There’s been a huge growth in online education in recent years covering almost everything imaginable from sailing navigation courses to making YouTube videos. One of the key selling points to your education program is that it needs to be slick and user friendly. This is why when running an online education course you should be doing good screen videos to show the skills and techniques you are teaching in a way that the viewer gets immediately.
Here we will focus on Mac machines as these are some of the best platforms for graphics and simulations.
A bad screen recording!
A poor screen recording will often come from poor preparation. You will be stumbling over your words, your phone dinging throughout the audio and perhaps the cat jumping on your desk to ‘help you with your work’ as you cuss at it to get out of the way! This is why proper preparation is key to a good online screen recording.
Top tips for preparing a good screen video on a Mac
You should first consider what app to use to record video on a Mac – there are a variety of them out there from the onboard Mac Quicktime system to Movavi Screen Recorder Studio app that you may buy online.
When you have the app, play with it for a good hour or so so you know what you are doing. What’s the record button? What format looks best? Even try editing some stages together for a seamless presentation.
When you have considered and perhaps bought the new app, it is time to look at what you need to do:
- What is the process you are describing?
- What is the simplest way to do it?
You should then get your script ready. It may help to record it separately in one minute, or single stage units – you can edit these together.
You should then practice each stage until you get the script into your head and can recite the script without reading. Though difficult at first, try to put the right inflection into your voice to emphasize as and when you would when speaking naturally. You could always get a bland, emotionless computer voice to do it but that wouldn’t exactly impress your audience!
Chuck the cat out, silence the phone…
When it comes to your live recording you need absolute peace and quiet. Kids in bed? Cat outside and unable to access your space? Phone off? Neighbors finished their nightly loud domestic argument? Boy racers stopped revving their engines? Now’s the time to do your recording!
Don’t be afraid to re-do a piece time and again until you get it absolutely right – this is why breaking it down into short recording sections is often very good so you can stitch them together. Video editing can be very simple and intuitive, though remember to avoid things like like stuttering ‘jump cuts’ – think how to insert silences and breaks into the process to manage those short segments.
When recording video on a Mac these processes, if thought through ahead of time, could really make a slick and decent presentation first time.
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