Suggestions for basic screencasting on YouTube

This was initially written as a reply to an uploader who created a video about the NoScript web extension for Firefox Quantum. The text has been edited for further clarity.

Before uploading:

Audio is important. Do a soundcheck with headphones, since badly-recorded narration can have issues both with volume and treble. Is the microphone close to your mouth, and is the recording volume high enough?

Use the headphones to compare with a normal non-Vevo music video, for which you have to keep the system volume low to avoid loudness, and then with your own video. For this, make sure the YouTube video volume is up, and system volume is low — start at 5–10% for "Volume" / "Wave" in Windows, and then gradually go up. The volume of a popular non-Vevo music video is the baseline, and the volume of your video should be similar.

Before screencasting, consider setting the monitor resolution to something lower than your current one. This would allow people with smaller displays (on smartphones), and/or slower connections to better see what's going on. (I do not know what your screen's actual resolution is, so I'm assuming Full HD.)

For example, I have a display with a 1360x768 resolution, and to keep the 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, I have in Windows the option to reduce the resolution to 1280x720 pixels — 720p is the lowest HD rating; also the earliest. Based on a screenshot scaled down to 640x360 pixels, the text there was more-or-less visible.

If your screen recorder allows capturing a single program window, you can reduce its size even further. Yet another option is to temporarily increase the software user interface text, or create a separate operating system profile for screen recording, where the display resolution is lower (such as 1280x720, or less, if available), and where the UI text is bigger.

Advanced screen recording programs may allow zooming in and out, or you can use the features offered by your video editing software.