Part of the Multimedia and graphics glossary:

A screencast is a digital video recording that captures actions taking place on a computer desktop. Screencasts, which often contain voice-over narration, are useful for demonstrating how to use specific operating systems, software applications or website features. 

Next Steps

Screencast production requires some kind of video-capture software and a microphone. The software, which can be a desktop client or web-based service, captures and synchronizes the video and audio files and compresses the completed movie into a format that can be shared. 

See also: screenshot

Learn More

Screentoaster is a free web-based screencasting service for Windows, Macintosh and Linux computers.

Camtasia Studio, a popular Windows desktop client for screencasting, is known for its built-in editing tools.

Screenflow is a popular screencasting application for Macintosh computers.

Google used screencasts to help customers become familiar with their new user interface for video ads. (See screencast below.)

This was last updated in February 2009
Contributor(s): Erin Kelly
Posted by: Margaret Rouse

Related Terms

Definitions

  • stream recorder (stream ripper)

    - What is stream recorder?A stream recorder (sometimes called a stream ripper) is a program used to save streaming media to a file so that it can be accessed locally. (WhatIs.com)

Glossaries

  • Multimedia and graphics

    - Terms related to multimedia, including graphics, animation and video definitions and words and phrases about images and sound.

  • Internet technologies

    - This WhatIs.com glossary contains terms related to Internet technologies, including definitions about port numbers, standards and protocols and words and phrases about how the Internet works.

  • Video

    - Videos about information technology (IT) topics; includes definitions about producing and editing videos.

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