Let’s say that one of your friends turns to you for helping to set a program, there are many ways you can choose to help him. Such as, explain the operation steps over the phone, send an e-mail explaining how to set the parameters, travel to his place and show him what to do, or you can send him a short screencast as the setting guide…
Obviously, the last way is the most logical way to get the problem done.

Just as a screenshot is a picture of the computer screen, a screencast, also known as a video screen capture, is essentially a recording of computer screen and sometimes containing audio narration. It is a powerful tool to demonstrate how to use a program, or to illustrate some complicated procedures that are hard to explain in textual description and static images.

But, how to make an effective screencast?

Firstly, download a record tool. PCHand Screen Recorder could be a good option.

Secondly, set the recording parameters.

Thirdly, start recording the screencast. While recording, you can add an audio narration for your screencast.

At last, when completed, save the screencast as your wish.

Want to make your computer runs more smoothly in recording, here are some tips:

1) Disable your computer’s hardware acceleration.

2) Close the unneeded programs.

If you want a faster solution to a problem, if you want to explain to this kind of issue to your friends more accurate, I think a screencast will be your best choice!

Sometimes, we need to record full screen or a part of a screen when we wanna explain something clearly. This post is dedicated to a free way to record screen – ScreenToaster.

ScreenToaster is operated by Iteria, SARL with offices in the heart of Paris, France. They are a small team of high-skilled web engineers, developing state-of-the-art web 2.0 services for Internet users. They have already raised a first round of capital to actively support ScreenToaster. Look forward to see the on-going development of ScreenToaster.

With ScreenToaster you can:

1) Register & use it anywhere, anytime
No download. And it’s compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Linux.

2) Capture videos of onscreen action in one click
Record screencasts, tutorials, demos, training, lectures and more.

3) Share stream videos online in Flash
Embed them on blogs and WebPages or send them by email.

Tip:

In the previous article I said I don’t really like web-based screen recorders, because they limit your recording time plus they worked slower for me giving worse quality. But it is free and could help you complete some recording.