Learn all the tips and tricks that go into creating a high-quality, polished screencast. We'll cover topic research, equipment, recording, and editing. I'll teach you how to create a final product that you're proud of.
Creating high-quality screencasts doesn't have to take forever. We'll cover things you can do while recording that make the editing process easier and faster. You’ll also learn my end-to-end system for editing quickly.
You don't have to be an expert filmmaker or videographer to get started! This course is perfect for anyone with something to say. If you’re already a seasoned pro, there's plenty here for you to learn. We dive deep into the research, recording, and editing processes.
I’m going to teach you everything you need to know about how to make exceptional screencasts efficiently.
You’ll learn:
We’ll cover everything from planning your content, to cameras, to recording and editing. Start your screencast journey today!
An overview of the course, a preview of what to expect, and an answer to a question everyone has: will I get rich selling courses? (I don't know!)
Welcome to the course! This video serves as an overview of who I am and what you can expect throughout this course.
This entire course comes from a single point of view: mine! I'll tell you up front about all the things I care about, and you can decide if you care about the same things.
The question on everyone's mind: will you get rich selling courses? I don't know! It's entirely possible, but it may also lead to jobs, consulting, or other good things.
Before you can record anything, you have to plan out your content! In this section we cover research, scripts, and outlines.
Clearly defining your audience will help you develop compelling content. In this video, you’ll learn strategies for identifying that audience.
Researching and outlining your topic upfront is a crucial step to producing a cohesive course. In this video, we will talk about the two phases of the method that I use.
Want to make your viewer feel overwhelmed? Teach them everything all at once! Try the stair-stepping technique instead.
As you're teaching, try to "speak on behalf of the viewer." Openly addressing common objections to your subject matter can help create trust with your learner.
Video length is somewhat dependent on platform. Let's talk about the different considerations when deciding how long your videos should be.
It sounds like a bad idea, but it's OK to show a wrong or sub-optimal method first, especially if that's what the viewer would have done on their own. That gives you the opportunity to teach the better (or more correct) method.
Reading from a script or recording off-the-cuff is totally up to you, but I have my opinions! We'll talk about tradeoffs of each.
In this video, we’ll look at my method for outlining my ideas. This method can save me up to a couple of hours per video.
Managing yourself can be tricky. I’ll show you how it’s done, and encourage you to keep it simple.
We'll cover what equipment you need and maybe more importantly, what equipment you don't need.
An introduction to the equipment section, where I beg you to not worry about buying a bunch of things.
It's up to you! I am going to try to convince you to be on camera for at least a little bit though. Showing your face on camera can help build rapport with your audience.
In this video, we'll discuss the different tiers of cameras, and I'll offer a recommendation for each tier.
Far more important than the camera is the microphone. I'll give you a few levels of recommendations here as well.
If you are going to be on camera, having just a few lights can take your setup to the next level quite easily.
You don't need to buy a new monitor! But it will help to set it up correctly for recording.
Now that you've got all of your equipment... where does everything go? I'll show you how mine is set up and things you'll need to think about.
A fun little app that I use occasionally. Not always useful, but very good when you do need it.
When recording, there are a few things you can do to give your screencast extra polish and make editing easier on yourself.
Creating a cohesive, consistent course can be difficult over time. In this video, we'll talk about a few things to keep in mind that can help you achieve that goal.
Before you record any video, it's important that you prepare yourself. We'll run through a checklist of things to prepare in this video.
If you're going to be on camera, you'll need to prep your space. There are a couple things you'll need to think about to maximize consistency.
Eliminating distraction is a crucial part of an effective screencast. I'll show you all the things you can hide to help your viewers focus.
When you're working in an application on-screen, you need to hide every single thing that isn't relevant. We'll take a look at several examples of things you might consider hiding.
How do you start a video? How do you end it? I'll show you what I think is most natural.
Getting a video recorded perfectly the first time is a daunting task. In this video we'll talk about how you can break it down into chunks to make it less overwhelming.
To show you how "recording in chunks" works, here are a bunch of outtakes from this very course!
How to set up your screen recording software with the correct settings. I'll be demoing ScreenFlow, but also make a few recommendations for other software.
You're going to make mistakes in your videos, that's guaranteed. The way you handle them depends on what kind of mistake it is!
Once you've finally finished your videos, you want them to remain evergreen for as long as possible! I'll give you a few tips to make sure your videos don't feel stale.
A word of encouragement for when you record a screencast with no video. Or no audio. Or you didn't record at all.
The part that everyone dreads: editing. It's not so bad! I'll show you some methods to get through the edits quickly.
Editing is a big topic! We'll go over what you can expect from this module.
Let's take a look around at the editor and familiarize ourselves with the layout.
The first step in the editing process is the rough cut. There are likely bad takes in your video, and we want to cut those out as quickly as possible without wasting any time.
After you've done your rough cut pass, it's time to do the fine tuning pass.
Adding a few transitions or a bit of movement can make your videos feel much more polished.
Let's enhance the actions that we learned about in the previous video.
Taking advantage of saved presets will save you time and make your videos much more consistent.
