Today I wanted to follow the instructions on "How to Make a Video Blog and Screencast" to learn to make a quick video blog or screencast. Only one problem - the guide there describes how to do it on a Mac, not on Windows.
Odio describes and demonstrates his basic process:
1 .PhotoBooth to record video, comes standard on any Mac
2. iShowU by ShinyWhiteBox for screencast capture
3. Vimeo (similar to YouTube) for uploading videos. Especially useful is their desktop uploader tool.
Unfortunately, PhotoBooth and iShowU aren't available on Windows. It took me a couple hours of research, but eventually I found a program that does both: Cyberlink Youcam. It's quite a good program, it's minimalistic and stays out of your way, but has enough power. Fast learning curve. Elegant. Auto-saves when you've hit stop, so you're already ready to go.
A Screen Capture with Cyberlink Youcam from Sebastian Marshall on Vimeo.
How long did learning how to do this take me? Probably three to four hours, but two of those hours were researching for a solid Windows-based program that could do screencasts and webcam recording. After I found that, the process itself wasn't very hard. Very excited that I've learned how to do this, it gives me a new medium to communicate with people.