Producing screencasts (for Moodle or WordPress) on Mac is done (according to my readings) often using established tools like Camtasia. After looking at the price tags I decided to look for something better and cheaper.
There are three main requirements:
- Record my screen together with my webcam. Output preferably MP4.
- Do some (pretty simple) edits like cutting. No more effects necessary.
- Present with some annotations like texts, direct attention.
With the latest H5P plugins for Moodle step three can be done very nicely and easily (and free). Only requirement: MP4 and WEBM format video files. So the only thing you need is a tool to make recordings – no sophisticated editor is needed. If you are looking for a completely free method you could use (OS X system) quicktime player and ffmpeg for conversion (which works even in batch mode but is a little bit slow!).
As a matter of fact I am using AceThinker Screengrabber Pro which does two tasks excellently: it records to MP4 with a freely sizeable webcam along and it enables conversion to webm-format. Both formats are needed for H5P interactive video: this can be edited within Moodle without any additional software giving possibilities not easily found in standard video editors.
Take this example (just a quick try – no sophistication):
[…] needs of this group of students — and is recorded (in case of a screencast just by using e.g. BigBlueButton without any additional effort; a simple mobile phone could be enough for a teachers […]