Delivering screencasts on the web is a relatively straight forward process--create your video, upload it to Screencast.com, and then share it via links, embedding, or email invitations. Screencast.com is great for the last two steps, but we have some tips for the first step as well.

After you've recorded and edited your video, you produce it to a specific file format. The format determines two very important parts of your viewer's experience: quality and playback.

File format and quality aren't directly linked, but the format you choose to publish your screencast in determines the codec used (which does determine quality). For video on the web, we recommend FLV. It looks good and compresses well, leading to reasonable file sizes.

One of the reasons why we recommend FLV is the other important part: the player. You want to choose a file format for your video that plays on as many computers as possible. The Adobe Flash Player has almost universal market penetration so almost anyone will be able to watch your video. It also embeds nicely.

The important thing is to think about the viewer's experience all the way through the screencasting process. Start when you're recording ("Is this too long? Is it too big?"), producing ("Is this format the right choice for viewers on the web?"), and then publishing ("Should I embed this on my blog, or should I provide a link to a Screencast.com view page?"). In the end, it's all about the viewer. Choosing the right file format is an important part of delivering great screencasts.

One of the great things about the redesigned Screencast.com Help Center is our new tutorials--separate pages where we can embed video, use big graphics, and really get into the details of how to use Screencast.com. One of the things we've done is put together an example use case of how someone might use Screencast.com (in this case, a professor at a community college). This may not be you, but we hope that by laying out how (and why) someone else is using Screencast.com you might get some ideas for how you can use Screencast.com to accomplish your own goals.

Here's an example. Follow the link at the end of the post to see the full case study in the Help Center.

Screencast.com Example Case Study

Before you begin to upload your content, it’s worthwhile to take some time to create a visual roadmap of how you would like to manage, secure, and share your content.

To get a general idea of what is involved in managing, securing, and sharing content, let’s look at the following sample use case.

Professional Profile: Community College Professor

A community college mathematics professor teaches several levels of Algebra and wants his students to access his digital content for their individual classes – things like a course syllabus, example and lecture videos, sample quizzes, solutions to problems, etc.

This Professor also has college and course information that he would like have online – course descriptions, text book information, grading scales, test/quiz masters, solution keys, and student contact information including email addresses.

There is other content that he would put into a personal category: a curriculum vitae, biography photos, research documentation, etc.

Content Categories

If he arranges his videos, images, and PDF documents into general categories, it might look like this...

Go to the full case study in the Screencast.com Help Center.

I'm pretty excited about the new Help Center here on Screencast.com. The new format makes browsing for information simple and the addition of longer tutorials means that we can provide you the information to get the most out of Screencast.com. Here's an example of the kind of tutorial you'll find in the revamped Screencast.com Help Center.

RSS/iTunes Overview

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with changes to your content on Screencast.com.

Screencast.com can generate feeds for any of your public folders and public or hidden playlists. Point your viewers to the RSS or iTunes feed on the folder or playlist page, and they can subscribe.

Viewers can use Outlook 2007, iTunes, or any RSS reader.

iTunes

iTunes is a digital media player application, from Apple Inc. for playing and organizing digital music and video files.

The two iTunes feed options represent different ways of adding RSS feeds to your iTunes application. The 1 Click button will launch the iTunes application and automatically adds the RSS feed to the Podcasts list in your Library. The iTunes button takes you to the URL of your Screencast.com iTunes feed. You can then enter that URL in iTunes (under "Advanced>Subscribe to Podcast") in order to add that RSS feed manually.

How do I turn on RSS for my content?

You can turn on the RSS feeds for public folders and public or hidden playlists.

1. Mouse-over a folder or playlist and click Edit.
2. Check the boxes next to RSS or iTunes to enable or disable those buttons for this folder/playlist.



3. Then your viewers will see this in the View page:
   
   

When they subscribe, they get an update in their reader or iTunes every time you add content to the folder or playlist.