Tools for Making Videos
Video content is very popular in the technical writing industry now. It helps to describe a product and its features clearly.
There are three main types of video content:
- Product Overview
- Feature Videos
- Tutorial Videos
You can learn about these types in detail here:
In this post, I want to share some top tools for making all these types of videos. Let’s get started!
Camtasia
It’s simple but feature-rich:
- Record screen and webcam. Capture crisp video and audio from your desktop. Or record webcam to add a personal touch to your video.
- Add effects. Camtasia gives you pre-made animations that are simple to customize. Effects add professionalism and polish to your videos with drag-and-drop functionality.
- Music and audio. Choose from our library of royalty-free music and sound effects. And Camtasia lets you record and edit your audio clips to get the perfect audio for your video.
- Titles, annotations, and callouts. Grab attention in your videos with eye-catching titles, annotations, effects and more.
- Zoom, pan, and animate. Add zoom in, zoom out, and pan animations to your screen recordings.
- Create quizzes. Add quizzes and interactivity to encourage and measure learning in your videos.
Snagit
It’s also the TechSmith product like Camtasia but a little bit different. How it works:
- Capture a process. Show customers and coworkers how to do something with screenshots and screen recordings.
- Add your explanation. Mark up your screenshots, or talk through a process and answer questions with a quick video.
- Create visual instructions. Create custom how-to guides, tutorials, and quick videos right within Snagit.
Here is what you can do using Snagit:
- Screen capture and recording. Take a screenshot or record a quick video of what you see on your computer screen.
- Panoramic capture. Capture wide, horizontal scrolls, scrolling webpages, and everything between.
- Create from templates. Use pre-made layouts inside Snagit to create visual documentation, tutorials, and training materials in no-time.
- Create videos from images. Talk and draw over a series of screenshots to create a quick “how-to” video or GIF.
- And more.
ShareX
ShareX is a free and open-source screenshot and screencast utility for Microsoft Windows. It is published under the GNU General Public License. The project’s source code is hosted at the GitHub code-sharing and code development platform. It is also available on the Windows Store and Steam.
ShareX can be used to capture full screen or partial screenshots, such as rectangle capture and window capture, as well as being able to record video using FFmpeg. Captured screenshots can be annotated and edited using the built-in ShareX image editor or modified using image effects and watermarks.
After capture, a screenshot can be autonomously exported as an image file, email attachment, exported to a printer, to the clipboard, or uploaded to a remote host such as many popular image hosting services or via FTP. If the image is uploaded to a remote host, the URL generated by it can be copied to the clipboard.
Bandicam
Bandicam is a lightweight screen recorder software for Windows that can capture anything on your PC screen as a high-quality video. Also, it makes it possible to record a certain area on a PC screen or capture a game that uses the DirectX/OpenGL/Vulkan graphics technologies.
Bandicam will help you carry out a screen capture with high compression ratio, while keeping the video quality closer to the original work, and provides performance far superior to other screen capture software that provides similar functions.
The above tools are simple and have primary features. But, if you create something more complex than just screen capturing, here are two programs for big projects.
Premiere Pro
Premiere Pro is the industry-leading video editing software for film, TV, and the web. Creative tools, integration with other apps and services, and the power of Adobe Sensei help you craft footage into polished films and videos. With Premiere Rush you can create and edit new projects from any device. Edit footage in any format, from 8K to virtual reality. Native file support, lightweight proxy workflows, and faster ProRes HDR let you work the way you want with your media, even on mobile workstations.
Premiere Pro works seamlessly with other apps and services, including After Effects, Adobe Audition, and Adobe Stock. Open a Motion Graphics template from After Effects, customize one from Adobe Stock, or integrate with hundreds of third-party extensions.
Vegas Pro
Nobody edits faster than a passionate creative with VEGAS Pro at hand. The timeline editing tools make editing fast and easy. But more importantly, they bring out your creativity, because ideas flow freely when you’re not preoccupied by clumsy editing tools. No NLE enables you to edit, think and create more effectively than VEGAS Pro.
- Nested timelines. Organize projects and speed up your workflow with nested timelines. Move easily between timelines within the master project, or access your nested timelines as stand-alone projects to work on them independently.
- Smart Split. With Smart Split you can remove whole sections of a video clip and leave behind a virtually undetectable edit with complete flexibility to adjust the results if you need to in order to get it just right. No more ugly jump cuts!
- “Hamburger” menu system. This innovative menu system enables you to customize high-traffic areas of the user interface so you can find the tools you need quickly while at the same time keeping the workspace clutter-free.
What tools do you use?
