Not to sound too negative to this screencast, I do like a couple of other aspects of the CrossLoop demo:

• Small size (video window about 320×240 pixels, delivered by default as a pop-up)
• The way it zooms in to the relevant section (it looks to me like it was created with Camtasia Studio 5 using the new SmartFocus pan and zoom feature.

For me, this is a good example of how adding music may turn out to take too much time and energy to find an engaging track that is not distracting from the information content.

1. Sound interesting but do not speak too fast
2. Record the screen at sensible size
3. Publish in Flash
   
4. Use a good microphone
5. Go easy on the ’special effects’
6. Plan but don’t script
7. Aim for a standard format

While I cannot test this, lacking ready access to a Mac (and note that ScreenFlow requires one Leopard), based on its own screencasts, it has some interesting editing features and seems to take good screen video and audio. For general library screencasts, the lack of Flash output and the inability to easily add text call outs (as noted by Paul) are concerns.

uTIPu demo: Recorded with their TipCam and using their free hosting. No editing is available. I’ve set the demo to “invite only” which means I just have a URL to share. Since uTIPu does give any embedding code, I’ll not try to embed it in this post.

Webinaria demo: I recorded with Webinaria, added one text call out, and uploaded at the medium quality setting (which seemed disappointingly low to me). I have it set to private, but that just means you need the URL to see it. Since Webinaria does not give any embedding code, I’ll not try to embed it in this post.

FreeScreencast demo: I had to install the Windows Media Encoder to get the Screencast Recorder to work. But once I got that installed, I was able to make this demo. FreeScreencast gives two embed options as well as the link option above: 640×480 and full size. I’m trying the 640×480 embed code below which is still too large to fit well into this blog layout.

Jing Project demo: I’ve created some examples with Jing previously, but to be fair, I wanted to try the same content with Jing hosted at Screencast.com. And here’s the embedded example which I just recorded smaller than the previous one to try to have it fit better here:

Screencast-o-matic demo: And finally, the Java-based Screencast-o-matic can be linked or embedded as well, but I’ll skip the embedding due to the use of Java and the iframe.

Intrigued by this one, I watched what looks like a Camtasia-created screencast, hosted locally, and embedded in the blog. What struck me right away was the narrator saying, “I apologize for sounding a little funny. I actually had five teeth removed. . . ” Now that is way more than I really cared to hear, and it almost made me stop watching. Since I did not know his regular voice, I would never have noticed that his voice was any more unusual than that of most other screencasters. Fortunately I watched the rest anyway, since it was demonstrating aspects of the software that I wanted to learn.

Musing afterwards about my reaction, I find both advantages and disadvantages to that approach. On the negative side, the comment distracted me from the content I wanted to see and made it take longer to get there. On the plus side, it did help make the audio track more informal, conversational, and less stodgy. I guess I’d rather have strange, personal comments than someone sounding overly scripted and pedantic.

The disadvantage is that viewers lose the controls of a standard video file. The stop, rewind, and replay functions are not easily available. I toyed with the idea of using a small .swf-based video instead of the animated .gif. But that takes much more work to get all the appropriate coding on the page, the JavaScript in the header, and all the embed codes working correctly. Despite their documentation’s claims, I did not find an easy way to use Camtasia’s ExpressShow to embed the small video on my page when I host it on my own site. If I use Camtasia’s option to upload to screencast.com, then I get a much easier embed code snippet to use. Trying that here in WordPress, it pastes fairly well, but for an unknown reason to me, it runs the 14 second video in about 3 seconds. Assuming that it ran correctly, I’m curious as to which version most people would prefer to see on a page like my search bookmarklets page.

I have been fairly pleased with the results of my second Demofuse tour. According to Demofuse, the tour has been viewed (or at least started) well over 400 times in the last month. Compared to the very sparse turn out we had for in-person new site tours, the online approach succeeded far better.

We will probably take this down soon, but I wonder if I will be using any more Demofuse tours. I am concerned that the Demofuse site still has a footer with a 2007 date, their toll free number now advertises a an adult phone number, and their blog link is dead. I’ve sent email to them to see if they plan to maintain and develop the site.

So you may consider using it for a short term project, if you do it soon. Or you might try a similar site I just came across called Amberjack. I have yet to try using it, but the example on their site is similar to Demofuse, although it seems a bit slower and less elegant.

I’ve not yet tried out the software, but you can see some of the hosted screencasts (68 at present) to see the end result.