Whether you are an app developer building cool apps or games for the mobile platform or a tech blogger who likes to review such apps, what you definitely want is a screencasting tool that will help you easily record movies of your mobile app.

Now there are tons of screencasting apps available for your Windows or Mac desktop but if you wish to capture the screen of your iPad or iPhone, the scene is very disappointing. A search for “screen recorder” or “screencasting” shows zero results in the iTunes app store.

That said, there are ways, or rather workarounds, by which you can capture the screen activity of your iPad or iPhone and convert that into a movie.  Let’s take a look:

Option 1. Create a Screencast Video using Screenshot Images

This is the quick solution. You can capture multiple screenshot images of an app (here’s how) and then stitch them together in one video either using Windows Live Movie Maker or iMovie on your Mac. This is how I created the following video screencast of an iPad.

If you would like to make your screencasting appear more natural, put all these different screenshot images in a PowerPoint slideshow, run it in Full-screen mode and then use Camtasia or any other screencasting software to record that slideshow. The advantage here is that the cursor will also be captured so people will find it easier to follow your video tours or game walkthroughs.

Option 2: Use Display Recorder to Capture your iPhone /iPad Screen

If you have jailbroken your iPad (or iPhone), you can use the Display Recorder utility to record the onscreen activity of your iOS device and save the video as an AVI or MP4 file. The app can also upload your recorded screencast to YouTube directly.

I haven’t tried this Cydia app myself but here’s a move of an iPad screen recorded using Display Recorder. The app doesn’t record system sounds though but you can run another app in parallel for that purpose.

Option 3: Create Screencasts using a Dedicated Video Capture Card

You can easily connect your iPhone or iPad to an external monitor – be it a TV screen or a computer monitor or a projector – using either the HDMI Adapter or the VGA Adapter.

Now instead of connecting the iOS device output directly to an external screen, you can connect it to a capture card and it will then automatically record your iPhone /iPad screen.

AverTV HD and Blackmagic Design are some of the available graphic capture cards that can be used in this kind of setup. The following video by Kelly Rush will walk you through the entire process of recording screencasts on tablets – Android, iPads or anything else – with the help of a capture card.

Also, if you do not wish to open to chassis of your computer to install an internal graphics card, there are other options like Epiphan and UltraStudio 3D. These are external capture devices though you would require a much higher budget for them.

Option 4: Record Screencasts using Whiteboard Apps

If you wish to create simple whiteboard style screencasts where your audio and all you activity on a whiteboard is recorded as a movie, you have some good options including Screenchomp, Explain Everything, ShowMe, Replay Note, Doodlecast Pro and Educreations.

ScreenChomp, Educreations and ShowMe are free apps for the iPad that will help you record Khan Academly style videos. You can create freehand drawings, write text, annotate pictures, and all your activity (including voice) will be recorded in one video.

Explain Everything goes one step further. It has a built-in web browser and anything you do inside that browser is also captured in the video so you be more creative here. You can also import PDF files, PowerPoint slides and other documents into Explain Everything through Dropbox, add voice narrations or annotations and publish them into a movie.

Option 5: Use a Digital Camera to Record App Demos

The trouble with all the above workarounds is that none of them would record your hand gestures.

To get around the problem, the developers of the Denso App recorded their interaction video with the iPad using the iPhone camera (see details). They placed the iPad on a white sheet of paper (picture), added enough lights to get rid of all the shadows and they also placed paper on the lamps to diffuse the harsh light.

It’s an easy setup and end result is much like the various iPad /iPhone demos that you see on Apple website. The following video from the DoodleCast team explains a similar setup that also uses an iPhone camera to record iPad videos – the key here is good lighting.

Option 6: Record Screencasts of your iPad or iPhone using AirPlay

I saved the best option for the last. If you have an Mac, just download the Reflection app and it will wirelessly mirror your iPhone or iPad screen  on your Mac desktop live. You don’t have to install any additional software on your iOS device, no cables are involved and there’s no jailbreaking required either.

Once the iPad or iPhone screen is beamed on your Mac desktop, you can use any of existing screencasting utilities – like Camtasia Studio, ScreenFlow  or Jing which is free – to automatically capture a video while you work on the iPhone or iPad. That’s easy and very convenient.

It’s time for a demo so here’s a screencast video of an iPad that I recorded using the Reflection app on Mac. This is what you have been waiting for!

Also see: How To Record your Comptuer Video Games

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This story, How to Record Screencasts on your iPad or iPhone, was originally published at Digital Inspiration on 02/03/2012 under IPad, IPhone, Screencasting, Software.

I’m a big believer in differentiation. I think advertisements should look and feel different in order to capture the attention of their jaded audiences. That being said, the latest offering from MCB Mobile just doesn’t make sense.

So the ad shows a split image with an Ipod on one side and an Iphone on the other. The design then goes to draw parallels between “Music made easy” and “Banking made easy”. So, in effect, MCB Mobile is to banking what the Ipod was to music? Surely this is a stretch of the imagination. Here’s why:

The idea is hard to understand and the analogy is fuzzy. Even if their target audience get it, the Ipod is hardware while MCB Mobile is a glorified WAP Page.

To anybody who does get the ad, this is sacrilege. You can’t use the alleged brilliance of Apple’s products to sell yours. That’s like me saying you should hire me because I read a book about Richard Branson. There’s no connection.

I have enormous amounts of respect for D’Hamidi, the agency behind this advertisement. Clutter breaking concepts and good visual design have become their forte. But while I appreciate their skills in convincing an otherwise conservative client such as MCB to go for something as different as this ad, I’m disappointed that they haven’t been able to execute their strategy as per the ad’s requirements.

I’m a big fan of technology. I do things with technology sometimes which are of no practical benefit to me, but I do them because I’m curious. Because I can. I ran Linux on my iPod just because. I swapped the firmwares on a Korean wireless router with a tweaked Cisco firmware just for the heck of it. I try out new things not because I need them, but because I’m curious.

But sometimes I ask myself, how much is enough? I’m not even gonna bring up cell phones and personal technology – augmented reality, life-streams and the fusion of technology and daily life. But today, we have 3D printers. In 20 years, people will be able to order a pair of Nikes online and print them at home. You’d be able to print clothing, accessories, even spare-parts for the machines that are printing these for you. You’d be able to print your own breakfast. And chances are, you won’t even need a computer to do all these things.

Today, we have walking people with no pulse. People whos hearts have given in but technology hasn’t. They have blood running through their bodies – they breathe, they eat and sleep and go about their daily business as usual. But if you put your ears close to their chest, they have no heartbeat.

The iBookstore just announced electronic textbooks seeking to replace paper and binds. I’m writing this on an electronic machine when I’ve always wanted to own a typewriter. The connection – of man and anything derived of nature, is fading away.

I’m not saying that these are bad things to have, but certainly things to think about.

Dustin Dwyer’s latest story on Apple brings up in detail 3 points we all knew at the back of our heads as to why Apple will not manufacture its products in the USA. Excerpt from the article: 1. Cheap labor Apple executives may not want to admit it, but Liker says one of the biggest [...]

3 Obvious Reasons Apple Will Never Produce in USA is a post from: PakMediaBlog All Rights Reserved.

Most iPhone 4S users are still waiting for a jailbreak for their device. It is more than a month now since iPhone 4S was officially released and still there is no news about Jailbreak availability. I believe the iPhone 4S users would still have to wait for some more time to get a tethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S.

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