Screencasting is Hard
So for the last two weeks I’ve been trying to get a screencasting site launched and it is proving to be more of a challenge than I originally anticipated. The troublesome site is PHP Casts — a site that I’ve decided to make to provide free video training for PHP developers. Since I have a decent understanding of PHP and have given several talks regarding the subject, it only seemed natural to offer this as another way to teach people about my favorite language.
With all that said, passion and understanding can only take me so far when other factors prevent me from getting stuff done on time. Things like lack of equipment and time are pretty much at fault right now. Also I suppose that not knowing a single thing about audio equipment also hinders things slightly. Just over two weeks ago I ordered a microphone and mixer so that I can capture some decent audio. Although my new toys took their time arriving at my doorstep, it still wasn’t enough time to put together some decent content for a podcast. Normally, I can just wing it but for some reason when I have a microphone in front of me, I have to be a perfectionist. So to prevent excessively long casts and to minimize the “uh” and “um” factor, I’ve decided to write out a transcript for the parts where I speak. Unfortunately, this now adds writing time into the equation — and I’m not exactly the best writer in the world so that seems to take up the most time so far.
This whole experience has taught me quite a bit about screencasting and podcasting. Ryan Price was kind enough to share quite a bit of his wisdom to me. The biggest thing I walked away learning from him was that quality equipment is certainly an important thing, but since the audio is being compressed down, there is no reason to break the bank while purchasing podcasting equipment. Total cost for all equipment (including miscellaneous cables and a desktop microphone stand) was under $200 from Amazon.
I’ve also learned that having a plan is pretty important. I’m still trying to figure out a good formula to screencasting. My current plan is to just record my screen with no audio as I demonstrate the code which I’ll be talking about. Next, I’ll write out a transcript of what I’m going to say as I do it on the screen. Finally, as I play back the recorded footage, I capture the audio and combine them together in Quicktime.
If anyone has any experience with this, I would love your thoughts. I’m quite sure that through trial and error I’ll discover a great pattern to this. Certainly the first few episodes will be rough but I’m not worried in the least. I’m having a blast and learning a lot so I can’t ask for much more than that.
3 Responses to Screencasting is Hard
mikeg:
The first cast will cover the basics (and some advanced usage) of PHP 5’s SimpleXML. I’m learning quickly that broad topics like that don’t make for good screencasts — those are best for entire talks.
I really would like to see myself make short and informative screencasts that focus on specific features of PHP 5. For example, I would like to have a series on common design patterns. Most likely, that will be what comes next.
Once I finish the design of the site, it will have a suggestion box where people can request specific topics they would like to see.
brian:
What are you using to do the screen-capture portion?
Comments are closed. Sorry.
php developers:
On August 21st, 2007 at 5:23 am #
Kudos on your venture. Also specifically which areas are you going to touch upon in your php webcasts ?