15 Places to Find Great Screencasts
Screencasts, how-to videos that show only what's happening on the computer screen, have been around since as early as 1994, according to Wikipedia. But in recent years, their popularity as an instructional method has grown and screencasts have become an essential means of teaching on the web (the term "screencast" was actually coined in 2004). Below are some of our favorite places to learn by watching on the web.
The now famous "Creating a weblog in 15 minutes" screencast that introduced the Ruby on Rails framework, helped to put Rails in the spotlight better than anything else in the early days. It has since even been emulated a few times by other frameworks. Here's how to find more great screencasts...
- Peepcode - Peepcode offers a collection of professionally-produced Rails programming screencasts that sell for $9 a piece. These are some of the best reviewed screencasts in the Rails community.
- Railscasts - Ryan Bates, one of the most prolific screencasters in the Rails community, has put out over 100 free screencasts over the past 14 months. He has a great voice, reminiscent of Bob Ross, and a background in video that makes for excellent production values.
- Ruby Plus - Over 75 Rails screencasts since last December? Bala Paranj is trying to give Mr. Bates a run for his money! (Then again, screencasts on both sites are free.)
- Pragmatic Programmer - Coders have long loved the Pragmatic Programmer's line of web dev books, and this month the company added screencasts hosted by well known personalities in the development community.
- ShowMeDo - A collection of screencasts from around the web (including some from sites mentioned on this list) focused on free and open source software. Ruby, Python, and Java have the most tutorials on the site, but there are also screencasts covering graphics and productivity software.
- TechScreencast - Like ShowMeDo, this site aggregates technology screencasts from across the web on programming, web development, database, graphics, security, and other topics.
- DimeCasts.NET - A new site offering .NET screencasts that are under 10 minutes each.
- ScreenCastsOnline - One of the most well-known screencast sites offering tutorials for how to use OS X, Mac software, and the iPhone/iPod. 140+ tutorials for $49 per 6 months -- also available on DVD.
- ScreencastCentral - Over 400 software learning screencasts, as well as over 1000 more aggregated from video sharing sites like YouTube. $7.95/month.
- The Screencast Blog - Screencasts on a wide variety of technical topics. Unfortunately, not updated very often these days.
- Demo Girl - Molly McDonald, aka Demo Girl, has created hundreds of screencasts over the past 2 years, mainly demoing web apps. She also does custom work for anyone looking to have a pro create a screencast for their app. Demo Girl absorbed Screeniac in March.
- Screencasters - Inkscape (an open source Photoshop alternative) screencasts can be had at this site.
- Video Professor - You may have seen their late night infomercials offering screencast DVDs for free. Video Professor sells DVD and online screencasts for popular Windows software.
- Screencast-o-matic - A web app for creating screencasts, this site also has a gallery of screencasts created using their application.
- FreeScreencast.com - Like Screencast-o-matic, this site offers free software for making screencasts and provides public hosting once they're recorded.
We know this list isn't complete, so please share your favorite places to find good screencasts in the comments below. If you want to try your hand at making one, Spread Firefox is holding a screencast contest right now.
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
GitCasts.com (http://www.gitcasts.com/) is great... for git.
Thanks for this compilation! I'm fond of watching a variety of screencasts, not just for the educational content within, but also to be entertained. Some hosts are fantastic. I'll add these to the list:
» http://www.russellbrown.com
» http://www.videocopilot.net
Photoshop and After Effects masters, respectively.
If you're into or curious about the online world of Second Life, there's a lot of screencasts/video tutorials here:
» http://secondlife.com/video
Disclaimer: I made many of them! :)
I am a bit surprised to see "Video Professor" on that list, considering the overwhelming amount of bad reviews from it, specifically from people being charged when they thought they hadn't bought anything. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Professor#Video_Professor_lawsuit
We've been producing sotware training screencasts since 1994, when we created our first title for QuarkXPress, which we demoed at Macworld Jan 1995. Pretty sure we were the first company to do this, and now we have over 70,000 screencasts online and on CD. (10,000 of which are free)
Josh, you should add ThinkRefresh.com to the list. Ryan Townsend's Rails screencast site is a relative newcomer, but he's keeping up-to-date and regularly posting great content. The screencasts have, so far, been more in depth than those on other sites, but it looks like there will be an even wider variety of content soon.
