Review: Screen Recording Software

Narrator  0:00  

You’re listening to the All systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way. With your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.

Chris Davis  0:32  

Welcome to the our systems go podcast. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder and chief automation officer at automation bridge the place online for you to learn about Small Business Marketing and Sales Automation, where we focus on turning digital marketing professionals in automation service providers. And if you would like to get more out of your existing profitable digital marketing efforts, I want you to go to automation bridge, comm Ford slash ASP, and determine the next steps on how you can start to leverage the power of automation to scale what’s already working. And in this episode, what I want to discuss is the importance, power and utility of screen recording software. For my longtime listeners, I promised you all at the top of this year to do more podcasts on reviewing software. So this is the first of that variety. And what I want to do is really break down the three things that I mentioned in terms of screen recording software, and make sure that you’re just aware of what the software is whether it’s taking a quick screenshot to share and collaborate or video recording of your screen. This software. For me, this type of software for me has become indispensable in my business. So it needs to be on your radar. And you also need to know the options and alternatives that you have. Okay, so if you’re new to the podcast, do me a favor, make sure you listen to this episode in its entirety. At the end, I will issue a official invitation for you to join and follow the podcast. I’m working on the language here because Apple just had an update that subscriptions are now paid. So follow is the right terminology. Let me say this Connect, connect with us and make sure that you are getting the notifications, I’ll send that invitation at the bottom of this at the bottom of this episode. And if you are a longtime listener, and you have not joined the podcast, okay, you can do so in Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, you can even subscribe on YouTube. To make sure that you don’t miss an episode, we release them every Thursday. So make sure you’ve joined the family of all system go podcast listeners. And while you’re at it, your five star rating and review would be greatly appreciated. If for any reason. You’re having troubles figuring out where to leave a review how to leave a review on your platform, we’ve got you covered, you can go to automation bridge, comm forward slash review. And we will take care of the posting, you can put your review there and we can get it to the appropriate platform for you. Alright, so let me start off with this.

