What is a Screencast?

In a nutshell, a "Screencast" is a video which records anything that can be displayed on a computer screen. You can narrate what you are doing on your computer so a viewer can learn about your company's services or products. Why not just show them in person?

Perhaps you have a PowerPoint presentation that describes your company. Just turn on Camstudio and narrate your PowerPoint presentation. You’ll have a video to upload to YouTube.com and post on your website. Or you can burn it to a CD and let them play it in ITunes or Windows Media Player.

Or your business uses custom software not available anywhere else. All new employees need to learn how to use it before they can become productive. Create a Screencast of someone using the software so new employees can watch how you want it to be used.

Or maybe you grow weary of helping your computer-challenged mother-in-law check her e-mail. Just create a Screencast once and she can review it again and again whenever she forgets.

Is creating a Screencast complicated and expensive? No! I am going to show you how to create your own Screencasts simply and easily. And for under twenty dollars!

Part 1: Installing CamStudio on your PC

In this lesson we download CamStudio from the www.camstudio.org website. We installed the program and changed a couple of options. We changed the Region setting to "Full Screen" so that the Screencast would show my entire screen.

Click the Play button to watch the lesson.

Part 2: Create your first Screencast with CamStudio

In this lesson, we use CamStudio to create a Screencast of a search on Google.com for "Gary North" and then going to the website. Click the Play button to watch the lesson.

Part 3: Creating a Screencast with Audio

In this lesson well buy a microphone/headset to add audio to our next Screencast.
Click here to go to Amazon.com to buy the microphone. Click play to watch the lesson.

Part 4: CamStudio Screencast to YouTube to Website

In this lesson, you are shown how to create a YouTube account, upload a Screencast to YouTube, and embed the Screencast into this blog. This technique can also be used to insert the Screencast's HTML code into your website. Click Play to begin the lesson.