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I need something short, like 1-2 min long video to catch attention of my visitors and highlight the best features of my system. I have an accent myself and would rather outsource the development of the thing anyway. Are there any services out there that do this sort of thing on a budget? My startup generates a big whopping $0 as I'm in beta and everything has bootstrapped so I'm very careful with cash. What is it even called so I can search around freelancer sites? Video demos? Screencasting?

Thanks, sorry for newbie questions

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6 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

If you're clearly not a native English speaker, then doing it yourself isn't good.

These names often come up in startup circles when discussing screencasts (not a personal recommendation, I have not worked with any of them):

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@jasper I usually like British Accents for video presentations, but the voice over from ProCasts is horrible. His words end abruptly and he doesnt speak as clearly "look at the Django sample". Demo girl has a great voice and even better rates! Thank you for this resource, I am sure I will be taking advantage of the links one day soon. – Frank Nov 29 '10 at 3:46
up vote 7 down vote

Igorek, You can do the presentation yourself with Camtasia studio, and then hire a narrator with a better voice to record the sound again.

You can also find very budget friendly guys on VideoHive.com's forum to polish your presentation with a some clean background music (i use audiojungle.com), an intro and maybe some clean transitions.

last year i went through this research and found a few firms but this type of work can be expensive, 5k - 30k (30k was from the firm that does the presentations for google and facebook).

While doing my research i found that most viewers are interested more in the content then the presentation. The key is to make sure your content is what you want to convey, and have a presentation that is professional, but it doesnt have to be avatar.

If its for your Azure product that you need a presentation for, then its likely the folks who view it are looking more for substance than pretty colors, music, and effects.

Write your own script, Record your own screenshots, then hire someone with a nice voice to repeat your words for a professional voice over. Put the slight background music, and maybe a few transitions and you are in business.

Best of luck on your ventures~ :)

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transvideo.com the expensive guys, BUT GREAT WORK – Frank Nov 28 '10 at 4:49
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PS, your site could use the following meta tag:::: <link rel="image_src" href="ww.yoursite.com/facebook/icon.jpg"; />... This will default to the thumbnail you want shown when someone shares your site on facebook. – Frank Nov 28 '10 at 4:53
I second this. Do your demo yourself using TechSmith's Camtasia Studio. Do the voice over and everything. Then ideally, have some one you know who has a good voice just redo the voice part of it. That should be sufficient for doing a product feature demo for now. – Ryan Doom Nov 28 '10 at 16:18
www.screencast-o-matic.com ($12/yr) lets you write a script and then record the voice over. Then record the video while the voice over plays. So... you could write the scrip and let someone record it (we got someone for $9/hr on Elance). Then you do the video portion. FYI, I have no affiliation with any of these other than being satisfied customer. – ClayNichols Nov 30 '11 at 15:15
up vote 2 down vote

Firefox has an addon called CaptureFox that you can use to record your app right from your browser. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/capture-fox/

You could do the video yourself, and just outsource the narration to save on costs.

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up vote 0 down vote

Try Screen Toaster. It doesn't have all the features of Camtasia Studio, but it's free and done entirely through the web browser. It's immediately hosted (rather than needing to upload it like Camtasia) and they give you a code to easily embed into your web site.

It's a single-take screen recorder, so it's not good for long demos. But for 1-2 minute screencasts, it's quick and easy. We've been using it for our short demos, but still use Camtasia for longer demos.

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up vote 0 down vote

This makes sence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_screencasting_software

Personaly I use DemoCreator. It's simpler and cheaper than Camtasia, but it provides many basic editing features that those freeware don't have.

If you have a mac, try ScreenFlow. It's the best.

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up vote 0 down vote

You can try searching for "demo videos" or "screencasts". The tools mentioned to do-it-yourself are good - you can also checkout Jing, which is free. There are also a few companies, like Demo Duck, specializing in building demo videos for startups.

Another cool resource to check out for inspiration is www.startup-videos.com.

Good luck!

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