A screencast is a video or animated image of what is displayed on a computer screen to show readers what the instructions in Knowledge Base articles are telling them.
Table of Contents
Before you create a screencast
- Try to present Firefox in its most familiar form.
- Use as many default settings as possible.
- Use the default Firefox theme.
- Use the default operating system theme.
- Lower the screen resolution or do not capture the entire screen, so it will fit in the browser window.
- Make sure there's enough context to know what the image is of.
- If speaking, make sure you speak clearly.
- Don't add unrelated background music - it may annoy some users.
- Screencasts should only be applied to step-by-step instructions.
Do not create screencasts that are larger than 640x480. Otherwise only a portion of the video will be viewable.
On Windows, How-To Geek has a great article on recording your screen, and, of course, there are plenty of videos on YouTube on how to create a screencast.
Tips for creating screencasts:
- As with screenshots, it's best to create a separate demo profile, so you a) know that you're using the default setup, and b) aren't broadcasting any private information from your main profile.
- Record a rough walkthrough of the screencast, so you know what you materials you need to set up for the main recording.
- Write a script before recording.
- Try to speak more slowly and clearly than you normally do.
Software
There are many more screen recording products out there. If there is one you would like to recommend, please tell us in the Contributors forum.
Windows
Mac
Linux
- VLC (free)
- recordMyDesktop (free)
Add your screencast to an article
Once you've uploaded your video to YouTube, you can add it to a new article (see Create a new Knowledge Base article) or to an existing article (see Edit a Knowledge Base article).
Use the following syntax to add the screencast to the article content:
[[Video:URL]]
For example: [[Video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXs_YE9QyUQ]]
