Re: Word-a-Day Bonus Round: screencast

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Sun, 2008-04-06 at 23:40 -0700, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> On Apr 3, 2008, at 10:32 AM, Shaun McCance wrote:
> >
> > Since we've got screenshot on the table, what do people
> > think of the word screencast?
> > ...
> > Here are our options:
> > 1) Boldly embrace this newish term.
> > 2) Recommend a more verbose phrase.
> > 3) Make no recommendation either way.
> > ...
> 
> 4) Recommend "video". It's much more widely understood, it's shorter, 
> and it's more relevant to whether someone will want to access it.
> 
> (If you recommended the term "screencast", how much non-screencast 
> video could a video contain before it could no longer be called a 
> screencast? Who cares! How well a video communicates information is 
> more important than whether it's a screencast.)

I'm tending to agree, after having talked to a number
of people who've never heard the term, and who couldn't
figure out what it means.

My concern with just using "video" is that it doesn't
convey how the video is made.  I know, who cares.  For
galleries of videos you watch, I agree with you.  It
doesn't really matter.

But I'm thinking of tools to take screencasts.  We've
discussed having such a tool in Gnome before.  If that
tool just talks about "taking videos", I think people
will assume it does so from a webcam or something.

(I suppose by analogy, the same is true of screenshot
and picture.  We could have a gallery of pictures of
Gnome 2.22, and people would understand what it is.
But if we had a tool to take a picture, you'd assume
it takes a picture with a camera.  But screenshot,
unlike screencast, is an incredibly common term.)

--
Shaun