Make your own tutorial screencasts!
Always seen those magnificient screencasts (read: digital recording/video of a computer screen output) of people teaching you how to use certain software or even teach you a new programming language?
I’ve always seen those Ruby on Rails screencasts and Subversion screencast and always wondered if it was easy to come up one with myself.
Screencasts really help you to follow step by step, much like an online lecture that’s directly captured from someone’s computer screen so it’s really easy to follow! If only IVLE webcasts can be done this way :/
Today, I’m proud to introduce you a FREE mac software that allows you to do that easily, called IShowU, which is only available on the mac of course 
It has the following noteworthy features:
So Convenient!
Ready preset output quality for your screencasts – low, medium and high. Not to worry for you video quality junkie’s out there – it’s customizable too, allowing you to change the frame rate and quality.
Show them this area only please
IShowU allows you to specify the recording area (you can resize this area and repositon anywhere much like drawing rectangles!) on your screen, so you can focus your screencast on a specific application you’re demoing.
Follow the mouse!
It has an option for following the mouse, so the whole screencast would follow your mouse where ever you go. It even works across spanned screens!
Hear me!
It also allows you to capture audio, albeit from your computer microphone.
The only downside to this screencast making software is that it only allows you to record in Apple codecs, and just a handful of 3rd party ones.
But all the screencasts I’ve come across are done in Apple H.264 codec (read: Quicktime), which has a good compression ratio, so I guess it isn’t that all bad.
Here are some samples of low, medium and high quality I’ve taken on my own, just right click, Save As..:
I’ve probably just outlined the basics of IShowU, I’ve not explored every feature just yet, so keep the comments coming in!
