Jayne Herdman, one of my Patreon members asked me what do I use to make my YouTube videos. Although this has changed over time I thought I would share this with all of you.
Surprisingly - Adobe Captivate
The first 200 or so videos I produced on YouTube were created with the previous version of Adobe Captivate taking care of recording video demos while I used the most up to date version to demonstrate what I was trying to teach that day. For example, in the video below I was using Adobe Captivate 7 to record Adobe Captivate 8. This was before I had any subscribers by the way and I was just experimenting with the ability to make video tutorials.
I later learned that I could open two instances of the current software and no longer needed to keep Adobe Captivate 7 on my machine.
PVX
Fast forward a few years and a few thousand subscribers later and I was in attendance at the Devlearn conference in Las Vegas. I was talking to Dr. Allen Partridge, Chief eLearning Evangelist for Adobe, and he asked the very same question. I told him how I did my videos at the time and he asked if I had heard of Adobe Presenter Video Express. I hadn't. At his suggestion, I started using this application to record my videos. The first dozen or so videos I made the same way I had always created them before so you really can't see much of a difference. PVX does give you an advantage that Adobe Captivate didn't have at the time and that was the ability to simultaneously record your webcam while recording your desktop. I continued to make my videos just of my desktop display but once I was comfortable enough I started to integrate my webcam view as well. Here is one of the earliest examples where I used PVX to make my YouTube tutorials and also included my webcam.
In this example, I was using the built-in webcam from my laptop so the quality isn't as good as what I'm capable of doing today. I starting buying external webcams and since that time I've gone through about three different models ending with my current webcam that I really recommend, the Logitech BRIO: https://amzn.to/31gFlv6
One complaint about Adobe Presenter Video Express is that most computers don't have the processing power to simultaneously record your desktop at the same time as your webcam. Because of this PVX drops the frame rate down to 15 frames per second. This is why these earlier videos with my webcam look very jittery.
Techsmith Camtasia
I had invested funds into the making of my YouTube videos for a while. Things like my Blue Yeti Microphone, various webcams but other than the Adobe software, which I had been getting from free since around version 8, I hadn't really invested in software. It occurred to me that the shortcomings of PVX were really beginning to show when you would compare my videos with the big-time YouTubers. Certainly, my Logitech webcams were capable of full HD at 30 and even 60 frames per second but the software was holding me back. I decided to jump ship from Adobe PVX and try out Techsmith Camtasia. I knew it was good but I think we can all agree that the quality of videos that I get today compared with a few years ago is tremendously improved. I should point out that while I use Camtasia to record my desktop and ultimately edit between my webcam views and my desktop. I actually use good old Microsoft Windows 10 Camera to record my webcam. I run them both at the same time and then import the video file into Camtasia when I'm finished recording. Camtasia would still drop my webcam quality so recording it in a separate app really makes a difference.
Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that recording your desktop and your webcam is processor intensive. Make sure you have a powerful computer if you want to attempt this. Video editing, in general, requires a lot of compute cycles so I recommend a computer with a six-core processor and a dedicated GPU like I have in my Dell XPS 15: https://amzn.to/2WEAqpw