Tools for recording and editing presentational videos

There are many powerful tools you can use for creating a presentational video as a creative assignment, capstone project, or when delivering research findings. These tools vary widely in terms of functionality, complexity, cost, and cross-platform availability (i.e., whether it exists on PC and/or Mac), so knowing what you hope to achieve in your video can help you decide what tools to employ.

Before deciding on your production and editing tools, though, you'll actually want to do a bit of brainstorming to decide how you want the video to look and feel (i.e., what the video's structural elements will consist of). Once you have a good understanding of the end-result that you're hoping to produce, you can then target the recording and editing programs to match your desired outcome.

Here are some initial questions you may want to consider when thinking about the potential components of your video:

Now that you've made some decisions from these questions, let's take a look at some of the options for recording your presentation, along with some key features and pros and cons.

Record & Capture

Zoom

For many of us, Zoom is a platform we are all pretty comfortable with by now, and recording yourself in Zoom is fairly easy to do. As well, if you are sharing your screen during your presentation, and want to capture a discreet, full-screen recording of whatever you are sharing, Zoom provides that functionality as well. Here is a link to a resource that shows you how you set up your Zoom recording preferences to optimize your settings for your specific needs: http://resources.learninglab.xyz/simple/people/katie-g/optimizing-zoom-recordings

Panopto

If you are producing a presentational video that incorporates Keynote or Powerpoint, and you're in a class that uses Canvas as its course site, then Panopto could be a wonderful option for you.

iPhone/Smartphone

Even if you don't know how to capture yourself in any other manner, chances are that you're familiar with recording video on your smartphone!

Screen capture software

Powerpoint & Keynote

If you are using Powerpoint or Keynote to create slides for your presentational video, you can also use these programs to record a narration to your slides as you scroll through them, and then export a video of the combination of your visuals and audio narration

Adobe Spark

Adobe