Recording talking head videos gives you fewer opportunities for seamless edits. In this video we'll explore some ways to hide those edits.
You may have recorded the entire screen, but you don"t have to use the entire screen!
Sometimes you'll notice a mistake while editing and using a freeze frame (or partial freeze frame!) is a good way to minimize or eliminate that mistake.
A fast and furious way to use freeze frames to make your edits disappear.
Fine tuning is important, but we still need to do it quickly. I''ll show you my keyboard-only workflow for fine tuning incredibly quickly.
If your video feed comes out a little red, you can fix it!
Having clean audio is extremely important. Hopefully your audio is already good, thanks to your space and your microphone. In this video we'll talk about how to process the audio further to make it even better.
Using a few very basic techniques (J & L cuts) we can make our transitions feel smoother than just an abrupt cut.
Time to get your videos off of your hard drive and out into the world.
Getting your video off of your hard drive and into the world starts with exporting. Let's talk about the right settings to export your videos!
Exporting a portion of the video for previewing or exporting every single video in a batch, I'll show you how to do both.
Where should you put your videos? I have my favorite spots, but we'll look at a few others too.
You want people to watch your videos, so you need to tell everyone about them! I'll share some of my marketing tactics in this video.
This is potentially the end of the course for some of you, I just want to quickly say thanks!
An overview of the philosophy and tactics behind different social platforms, and thoughts on how to optimize each.
Every social platform is different, and each has their own requirements for videos. This will serve as an overview of the platforms.
What does the social media platform want out of you, what do you want to create, and is there a middle ground?
Repurposing your content can be a little tricky, because it can lead to lower quality results.
Twitter is my favorite platform for sharing short form video content. We'll talk about what I think works well and what doesn't on Twitter.
YouTube is the best place to share your standalone long-form videos. It can be a great place to share a few videos from your course as marketing, or completely standalone videos.
Instagram Reels is another short-form platform where you might find an audience for your videos.
LinkedIn is a surprisingly vital social network where you can share your videos if your audience is there. We'll talk about requirements for that platform.
Not everything on TikTok is dances! It can be a good place to share your short-form content.
Look at real-world example and learn from other people's screencasts!
An introduction to the teardowns section. What's important is not my taste, but yours!
A review of the first video from a course called Component Odyssey.
A review of a YouTube video by Umar Hansa
Teardowns will continue to roll out in the coming weeks!
Teardowns will continue to roll out in the coming weeks!
Teardowns will continue to roll out in the coming weeks!
Teardowns will continue to roll out in the coming weeks!
Past students and peers from an online community of over 30K followers
I watched a few videos of this incredibly beneficial series, it’s awesome. You are teaching in a very precise and simple way, just like teaching to kids.
Mian M Imran Shah
Wow, Aaron, you’re a natural at this! Here I am struggling to record videos and watching yours isn’t making that easier! You just set the bar a bit higher for me now!
Bert De Swaef
If you've never done a screencast course before, this 100% will be all you need to get going. As someone who has done a few courses before, I'm still finding it full of great tips!
Jack McDade
Binged it in one night. LOVED IT, can’t wait for the additional video tear downs. Those really helped highlight optimizations and how to think when setting up my own.
Jacob Devore
Not sure how Aaron Francis does it, but everything he works on, he does with a lot of heart and brain. The results are special. So this course is for sure as well!
Christoph Rumpel
The quality of these videos is truly impressive, and yet, it still feels like Aaron Francis just jumped on a Zoom call to teach me. Very friendly and approachable teaching style.
Anthony Clark
100% money back guarantee.
Want to buy the course for your team? Contact us for team pricing!
Created by Aaron Francis , screencasting.com is a course designed to educate content creators, developers, and aspiring teachers on pro techniques for making high quality screencasts.
It's an 8 module course with 50+ videos that provided detailed breakdowns, instructions and tutorials for making screencasts. Learners get everything from planning course content and equipment setups to pro techniques for recording, editing, and publishing.
Aaron cares about helping content creators and developers to overcome the roadblock of sharing their content. He's here to empower others to make great-looking screencasts with ease and speed.
The course breaks down little-known tips and tricks most people miss, that are very easy and make a very high-quality end result.
screencasting.com gives you pro insight on the exact steps you need to make the screencasting process easier, faster and much more rewarding.
When you take the course, you'll learn:
This course is ideal for:
The editing software used in the course is ScreenFlow . This course is not a ScreenFlow tutorial, great effort has gone into teaching the philosophy and workflow side of editing, as opposed to editor-specific features. ScreenFlow was chosen because it is so simple. Any editor that you use likely has all of ScreenFlow's features, and more.
If you buy the course and decide it's not useful because of the software demonstrated, we'll happily offer you a 100% refund, no questions asked.
There are several free videos, but no free trial. If you aren’t fully satisfied with the course, just ask for your money back – no problem.
The course is comprised of 8 modules, 67 videos, and 4.5 hours of lessons.
Forever, as long as it’s online.
If, for any reason, you find yourself less than fully satisfied with the course, you may request a refund at any time.
Yes! Visit our affiliates page to learn more about our affiliate program.
Didn’t find an answer? Send me an email and I’ll get ya fixed up.