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Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#31

Post by smountcastle »

zhyder wrote: post #14
apinstein wrote: post #5

We use Screenflow. Mac-only, but quite awesome: http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/overview.htm Has a/b editing, records lots of things as separate tracks and has a special-purpose video editing interface just for screencasts. Editing interface is a little quirky to get used to but the results are great.

Seconded. Definitely the best option if using a Mac. Make sure you get a decent mic: since you'll still be grabbing your voice from the old-fashioned analog world.

Care to recommend a good USB mic?

Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#32

Post by DarkShikari »

martian wrote: post #13

Aside from all the technology, it's crucial to get a solid, professional voice-over that tells a clear story about your product. My personal experience has been that even the best video production can be quickly tarnished by a voice-over that is casual, meandering, or inconsistent. For our demo video, we first sketched out what points we wanted to make in the video, wrote a draft script, then recorded nearly an hour…

Seconding this. Use x264 (or an application that uses it, like ffmpeg) and make yourself an mp4 video that plays in Flash. Having low quality for a product demonstration video simply isn't tolerable--and yet it's amazing how much people tolerate awful quality internet video despite the fact that one doesn't actually need a lot of bandwidth to achieve reasonable quality. JW Player is of course a great tool, and takes literally 30 seconds to set up.

My standard toolchain is ( x264 -> rawvideo + faac or NeroAACEnc -> aac audio ) -> mp4box -> mp4 file. For those who are commandline-phobic, there are many GUIs to streamline the process; for example, MeGUI can produce Flash-compatible H.264 video files with x264.

Make sure you're using the latest versions of the encoders as well, especially if you're trying to get away with a much more fancy video than the one in the parent--it's better quality and compression for free.

Also remember that Flash supports H.264 all the way up to High Profile, so there's no reason not to use all the features.

(aside: above video uses a ~2007 version of the encoder, according to my detection tool)

Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#34

Post by ddemchuk »

IanOzsvald wrote: post #21

+1 for CamTasia (Windows) and ScreenFlow (Mac), also RecordMyDesktop (Linux). CamStudio (free Win) ok. Online solutions (screencastomatic, screentoaster, jing) also good. I'm a professional screencaster ( http://procasts.co.uk ) - if you want to crib examples, see my Examples page, they all reflect live use of screencasts that make users happier, convert more visitors, reduce support costs etc. Definitely get a good…

That was a really great reply, thank you

Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#35

Post by jamesbritt »

dhimes wrote: post #28

If you find the other recommendations here a bit more than you were looking for, have a look at Wink: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Wink is quite cool, and I especially like how easy it is to edit, cut-n-paste, and work with the images.

Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#36

Post by callmeed »

We're producing some for our online image sales app and websites. You can see a few recent ones here:

http://www.nextproof.com/holidays/

I use ScreenFlow and it's incredible. Very easy to record and create zooms/transitions.

For technical ones, I record the audio myself. I have an AKG 3000 studio microphone that goes into an ART TubeMP pre-amp. The pre-amp then goes to my MacBook Pro. I've found that it's better to record the audio after the video.

We were also lucky to find a great voice-over person on Craigslist. Usually, we just send him the video file and a rough script with a few time markers for guidance. He does a GREAT job and is not very expensive (especially compared to how many takes I require). I would definitely recommend going this route if you can.

Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#37

Post by sanj »

smountcastle wrote: post #31
zhyder wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded. Definitely the best option if using a Mac. Make sure you get a decent mic: since you'll still be grabbing your voice from the old-fashioned analog world.

Care to recommend a good USB mic?

Snowball: http://namm.harmony-central.com/WNAMM05/Content/Blue/PR/Snow...

and Snowflake: http://www.bluemic.com/products/snowflake

I own the former. Kinda wished I owned the latter.

Re: Ask HN: How do you produce product demo videos?

#39

Post by alexkay »

dhimes wrote: post #28

If you find the other recommendations here a bit more than you were looking for, have a look at Wink: http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Wink is great! The only downside is that it cannot produce mp4 video files. To do that, you can use Jing Pro ($15) to capture the Wink screencast playing.
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