Ghost Letters 幽霊文字

Making Programming Screencasts

Lessons Learned While Producing my First Screencasts

This article contains my personal notes, about things I learned, while doing my first screencast series on youtube. My initial goal was to practice my skill of presenting a problem and showcase a solution. Both parts should be somewhat ‘entertaining’ (given that one is into the very special topic of programming) and also be educational.

Notice, I produced two playlists on the very same topic. The second one is already an iteration, or a version 2 release. You find the playlists on youtube version 2 here and version 1 here.

a glass tunnel

The IDE/Editor

The IDE is the crucial part in my screencasts, because I spent most of the time there writing and talking about code. I learned the following things:

I use the ZEN mode in IntelliJ which provides fullscreen and most hiding automatically.

Equipment

That’s all for equipment

Recording Software

Post Processing Software

Youtube

Supporting Resources

Try to provide links to resources you used or created for/during the video, for instance a link to:

I might update this post in the future (or write a follow up) as I continue to do videos and learn more. A general thing I learned, that did not fit in any category so far, is to continuously streamline the video content. Meaning: it is totally fine to start with a very rough version. It is easier to improve a rough version than it is to plan a smooth one. Then shovel away all the distractions till it feels like a smooth ride from problem to solution. :)