Chris Davis  3:29  

One, let me tell you what screen capturing software is and where my relationship began with it. screen capturing software is pretty self explanatory. It’s software used to either take a picture or video of a window, a tab or your entire desktop screen. Okay. And in this for me, I was exposed to it. I was aware of it before and I was doing it for like courses or things of that nature. And this is, you know, back when screen recording wasn’t really big. And when I started working at Lead pages, we were using a tool called Jing I think it was by techsmith. And and what it was is you could grab a screenshot and it would produce a URL. And you could then instead of like uploading the screenshot to an email or an it as an attachment or anything like that, you could just simply send the URL to someone and they can easily view it. You know, you take it to the next level and you can annotate, start drawing circles and highlighting and blurring out certain things. And you have just entered into a new realm of collaboration. So by default, if you’re running a Mac or a PC, you can capture your screen I think on PC it’s called the snipping tool on Mac is just a shortcut. I think it’s shift command three or shift command four You can grab, you can take a picture of what’s on your screen. But the next question is, how do you share that easily? How do you share that in a way that is collaborative? Well, that’s where screen capturing software comes into, into play. And that’s why, and that’s how it increases your productivity by enhancing the efficiency of your collaboration. Alright, so I did write a marketing automation report on this. So for those of you who want to kind of follow along, and maybe read is, is your primary means and maybe you don’t want to read the transcript, you just want to kind of go see, click around and view some links, we’ll have the link to the marketing automation report, issue number 46, in the show notes, but when when it comes down to it, there are two tools that I use. And there are a variety of options now. And I took the LinkedIn. Before I recorded this, I took the LinkedIn and I just asked, I said, Hey, what do you all use? And at the time, one of the solutions, I was I was experiencing some frustration with so I just wanted to go and see, what was everybody else using? I got a handful of recommendations. And I said, Wow, this is gold. So let me go ahead and compile this into something that’s easily accessible, and consumable. For my listeners. You know, I’m always thinking of you also. Let me let me start here. Again, I started with jing jing is no longer available, I believe they’ve made no transition sunsetted that software, but TechSmith has has another software that does something very similar. And Jing would let you grab a screenshot but annotating that screenshot was was was not common, you had to use a tool called I think it was skitch skitch. And it was, I think, later purchased by Evernote or something like that. But that software has been sunset as well. Well, what Skitch allows you to do is to take that screenshot and add text arrows and, you know, annotation to it. So once Skitch was out the way and you no longer have, Jing, it was I was kind of left like. Wow, what’s the next solution? Now, to be fair, this kind of was convenient for me, because I was transitioning away from lead pages, and going into Active Campaign at the time. And that transitional period, it wasn’t a huge need for me to collaborate, I kinda, you know, pretty much figured everything out, or I didn’t have those needs. So I start at Active Campaign, and they introduced me to another tool. Okay, so I’m going to talk about that tool in a minute. But I just kind of want to give you all a quick understanding of how I came into the light of and the need and the reliance on screen recording software. So I’m gonna do this in the order of history, not in the order that I wrote about it in my marketing automation report, or even the order of importance. Okay, so starting with Jing, which I believe is now snag it, I do think it’s snag it. There’s another there’s another tool that looks very similar to snag It is called screencast o Matic but I believe snag it was what TechSmith intended Jing to be. And what snag it does, is it allows you I mean, it’s it’s pretty full fledged it allows you to take to capture your screen and annotate the images, but it also includes a video editor. Okay, so here’s what you need to know, anytime. Some was a platform provides both, you’re thinking of Alright, are you charging me for bandwidth? Where’s the storage? And how do I create and how are the links created? Because the The purpose of this type of software is to make it easy, so that when you do something, you just a couple clicks away, and then boom, you’ve got a URL that you can quickly share. So snag it I believe is is the the next version of Jing. However, I don’t use it. I don’t use it. And it was brought back up when I asked on a on LinkedIn. And I like let me let me just say I like that. It’s probably the most robust software available in terms of it has the most features right? You can annotate both images and videos and the video editing capabilities are are really nice. But I have to say it feels you all know how apps have been upgraded for look and feel. This nugget wasn’t I don’t want to be surface You know, in judgmental, it’s like, oh, Chris get over. But they, their interface gave a very windows 2000 ish feel, to me, especially when you compare it to the standards of the UX UI of modern software and technology that you’re used to using. That was one. And then I didn’t like the installation process from my, for me on a Mac, it was very clunky, clunky, I mean, usually when you install software, it’s just as easy as dragging it over into your, into your Applications folder, running it for the first time. And maybe you want to set if you want it in your dock or your menu bar, and then you’re good snag it was very strange, how they did it. And then the platform, the name of the software, once it was installed was just called record. And it was like, Okay, I you know, when I’m looking for the software, I’m looking for snag it or the name or anything like that, but it was just called record. And then the interface, of course, I was just like,

