As promised, gang, here is an introductory video that briefly describes Screencast.com, a web-based file sharing application from TechSmith, the folks behind Camtasia and Jing. Just like Jing, the basics of Screencast.com is totally free, and basically involves not only 2 GB of storage for images, videos and other files, but also enables you to easily share those files with whomever you want by sharing a URL weblink, and/or generating code so you can embed the content in a webpage (like a Moodle site for you course, for instance). Just like Jing, if you want more storage space and more snazzy options you can pay for them, but I like free, especially to get started.
Click here to check out the Screencast.com introductory video. And then check out my assessment of the video quality after the jump.
Now, please note: the audio quality of the video capture is tinny and a bit crappy. This, I believe, is a function of the audio recording, which happens through my laptop's built-in microphone. This time I'm using an HP Pavilion (a PC platform); for the Jing capture yesterday, I used a Macbook Pro, which has a better built-in mic. Clearly, Camtasia seems to provide a better program for grabbing quality on-screen video, and one technical wrinkle I need to explore is how to capture the audio more effectively (i.e., can these programs grab the audio that's built into the displayed multimedia, or do they have to record what comes out of the computer speakers?).
Overall, for video and audio quality when grabbing video from the computer, I've had better luck with RealPlayer Downloader and Converter (that will be a post for another day... stay tuned!). Jing and Screencast.com appear to be much better for video and image grabs that don't require sound -- and if you want to provide your own voice narration to the image or video you're grabbing, Jing makes it super easy for simple grabs! If you need something more elaborate (like the mixed multimedia I'm using in the podcasts), Camtasia is far superior.
Cool..great option when Camtasia is overkill.
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