I recently came across Gitcasts.com too. The mic setup needs a little tweaking, but I've found it useful regardless of the sound quality.
Google has great screencasts as well. For example if you'd like to review a new Google API, you're confronted by a lot of "text" that you must go through in order to have an idea of what the API can be used for. Many of these Google sites now have screencasts that save a great deal of time. They won't fully replace hands on experience but they act as "quick start" guides.
http://webshopinabox.peter-tashjian.com/WebShopInABox.htm
My favorite places are:
1) dnrTV!
http://www.dnrtv.com/
2) Microsoft Events and Webcasts
http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/calendar/monthview.aspx
3) SQL Server 2008 Jump Start
http://sqlserver2008jumpstart.microsofttraining.com/content/info.asp?CcpSubsiteID=69&infoid=27
4) MSDN Channel9 screencasts
http://channel9.msdn.com/showforum.aspx?forumid=38
5) Microsoft MSDN "How Do I?" Videos
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb629407.aspx
6) Silverlight: Videos
http://silverlight.net/learn/videocat.aspx?cat=2
7) Tekzilla - Revision 3
http://revision3.com/tekzilla/
8) Lynda.com Free Sample Training
http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/free.asp
--
Luciano Evaristo Guerche (Gorše)
Taboão da Serra, SP, Brazil
TechTutor.TV (http://www.techtutor.tv/) has over 400 original screencasts for tutorials on all sorts of software like photoshop, illustrator, flash, excel, access and so on. Great thing is they are all free!
"The infamous "Creating a weblog in 15 minutes" -- How was that infamous? I thought it was pretty good.
@alex: You're right! That was completely the wrong word on my part. I meant "now famous" ... not sure what made me type "infamous." Thanks for pointing that out, though. I've updated the post. :)
Here are some Blender screencasts I've been putting together
for my seventh grade students. (It's a magnet technology program.)
http://linuxclassroom.com
Thanks, great post! I have to say the best quality screencasts by far are on the Apple site, they've quietly posted hundreds of how-to videos of their software...
http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/
Great post. The screencast and tutorial market is booming these days. You may also want to add PHPVideoTutorials and KillerSites if you are interested in learning web development in short, bite sized chunks. Both of these sites offer free and paid screencasts, but currently most are free. I would also like to second the vote for ShowMeDo if you are interested in free tutorials on open source stuff.
If you are going to mention paid sites, here are a few more that I like. CBTNuggets, VTC, LearnVisualStudio.Net and DigitalTutors as well. Cheers!
(I'm in no way associated with any of these sites).
I just found out about Common Craft by the LeFever tandem and it blew me away in its simplicity.
See a sample here:Twitter in Plain English
Best.
alain
Mor.ph
For the designers / CSS people out there, I do screencasts as well:
http://css-tricks.com/videos/
Inkscape is an Illustrator alternative, not Photoshop.
Handy list, though. Thanks for pointing me to some new sites.
I co-produce a series of free Ruby on Rails screencasts that may be of interest. See LearningRails.com. Unlike the excellent Railscasts and Screencasts, which take individual topics in isolation, our series of screencasts starts at the beginning and builds a Rails application step-by-step over the course of a dozen screencasts.
Ryan Bates is my inspiration behind the rubyplus.org site. Rubyplus site is a tool that I use to share my passion for programming with other developers. It's mission is to ease the pain and introduce the joy of programming in Ruby to other developers. I have learned a lot from his screencasts and I am a big railscasts fan. I have met him personally at Railsconf 2008.
John,
How about including http://www.utipu.com/app in the list.
It also provides great free screencast recorder and a free screencast hosting site with a fast growing content.
Thanks.
I'd recommend Best Tech Videos site - large collection of really good quality screencasts on many topics - http://www.bestechvideos.com/