Screencast of the Week: Foxy Tunes

I'm obsessing about screencasts - I'm learning, creating, making mistakes, and even beginning to like this rabbit I jumped down.  Ten or eleven years ago, when I was learning HTML and Web site creation (in the very early days) and teaching arts organizations, I always started with an exercise called "Critical Browsing."   Basically, looking at lots of web pages and analyzing/evaluating their design, navigation, and other criteria. I learned this from early days in music school (and art school)  -- you listened to music or viewed art and analyzed what you were seeing or hearing.  Then, you could apply what you learned to your own creations.

I need to do the same for screencasts.  So, I've decided to start a weekly post "Screencast of the Week" using the tag "scotw"

This screencast comes from FoxyTunes. 

Artistic

The screencast is done MTV style - that is it is like a music video - visuals and music - no narration.  Editing is done to the music and works well.

Instructional

There are call-outs to highlight features.  For a less technically savvy user,  I wonder about the lack of over to describe what is being viewed on the screen and the user's understanding of how to use it.  There is a link to the download and the written instructions.

Content

This is a really fun product demo.  Makes me want to download it now! They are using copyrighted music, but give a big disclaimer and plea to support those musicians by buying their music.  So, the screencast is like a promotional video for the musicians.   They also provide a link to Amazon where you can buy the tune.  I'm sure they got permissions to use this music.   

Production

Good use of zoom and pan to zoom in on specific detail of a menu, versus the whole screen. 
They "set the stage" in firefox with getting the different links in tabs and just tabbed back and forth to show the different pages.  They were careful to keep the same window size while recording so you didn't get that annoying shift.

Technical Observations

It is seven minutes long flash movie file produced at 640x480.   They've used a table of contents to divide each section - so it has the appearance of downloading faster. It looks like it was produced in Camtasia, but not sure because it looks like a Mac interface (not sure if the dual boot allows you to use the software in windows and record in MAC).  They also removed the Camtasia flash loading animation with their own.  (I need to learn how to do that sigh...)

What do you think about this screencast? Leave a comment.

Hat tip to Marc Sirkin for sending me the link.   If you find a screencast that you think is really cool and want to share it with me, you can always send it to me via delicious for:kanter or tag with scotw.

Technorati Tag: scotw

Comments

[Steve Sherlock]

Beth, you should consider joining the hitchhiker team. You could post once in a while on the good finds that you do come across in the wonderful world of the internet!

[Tom Cone]

Beth

Nice work on your own screencasts :-)

Nice use of pan n zoom to add life and movement to your presentation.

And the intro / outro video footage.

Best wishes

TomC