Chris Davis  11:05  

okay, you work, you work, it does work, but I don’t like how it worked. Okay, so snag it was not even on my radar, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t on my radar. But if I tie it into my experience with Jing that would have been my natural progression is to move to snag it. But instead, when I was at Active Campaign, they introduced me to a tool called Cloud App. Now cloud app is one of the the technologies that I use to this day, okay, and what caught me about cloud app was when I was using Jing, and you will take a screenshot, it would download it to your server. So you would just tell it, which which website to go to, it will download it to your server and just generate the link. Well, I was used to that. And in all of the videos and everything was on my, my server, I can control it. And if I needed to access the raw files, it was easily there. So when cloud cloud app comes along, and I’m exposed to that Active Campaign, and people are using it, I’m like, wow, this is the same as Jing, right? I was like, wow, this is this is cool. This is the same as Jing, and it had a URL, but I was a little put off that it was uploading it to another server that was not mine. So there was a little bit of hesitation for me. But since I’m using a company computer is, Hey, you guys are stuff. So I did it didn’t matter to me much. But the more I used it, the more I realized, Hey, this is really good software. So I use the one cloud app was called get cloud app, it may still be get cloud at Cloud App Com. But at that time, they didn’t have annotations, they didn’t have any of that it was literally for me a gene replacement, he could capture your screen and share it quickly and easily. So as that platform has, has evolved, now, I think that they’ve got the best screen capturing software in terms of images. Because right after you capture, they now have an editor where you can highlight things, you can blur things out, you can draw arrows, add text, and let me tell you this. If you’re not using annotated screenshots, and your collaboration, you’re working too hard. I mean, especially in today’s digital age, where everything is on a website on a web page in a doc. I mean, I can’t count how many screenshots I send to my team. And my students, I can’t count how many times I do that a week, I have truly lost count, you know, and for the price of a lot of this software, it’s very inexpensive. It’s like $100 a year for this type of functionality. I mean, it’s one of the tools that you take it away and I feel crippled in my business. I really do. Right, so one of the one of the bonuses though, before before, you know that I never thought about when I was using Jing is gifs. So gif’s gifs, just whatever you want to call them. And cloudapp allowed you to make gifs as well. So now it’s just like, wow, this software can really do a lot. And then over time, you know, they eventually added video recording. Now, let me say this.

Chris Davis  14:29  

They have video recording, but I don’t use it often. And the reason being is because the collaboration on their video recording isn’t as good. Okay, so this is this is gonna sound really strange, but it’ll make sense when I tell you my video recording solution. So for cloud app, you can share your videos, but a lot of times when you’re sharing videos, people have questions. And here’s what’s interesting is that When I share my images, most of the time, wherever I share is where the questions take place. For instance, if I share an image on Slack, we’re commenting under that thread about that image. If I share with them, my private community, we’re commenting under that thread about that image. However, if you share a video, I would like the I expect the collaboration to happen under the actual video, not under the thread in which it’s placed. Maybe it’s just me, I think I’d understand why in a minute because of what I’m using for video. So in that sense, cloud app just falls short. Because they are process of sharing. and collaborating on video is not as good as the solution that I use. Now, let me say this, if you want a one, one place to go solution, just say, Hey, I just want one app that does screenshots and screen recording, cloud app is the app for you, I can say that confidently, I don’t have an affiliate link. They’re not paying me to say any of that. But just if that is your need, if you’re just getting new to the you’re new to the game, you just want to get started. Cloud App is hands down the best way to go. Now, it’s the interface at times can be a little clunky, but they’re improving it, you know how you rename files, and sometimes, especially with videos, our rename it, then save it and then realize that it hasn’t saved. So you know, no software is perfect. But it’s got annotation, custom domain, so you can buy, you know, your domain, one of the domains I have is a m.br, d g, I think for automation, bridge, short.cc. And all of my URLs are just automatically created with that domain. And of course, gif creation. Now.

