Screencast composition application

I’ve been recently working on some screencasts to demonstrate data analysis techniques.

Two common features I needed for my screencasts, which I’ve seen many screencasters also use/need, are:

• Overlay of a small frame on top of the screencast. For instance, you may want people to see you while you are talking. With computers taking more and more an active role on activities like interviewing, taking down patient records, etc., you may want to highlight some personal interaction tips while using your software. Perhaps you want to show a piece of hardware associated with the screencast. The limit is your imagination.
• Watermark your screencast You may want to prevent others from using your screencast on other sites without the proper credits.

This image shows basically what I needed. By the way, it is actually created with my program.

 

I started last weekend trying to do it with Quicktime Pro, and found it quite cumbersome. I can record the screen activity fine on the PC, as well as recording myself talking. Here the easy part ends. Then I have to add a video track on QT Pro, guess the offset entering it with numbers, and recompress. No, I wanted something simpler. Searching on the internet, found people using higher end applications, like Final Cut Pro. Not wanting to fork $1,299 for Final Cut Pro or $299 for Final Cut Express, I coded a simple app to achieve what I need. It works nicely, and with that many people doing screencast these days, I think there may be interest for it. When it’s completely finished, I’ll release it as a $9.99 download, and will set up a permanent page for it so people can purchase it. Meanwhile, I’d like to gather some feedback, so if you are a brave soul that can deal with beta software, and have use for the tool, please contact me. The first 25 beta testers will get a full version of the software when it is done. Sorry, no plans to open source the code so far.

The application is very simple and straightforward. It allows you to open a movie as the backdrop. You can move around the square where you want the overlay. You can choose which movie you want on the overlay. If you quit and launch the application later, it will actually open automatically your last movies. (You can change them, of course).

On the side drawer, you can set your watermark text, the color you want for it and how much blur you want to have. The overlay movie will show blended into the image, and you can adjust its brightness, contrast and saturation to compensate, for instance, for dark/light colors on your background movie.

Finally, you hit Export, choose your compressor, some settings and pronto… you have your screencast.

Here is a picture of the *simple* user interface. No, my application doesn’t look strikingly similar to Excel 2007 I’m editing a screencast about Excel 2007. I hope some lawyer won’t ask me to take Beavis’ image off this post. I didn’t have other movies hanging around.

It’s quite simple, and simple is better. At least for me.

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