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CAD Video Tips?

S1monS1mon Member Posts: 3,955 PRO
in General

For those of you that produce regular content for YouTube etc.

What tips and tricks can you offer about how to set up your Onshape environment and screen recording tools?

I assume that most videos are recorded at 1080p resolution for ease of viewing on most monitors. I assume that higher resolutions could make it hard to see the icons and read the text.

I'm on a Mac. If you have specific tools or settings there that might be helpful….

I've already heard from @EvanReese that https://www.descript.com is super helpful for editing.

Any other thoughts?

Simon Gatrall | Product Development, Engineering, Design, Onshape | Ex- IDEO, PCH, Unagi, Carbon | LinkedIn

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Comments

  • ry_gbry_gb Member, csevp, pcbaevp Posts: 177 PRO
    edited 2:36AM

    Are we gonna get tutorials from the one and only @S1mon in the near future???

    The only nugget I have to offer is that I've used Loom to record short videos for the office.

    Ramon Yip | glassboard.com

  • S1monS1mon Member Posts: 3,955 PRO
    https://forum.onshape.com/discussion/comment/126686#Comment_126686

    That's the plan. I'm busy working on a very powerful plastic boss custom feature, and it seems like a video intro is probably in order. I also want to do similar intros for some other features I've been working on.

    Simon Gatrall | Product Development, Engineering, Design, Onshape | Ex- IDEO, PCH, Unagi, Carbon | LinkedIn

  • glen_dewsburyglen_dewsbury Member Posts: 1,274 PRO

    Now that I have my new computer set up with Win 11. I see the snip tool upgraded to record video as well. The issue is trying to post. It makes a mp4 file that won't post. What's the best way to convert this to one of the file types listed below.

    Screenshot 2026-02-09 231312.png
  • alnisalnis Member, Developers Posts: 453 EDU
    edited 6:25AM

    • While I haven't recorded a CAD YouTube video in a while, my advice would be:
    • Sound quality is important. The built in mic on MacBooks is great, but on other platforms, you might want to use a cheap USB mic and normalize the speaking audio track volume (audacity does a good job).
    • If you do add background music, it should be quieter than you think (in my experience, at least 20 decibels quieter than the speaking track, depending on the style and situation), and make sure you have the right to use it! (The YouTube music library in the creator studio is a great resource).
    • Fancy editing is rarely worth it...with the exception of a few videos, the reception of the videos I made was generally inversely correlated with the effort-per-minute-of-editing I put in. The ones where I just hit record, did stuff, and posted (with low/no editing) did well and people found them helpful. And it is generally easier to follow something in human time, rather than something with lots of cuts and tight pacing (generally the "highly edited" videos resulted in a lot more comments and emails asking for help because something was unclear or jumped over too quickly)
    • If you do want to edit something to a higher degree of production quality, it is much easier to cut out sections of a long take/video than it is to stitch together multiple shorter takes/video files. Same goes for podcasts/audio, even/especially with a script. If you biff something, just undo a few steps, take a breath, and continue from the start of some recent "paragraph" so to speak. Then, when editing, you can split the clip before and after the section you want to cut, and delete the middle part.
    • On Linux, I used Kdenlive for much of my editing needs and OBS for screen recording. Now on my Mac, I've found iMovie to be perfectly capable for general cutting and editing, and the built-in screen recorder is great for capturing screen casts (as long as you don't need an "action camera" for the CAD user 😄)
    • You can zoom in the browser to make the UI bigger without having to go to a lower video resolution. Note that video streaming platforms (well, YouTube at least) tend to apply crunchy compression to lower resolution screencasts, which can make text hard to read and cause other artifacts. So I definitely recommend recording and uploading at least at 1080p.

    Looking forward to seeing what you make!

    Get in touch: contact@alnis.dev | My personal site: https://alnis.dev
    @alnis is my personal account. @alnis_ptc is my official PTC account.
  • jelte_steur_infojelte_steur_info Member Posts: 642 PRO

    No tips, just enthusiastic encouragement from my side! I always love to see some workflows tips/tricks from other advanced Onshape users! Would also love to see some of your more advanced surfacing models or tips/tricks explained if you ever get to it…
    I saw your post in the thread about solidworks vs onshape surfacing and was impressed!

  • Ste_WilsonSte_Wilson Member Posts: 560 EDU
    edited 9:22AM

    If you ever stray to the dark side that is a windows PC I found OBS Studio a useful free bit of software. Available from portable apps.com

    I see Alins has already suggested that!

    https://hwh.stephenteacher.com/txtbook.html
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