How To Make Amazing Screencasts Nobody Will Watch
Some people make great videos. Unfortunately, I am not one of those people. Also unfortunately, that doesn’t stop me from making videos. To be fair, I do feel like there are some who make worse videos than me. If it pleases the court, I would like to present Exhibit A:
Wait — that’s still me. A bold coming of age story that draws you in and forces you to ask yourself the question, “Why am I watching this?”.
Forget that. The point is, I’ve come a long way since the days of depressing cubicle documentaries. I’ve spent the last six years as a Developer Advocate in some form or fashion, and while many people assume that all we do is go to conferences and drink beer (we totally do that), we also make a LOT of videos.
Here is what I’ve learned along the way.
Record At 1280 x 720
The first thing that you are going to need to do is to identify some basic logistical items. First and foremost, you need to record your screen at 1280 x 720. Some people will swear by different resolutions, but don’t listen to them; they are only interested in your failure.
1280 x 720 is considered HD for YouTube and is generally as good as you can get your resolution without having a redonkulous file size.
To achieve this, your knee jerk reaction will be to change your entire display resolution to 1280 x 720, thus annihilating both your glorious desktop icon setup and your ability to actually use your computer.
Unless your desktop is already at 1280 x 720, in which case — Hi Dad!
You only need to record windows sized perfectly to 1280 x 720. You do this with a magical tool called Sizeup.
Sizeup
Sizeup is a window manager from Irradiated Software first introduced to me by Derick Bailey. There are a lot of window managers out there and some people will swear by others. Just remember that those people are wrong.
Sizeup runs you about 15 bucks and it’s worth every penny. You’ve already spent that much on the 80 oz Frappacino this morning and the Big Mac you had for lunch. What? You thought nobody saw that?
The killer feature of Sizeup is it’s ability to center any window at a precise resolution. You can go into Sizeup settings, then choose preferences, and set a specific resolution and keyboard shortcut. I use ctrl + cmd + option + c. That is the only keyboard shortcut I know.
Now any window can be sized to EXACTLY 1280 x 720. Any browser window, your text editor, the terminal, Apple Music (come at me) — whatever. Actually, that’s a lie. One place that this does not work is with PowerPoint.
PowerPoint Does Not Want To Do The Dishes
PowerPoint does not respond to Sizeup at all. It’s like me asking my kids to load the dishwasher. It does not go well. Here is a picture of my 11 year old after being asked to unload.
PowerPoint gives you the same response only without the eye rolling. Just nothing happens. Here is how I force the issue.
In PowerPoint go to the Slide Show tab and then Setup Setup Show. Choose “Browsed by an individual (windows).
Start the show and get a browser window resized to 1280 x 720. Now painstakingly resize your PowerPoint show based on the size of the browser window until you get to parity OR decide to go back to school and find a career that doesn’t require such shenanigans.
If anyone has any ideas on how to get kids to unload the dishwasher, please send help.
Now that your windows are the right size for recording, it’s time to crank the font to 11.
Up Your Font Size
I don’t actually mean 11. 11 would be tiny. That was a Spinal Tap reference. I can’t do all the work here folks.
The biggest mistake that people make when screencasting is assuming that anyone cares. The SECOND biggest mistake is having a font size that is entirely too small.
Crank your font size up to a ridiculous level. Do this is in your text editor, do this in the terminal. Do it anywhere you have text. Imagine that your viewer is going to watch your screencast (nobody will watch) in a tiny embedded window on some site or blog, because that is probably how they will do it. They are not likely to watch your terrible video in full screen because you do not deserve that much real estate on their monitor.
When I record VS Code, it looks about like this…
And my terminal looks like this…
And my wrist looks like this thanks to my Apple Watch…
That is not related to the content here, but still very important. Please hold the comments on how hairy my arm is. I am wearing a sweater that never comes off. Do you have any idea what the summer time is like?
Another thing I would recommend is to make your text editor a light color.
Oh No You Didn’t!
Oh, I can feel the rage already. How dare I suggest you switch from Monakai!?
Like Neo looking through the strands of the Matrix or Elliot hacking into E Corp’s data center to destroy their back up tapes, you are a dark, misunderstood and volatile hacker and your black text editor with green text proves that.
Two things.
- No you aren’t
- Both Neo and Elliot’s last names are “Anderson”.
The truth is that people can see your screen better with a white background on your text editor and dark text. Refer to MY editor setup, which is the most perfect blend of colors and icons that you have ever seen.
And spare me your science reasons about how my eyeballs are going to fall out if I don’t use a dark theme. Next you’re going to tell me that I need glasses to stare at this eclipse. There’s a sucker born every day, but it aint me.
OK. We’re ready to record. For that, you are going to need Screenflow.
Screenflow Is My Jam
Before you record anything, you are going to need some good screencasting software. I almost always record on a Mac, so Screenflow is my go-to. Some people like Camtasia, and that’s fine for them. But these are the same people who want you to use other window managers and resolutions. Don’t forget that they are inexplicably wrong about pretty much everything.
Screenflow is stable, easy to use and has all of the essential features like easy timeline editing, removing background noise from audio, annotations, transitions and easy publishing to YouTube. Camtasia has all of those things too — I already know that. Don’t email me.
Screenflow recording is pretty straightforward. Once you have captured your screen, you want to adjust the canvas to 1280 x 720. That will leave only your perfectly sized window visible. If your window is slightly out of the frame in either direction, don’t fret. Just use the screen tab to adjust it’s x and y positions until you get it just right.
The only keyboard shortcut that you need to know in Screenflow is t. Just t. That command splits clips like Mr. T splits wigs. You will split a lot of clips as you try and edit your 2 hours of mostly crap down to 2 minutes of tolerable content.
Now we’re ready to export this terrible video!
Exportizing
Publishing to YouTube is just built into the Screenflow menu and your video will be published at the highest res possible, which is 1280 x 720.
Exporting to disk is a little bit more convoluted. If you export for the web, Screenflow will resize the video by 50%. I guess that means it’s half as big as it was before. I don’t like to brag, but I did take Algebra in High School. I failed it, but I took it.
If you want to maintain perfect 1280 x 720, choose the “iPad” setting. Because nothing says “just export my video exactly like it is” like the word “iPad”.
Now You Know What I Know
Well, not everything that I know. And that’s a good thing because I have seen some stuff, man.
But I have at least graced you with the entirety of my video knowledge. Your life will never be the same and it’s probably only a matter of time before you have your own show on YouTube Red. Or you end up on Tosh.0.
Most of this article is satire. Obviously I do not really think that you are wrong if you use other tools or IDE themes. But you should ask yourself if maybe you ARE wrong and then think about that for a while.
