTube marketing.
But that gives you a snapshot of the tools that I use: ScreenFlow, a Logitech C930 camera,
webcam bought at $130, $7 or $8 worth of color correction software in the camera called Webcam
Settings, a nice good quality microphone--spend $200 or $500 on your microphone—an audio
interface that you can spend anywhere from $75 to several hundred dollars on, $150 worth
of lights, $150 worth of green screen, a good computer.
If you’re not in with Mac, if you’re a Windows user, you’ll want to use a tool
called Camtasia.
It costs about three times as much as ScreenFlow.
I don’t know if it does a better job but it does a good job so you can certainly do
it in Windows as well.
That’s how I put my show together.
Now I’m not going to do a demo here of ScreenFlow.
I’m not going to walk you through how I do all of the different editing things and
the tricks that I’ve learned but I will ask you a question.
If it’s something that you’re interested in, definitely post in the Comments area saying
that you want to see some demos of ScreenFlow.
If I see enough comments there, I’ll do demos.
I think it’s a little bit of a vertical application for the channel.
But if it is something that you’re interested in, let me know and I’ll be sure to start
doing some.
I’m happy to do some.
I love the software and I’m happy to share it but I want to make sure there’s an audience
for it.
And that’s really it for today, how I produce my screencasts.
I hope you found this information to be useful.
Remember there are three ways to stay in touch with us here on DottoTech.
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That’s it for today.
Until next time, I’m Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle!