After many disappointing efforts to edit my screencasts in iMovie, only to have the software totally munge the video quality during the conversion to one of its native formats, I finally hit upon the right string of Google keywords to find what I needed to know. Simply put, you need to determine your resolution up front, specify that resolution in your screen capture software, and render the video in a codec that works well for this type of footage (I’ve read recommendations for both Apple Animation and Apple Intermediate).
Screencasts, of course, are mandatory for any online software training these days. We use this technology extensively in the Stratepedia Learning Labs to provide short-and-sweet how-tos for our own, web-based software and other apps we use. They’re also easy to incorporate into a Moodle-served course–just upload a video clip (or link to a file on a streaming server) and you’re good to go.
This tutorial provides the low-down. I use Snapz Pro as opposed to iShowU, but the same principles apply. I did a couple of tests this afternoon (one at 640 by 480 and one at 720p) and they both turned out beautifully. So now we get to redo our video clips–on the one hand kind of a bummer since much work has been put into them, but on the other a chance for us to one-up ourselves, even providing clips in high definition. These are going to look beautiful on our site, now that I’ve taken a shine to using pop-up windows in Moodle to display video clips and slide shows.