Chris Davis  17:00  

If If I were to really ask for an improvement, it would all be around the unit user interface and collaboration, if they if they get that together. I would be willing to just go all in with Cloud. Okay. So with that being said, some of you may be asking, Well, Chris, it sounds so good. Why are you not using it? The reason why I’m not using it is because Wow, cloud app was just a image taking is a screen, picture image capture software. I needed video, right? That’s where loom came into play. Okay, so I kind of went in reverse it this podcast, but that’s where loom came into play. Now loom was my first screen capturing software of the variety that would easily create a shareable link. Okay. And when I started to use it, it was just a Google Chrome plugin. And since then, loom has really grown, it has really grown. It’s a standalone app now. And they’ve got all of these features. And you can embed looms now. And some of you may be it may have seen just scrolling through your Facebook feed or maybe a feed on LinkedIn, someone recording a video using loom and just posting it for their ad collateral or just the, you know, value valuable content on social media. But what I like about loom is that with a click of a button, you can decide to say, hey, I want to record this tab, this area on my screen on my home screen, and hit record, you’re going you know, recording whatever’s on your desktop, you hit stop, it immediately takes you to a page where you can easily rename the file and click a link, click a button that that saves the link and you can easily share it. I mean, the process is so streamlined, and where they really go to the next level for me, is the collaboration right? So the comment area under every video has become like invaluable to me in the beginning. It was just recording videos and sharing them now. People can ask comments in the end a timestamp. You know what, what time in the video, someone has asked a comment you can have responses. So give a thumbs up laughing emoji you know, they’ve got a variety of emojis that you can just click at the appropriate time. So as a creator of this video, you can see where the question where people have questions and what they really like about it, which just speeds up collaboration. Because if I’m, let’s say I’m reviewing a landing page, and I’m a five fired up loom, and I’m just walking through and say, Hey, we might need to change this headline and hey, what were you thinking here with this with this call to action? Now, right when I say what were you thinking here, they can hit comment, and that comment is attached to that timestamp. So I know exactly what they were listening to. That that was responsible for that response. Right? So that type of experience has spoiled me. Hence why when I look at cloudapp, for collaboration on video captured files, it’s not even close. Not even close. So loom I love the fact that they have a chrome plug in it’s downloadable software. And now they even have mobile apps, which which work really well, I recorded a video on my Android phone, right? Like I put up an ad on my Android phone and just recording was like, Hey, guys, I don’t think this is displaying right? Look at how it’s showing in my in my video feed, and was able to share it all from my phone. This is you could do it on the iPad as well. So you know that along with the comments and shareability is top notch, the one thing I have to say, you know this type of software, I think any type of software that you have to get right the first time any errors in that process are really magnified. And looms reliability as they have been scaling has left a lot to be desired. I can’t count the amount of times where I’m recording a video, maybe like up to five minutes. And then afterwards, I click the button to finish it up. And it just gets stuck uploading. It is one of the most debilitating experiences ever. Because not only are you thinking I’ve got to record that again. The reality is, I can’t remember everything that I said.

Chris Davis  21:30  

Right. And sometimes just the thought of having to re record something is so frustrating that if it happens more than once or twice, you really start contemplating leaving. And that’s what I did. I mean, I was on the verge of just saying you know what loom I love you but I’m done. I need something that’s reliable to cloud apps defense, they’ve never done that to me. Granted, I don’t use it anywhere near as much as long. But I’ve never had a stuck upload. I’ve never had a last upload. And I’ve had at least 10 with loom in the last two to three years, at least 10. And that may seem small, but you know, when when when they hit you, when it really counts, it really hurts. It’s just like, man, I really needed that video to record. Right. So that is my review. Now there’s a few other software’s that I like to mention. I did I talked about screencast o Matic screencast. O Matic is an option as well, very similar, it looks to be really similar to snag it. And it feels like they may be targeting the same audience, which may be you know, a little more enterprise and you know, more established companies because they don’t have that startup feel they don’t have that modern looking interface. So I may be totally off. And they may just not care about how they look. But that’s my assessment there. But there are a couple surprising solutions in here. And one was soap box. Now gentlemen, if I remembered his name, I should have looked it up before I recorded this but a gentleman mentioned soap box by Wistia. And it was really good software. If you are a Wistia user, you have to be using soapbox, because what it does is as long as you’re a Wistia, you’ve got to pay Wistia account. It will you can record just like you know, click a button from your browser and say, Hey, record what’s on my screen. And it’ll automatically upload to Wistia. So this is great for if you’re making a course you’re recording your screen, for course, the videos upload automatically to Wistia. You could just log in grab the embed code and put them in your you know, your platform of choice. And just as I was getting excited, because I’m not a Wistia user, everybody, I’m a Vimeo user. And I was like, Man, I wish Vimeo has something like this. And to my surprise, Vimeo has Vimeo record. And I’m like, how do I as a longtime user not even know about this? How did you guys not email How did you not make this known and Vimeo record works very similarly, you can download the Chrome extension, select video, start recording your browser, I believe you can even record your desktop and it will automatically upload to your Vimeo account. So as with most tools, you’re probably going to be using more than just one. But these are some solid. Like these are some solid options right now. Which is really exciting because, again, you rewind just five years ago this this landscape didn’t even really exist. So to see the screen capturing process become a lot more easier for us. As digital marketers and an online business owners. It’s making it that much easier to not have to rely on email and text Only to collaborate in a way that that produces an output with high efficiency, that’s high quality. Okay, so I hope that helps you all, if you didn’t know what screen recording software is, I hope it put it on your radar and let you know where to start. If you’re for anybody just getting started, like, you know what, that was a lot. I don’t have all those considerations, Chris said, but I would like to start capturing images. Start with cloud app. You can’t cloud app and loom You can’t miss it with those with those combos, I think you can get a lot out of both for the for free.

