Screencast and Video Formats – What To Use

This actually came about from a discussion about Armand Morin/Tracy Childer’s Screencam Generator Suite Vs. Camtasia. They are both excellent pieces of software but the one biggest plus of Camtasia is the ability to create multiple formats. Why is that important?

The majority of the screencasts and videos you see and will continue to see online is flash. This is because it’s able to be viewed accross a wide variety of computer operating systems and it’s freely available.

However, this is just my gut feeling. If you’ve seen those digital media players like Archos, Creative Zens and the super cool smartphone or Pocket PC’s, you will notice a common thread. WMV. This is going to be one of the leading if not the leading formats in the future for video.

Why would you want to watch a screen tutorial on a tiny portable digital media player screen? I guess that is somewhat a personal preference BUT drawing from my observations of podcasting and the portable MP3 Player, I’d say that would be a good indicator. I’ve often found myself wishing I could watch my copy of Traffic Secrets CDrom tutorials away from my computer. Oh it would be absolute bliss to be able to learn literrally from my kitchen , laying on my bed or on the road.

So if you’re screencasting to market your products, it really wouldn’t hurt to have an option to create WMV videos.

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7 Comments

  1. Bina from WebBriefcase on March 15, 2006 at 10:21 am

    Hi Lynette,

    Am a bit upset to discover that WMV would be a good way to go. After a long time trying to decide between screencasting tools, I settled for Captivate. I liked the amount of control it gave me to change my movies without having to record a scene all over. The only reason that I was reluctant to get Captivate was, like you mentioned, the lack of different type of output files. I thought that Flash would be a good way to go since it’s so popular. Would you know if Flash players are available for PDAs?



  2. Bina from WebBriefcase on March 15, 2006 at 5:21 am

    Hi Lynette,

    Am a bit upset to discover that WMV would be a good way to go. After a long time trying to decide between screencasting tools, I settled for Captivate. I liked the amount of control it gave me to change my movies without having to record a scene all over. The only reason that I was reluctant to get Captivate was, like you mentioned, the lack of different type of output files. I thought that Flash would be a good way to go since it’s so popular. Would you know if Flash players are available for PDAs?



  3. Lynette on March 17, 2006 at 1:39 am

    Bina, Yes there are flash players for mobile devices but it’s not quite as widespread. Since this post there has been a lot of changes to video – I put an update here and here. It seems like MP4 at time of writing is preferred.

    Flash is still great for good old fashioned websites though. By the way – I really like your Create A Website In 5 Days book. Recommend it all the time 🙂



  4. Lynette on March 16, 2006 at 8:39 pm

    Bina, Yes there are flash players for mobile devices but it’s not quite as widespread. Since this post there has been a lot of changes to video – I put an update here and here. It seems like MP4 at time of writing is preferred.

    Flash is still great for good old fashioned websites though. By the way – I really like your Create A Website In 5 Days book. Recommend it all the time 🙂



  5. Bina on April 12, 2006 at 10:38 am

    Thanks Lynette.



  6. Bina on April 12, 2006 at 6:38 am

    Thanks Lynette.