Making your own podcast or video can be fairly straightforward, and there are lots of free tools to make it easier and add bells and whistles. For now, we’ll deal separately with screencasts, which offer a video recording of action on a computer screen (with or without an audio track) and standard videos.
Screencasts
Screen capture tools allow you to make a video, often narrated, showing how to do something on a computer. They record your mouse as well as everything you click on and show on your screen. Screen capture is a great way for showing students, colleagues or a wider audience how to use an online tool. I used this Thing to help me create the screen cast of how to set up a wordpress blog in Thing 1. The tools were great, hearing myself on audio was not so good!
There are a number of screencasting tools available, both free and for purchase. An example of this is Adobe Captivate, which has some great features, but it isn’t free. It certainly isn’t necessary to spend lots of money to make a good screencast, however, and we’ll cover a couple of free tools that do the job.
Some general tips:
- Speak slowly and clearly
- Write a script and run through what you’ll be demonstrating in advance
- Make sure you don’t have a tennis match or dog barking in the background
- Clean up your desktop or internet bookmarks to make it look professional
Screencast-o-matic
Screencast-o-matic is fairly intuitive, so you can get started right away. You may want to create an account (so that you can store and keep track of your videos), and you can also watch a short demo that walks you through the recording steps.
To begin, press ‘Start recording’ in the centre of the page and the ‘Launch recorder’. A frame will appear (make sure Java is enabled – if this is an issue then you can download an app); you can drag and resize this frame to suit your needs, and you’ll also see some options for size, etc. Once you’re ready, simply press the red button and go. If you don’t want to record anything, make sure you mute your computer’s microphone (otherwise you’ll get a lot of white noise).
When you’ve finished, press the ‘done’ button and choose where to upload your video
Jing
You can download a free version of Jing. You will get a ‘Sun Launcher’ button on your screen.
Hover over the sun and choose ‘Capture’. Click and drag to select a portion of your screen, and then release the mouse when you are happy with the image you have selected.
From here, you can do two things: 1) take a still screenshot or 2) make a video. You can annotate your screenshots with text or arrows. When you’re happy with what you’ve done, click the ‘save’ button.
Other free screencast tools:
Video and audio recordings
If you want to make an audio podcast, you just need a relatively modern computer and a microphone. Many computers have built-in mics that will do the job, although you may find that investing in an external mic is worth it for the improved sound (RDP has podcasting equipment if you want to borrow it to have a go) use a USB mic designed for the job if you want to avoid extra purchases like an external sound card). You can use any standard tool on your computer to record your sound; Windows Sound Recorder on Windows is free (just type sound recorder into your surrey computer), and many Macs come with Garageband. You can also download a free tool like Audacity, which will also give you tools to clean your recording up a bit (this can be useful if you’ve made any mistakes or want to piece together parts from different attempts). Audacity offers tutorials on its website.
If you want to do a video podcast, you’ll need a video camera. This could be a simple USB webcam or something more expensive; you can even use your smartphone. Again, you can use Windows Movie Maker or iMovie if you want to stick to free tools.
Publishing your video or screencast
You can put your video up on a video hosting site such as YouTube or Vimeo, and these are often the best place to start.
Other helpful notes
If you need copyright-appropriate images, clips or sounds/music to use in your podcasts, videos or presentations, there are some great search tools out there:
- Creative Commons search (images, video and more)
- YouTube pre-approved audio tracks
- The Internet Archive’s audio archive (audio)
- Morguefile.com (free images, with licenses for commercial use)
- Compfight (searches Flickr and allows you to sort results by Attribution or Commercial License)
Further reading
- Lecturer adds value with iTunes (from the Guardian)
- Behind the Scenes at OUP Studios – things to think about when you’re working on or commissioning a short video
23 things for research 