Maximizing the quality of screencasts

Oct 31, 2012

Tim Kraft
By Tim Kraft

Against my suggestion, the client wants a walk-through of many SharePoint screens to teach users how to access various features. The screens have rather dense text with many lists and drop downs.

I use Screenr to capture the screens, but the resolution in the published screens is not very good. I am careful to preserve the aspect ratio, but do need to reduce the overall dimensions of the videos after inserting them.

The inserted videos are shown edge-to-edge on the slide.

I've searched for tips and found none, and figure it is what it is ... but I thought I would ask you smart, wonderful people if you have any suggestions,

Tim

2 Replies
Christine Hendrickson
over 11 years ago10/31/12 at 11:17 am (UTC)

Hi Tim! Welcome to E-Learning Heroes!

First, are you inserting the Screenr video from your machine? If not, it may be compromising the quality of the video. If you'd like information on downloading a Screenr video to insert into your project, check out this article.

I know that you've already worked with the aspect ratio of the video, but since the resolution sounds pretty large you may want to try using a calculator. 

Articulate Presenter '09 supports the default On-screen Show (4:3) slide dimensions in PowerPoint, which equates to 720 pixels wide by 540 pixels high.  When creating images and videos for your presentations, you will usually want to maintain this 4:3 aspect ratio to properly fit these slide dimensions in PowerPoint.

You can use this Aspect Ratio Calculator to determine the appropriate dimensions for your images and videos when you want to develop them at a higher resolution than 720 x 540 and still maintain the 4:3 aspect ratio of your PowerPoint slides.

Here is a video screencast of this process.

These are just some suggestions that may help improve the quality of your Screenr recordings. 

Let me know if this helps!

Have a great day,

Christine

Tim Kraft
over 11 years ago10/31/12 at 2:00 pm (UTC)

As usual, someone quickly replied to my inquiry. That kind of support is one of the reasons I recommend Articulate to clients without reservation.

Unfortunately, you suggested things I've already tried. I even found the same aspect ratio calculator.

This was a case of trying to make a silk purse out of sow's ear, but thanks for the fast reply.

Tim

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