Looking to create a video demo of software; Tool suggestions?

I used MS free development tool (sorry forgot the name and not on the computer where I did it) and the video was just old and not that good. I'm not good at the whole video thing but would really like to show the experience of my software so people can quick see that it does as advertises without needing to start the install. I am price sensitive so quality, simplicity and captures desktop activity.

Hey any suggestions on where to have some techniques for doing this right?

Cheers

A relatively new service that I haven't seen mentioned in the past discussions on this site is Jing. I've been seeing a few QA teams use these videos while logging interaction-level bugs, and it's been very helpful.

There are both PC and Mac versions. They primarily sell themselves as a screencasting tool.

The few times I've used it, I've found it somewhat easy to use. Took me a few times to get it just right though, but that could be me. You can define exactly which portion of the screen to record, which I found very helpful.

There's a free version (which I used) and a paid version.

The parent company is TechSmith, which - oh look - has another video-capturing tool called Screencast that is also positioned as a screencasting tool. I just discovered this now. The main difference seems to be that Jing saves the video onto your desktop, while Screencast hosts it on their servers. Huh. Interesting way to niche their products.

A good place to start would be past discussions on this site, and then Ian Ozvald's excellent handbook.

You write that you are price sensitive -- fair enough, but keep in mind that without prior experience it will probably take you many hours to create a really good screencast.

If you want to use flash to display on a web page then you could try SCREEN2SWF. I've used this before and although simple it is good for quick demonstrations of your software. I use it to demonstrate new changes that people have requested. They send the request, I make the change, record a demo of it working, post the page on my website and let them see if it is what they were after.

If you want something more sophisticated with nice audio then you will need something that is a little pricier. Recording audio also requires someone who has a 'nice' sounding voice.

If you are after quick and easy then SCREEN2SWF is a good option.

Good luck!

I use Camtasia. It's paid, but it has some cool features to zoom/pan which is very important when you're showing software products (you'll need to zoom in some details of your tool).
It also has some cool transitions to use between screens, which make the demos a little more lively and less dull (which is key to make sure your demos convert your website visitors into prospects).

hope this helps
Michel