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#205
Katlin Humrickhouse
Participant

Screencasting is becoming a pretty big thing. Think about it – how many tutorials or walkthroughs can you find on YouTube right now? The answer is nearly and infinite amount. This had become so popular that even new gaming systems have a sort of screencast program built in to live stream or record and share gameplay. Screencasting can be used for a number of things in the digital humanities. You could use it to show your work and gain support. In fact, there is even a page on digitalhumanities.org dedicated to screencasting. As I explained in class, someone doing a history of gaming (or programming or social networks) could use screencasting to show gameplay (or a walkthrough of a program or site). There are a number of screencasting tools out there.

The one I mentioned in class was called CaptureFox. This tool is a free plug in for Firefox. It is easy to use and, if you do get lost, you can find support and help quite easily in the format of FAQ. However, it is only compatible with FireFox and Windows. In fact, it is only compatible with older versions of FireFox. So – if you are like me and update regularly – you may find it difficult to get CaptureFox working. It seems to have lost grounding and has been left at an old version since 2011. Fortunately, there are many other screencasting tools out there.

ScreenFlow is a Mac-only screencasting program. ScreenFlow allows much more editing than CaptureFox. It is easy and, like CaptureFox, you can get support. However, you can get support that is up to date! ScreenFlow is a paid service – $99. It could be worth it if you screencast regularly, but for a one time use, it probably isn’t worth it.

If you’re not into installing and paying for something to screencast, there is a web-based, free screencasting tool known as ScreenToaster. It is easy to use, FREE, and quick. It also supports picture in picture screencasts – so you can use your webcam and record yourself talking about the main screen! However, there aren’t any advanced editing settings and your browser has to support Java. ScreenToaster is definitely the most exciting tool that I’ve come across. This sounds great, right? Too good to be true? Well, it is. Because since 2012, ScreenToaster has been down.