

Ask YC: Recommendations on how to make demo video (60 sec tour) for our starup? - shafqat

Are there any (free) products on the web that help make demo videos? We want to make a 60 second tour for our startup, and were wondering if people had any good recomendations. Just need to show the screen and capture mouse movements/changes with some voiceover or text.<p>Any ideas?
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jcl
Free, open-source screen capture program for Windows:

<http://camstudio.org/>

I've used a suspiciously similar-looking program called DemoStudio in the past
and I found it fairly easy to use.

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jakewolf
Camtasia is easy to use. <http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp>

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ardit33
I have used it before, and Camtasia is really good. It exports video in a
bunch of formats (flash is one of them) plus it has a 30 days no limitation
trial.

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thomasswift
ishowu for the mac is pretty cheap. i am afraid there aren't too many free
options that are easy to use. there is
<http://www.unixuser.org/~euske/vnc2swf/> i've used it before, but honestly
spending a few bucks in this department will save you time in the long haul.

there was some sort of hack with using yui as a guided tour a few weeks back,
sorry no link. applying a voiceover could be a problem though.

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shafqat
i heard there is an inbuilt product for the mac that does this. you said
ishowu is 'pretty cheap', so I imagine that isnt it? thanks for everyone's
help!

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thomasswift
$30.

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spif
Why don't you watch the peepcode screencast, it's only 9 bucks but very worth
it.

He explains how to use iMovie, iShowU and Omnigraffle for creating them.

The link is <https://peepcode.com/products/screencasting-on-the-mac>

(BTW I don't know or am affiliated with the top funky guy, just a fan of their
peepcode screencasts)

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paul9290
Yes - I suggest showing if it makes sense - how it affects a user when using
it. This will garner you a larger audience, then step 1, step 2, etc

Like Speeddate's (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJnXORCW1Vg>)vid.

This is something we did for our startup and it has worked well!

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bprater
Get a good mike. Might be the most important thing you do to create a good
vid.

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twak
<http://amazon.decenturl.com/samson-audio-c01u-condenser> is the kind of thing
you'll be wanting

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jakewolf
I've heard good things about that one, but ended up with a Blue Snowball which
also works well. Love using with with skype and speakers for a truly hands and
headset free talking experience.

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webwright
While you're asking about tools, I gotta link to these guys:

<http://www.commoncraft.com/>

They do some pretty kickass "screencasts". ;-)

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wehriam
I use a $40 Logitech headset, Screenography for OSX, and iMovie.

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iamelgringo
I know that VMWare workstation has a "capture movie" setting. It's pretty
handy to be able to have the functionality outside of the OS, so you can use
any OS you want.

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clm9779
www.jing.com

Its free, not the best but super super easy to use. You can make up to a 5 min
video, while talking people through it.

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earle
email ijustine :)