Chris Davis  25:36  

But as your needs grow, you may see you know that your something else is a better fit for you. And all of the everything that I mentioned is linked in it. We’ll have it linked in the show notes as well as the marketing automation reports. Has it has it all linked as well. All right, so So who do you really need to share this with I’m gonna make this one easy for you, you need to share with your team, anybody that you collaborate with, I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve sent a loom with me talking over a document that I’m sharing a proposal or whatever. Not to mention, this is gold, if you have a support issue, your automations broke, your login isn’t working, or something’s not displaying correctly, create a little video a video recording of exactly what’s happening and send that with your support ticket, it will minimize the time in which you get a valuable response from from the from the team itself. So the person you need to share this, this podcast with is the person you work with. Okay? Because you need to be increasing your productivity through collaboration by way of screen recording software. Okay, so if you found any value in today’s episode, and you’re not, you have not joined the all system go podcast. This is my official invitation to both you and first time listeners. Now’s the time to join. So you again, we’re in Apple podcasts. We’re in Google podcast, we’re on YouTube, make sure you go join, click the button, whatever text is on the button. Now I don’t know if he’s gonna say subscribe or follow, I guess we’ll figure it out. But most More importantly, leave that five star rating and review. Okay, you’re at automation bridge, we’re dedicated to training digital marketing professionals to become automation service providers. And that just means we specialize in scaling your profitable marketing efforts. That’s what an automation service provider is. And that’s what businesses are in need of they need. They need experts who can navigate the technological landscape as well as the strategic marketing landscape, put them together to form deployable automated systems for rapid growth. That’s what an automation service provider does. So if that’s you, and you want to become or you want to get connected, and you want to join the community, okay. And when I say community, just the ecosystem of automation bridge, you want to get in the know start here, automationbridge.com/ASP, I can promise you, that link will always take you to the best place to assess if you will be a good fit for a career in marketing automation, or other opportunities to connect and engage and grow. Alright, so again, as automationbridge.com/ASP, we’re also accepting guest for the podcast. Okay, so if you’re a SaaS, founder of marketing, or sales software, we love to discuss your software and your journey. And if you’re a marketing automation consultant, experiencing success with your clients that you like to share with the collective audience, we welcome you as well. So go to automationbridge.com/guest. The time to do this is now I need you to act urgently. Okay, success follows the steps of the Swift. Okay, so when you see an opportunity, move, jump on it. Don’t just wait. Don’t just say oh, well, when I get around to it. No success was the sweet of the feet of the Swift. Alright, so make sure you’re moving swiftly, responsibly, but swiftly and we’ve got all the resources you need. If this is something when you listen to this podcast, you’re like, Oh my God, if I could just do this for a living. I do this naturally. You mean to tell me I can turn this into a career? Yes, yes, you can. Okay, so all of the show notes and podcasts are accessible at automationbridge.com/podcast. Again, you can follow subscribe join there at and listen to all the other episodes at your leisure. So until next time, I see you online. automate responsibly. Bye for now.