Ask HN: How do people create those sleek looking demos for startups?
I have been seeing people build product demos or show off their updates via videos - complete with zooming in on the active function and all. How do they make it? Can't find any straight forward tools online for this.
Ex: https://x.com/LeapAI_/status/1781001036481613851
Arcade looks genuinely great, so thanks for posting this question.
Several folks have already mentioned that the real value of screen capture tools is to create assets that can be used by a person whose job it is to explain abstract concepts to an audience. I would go so far as to say that if you're a founder, hiring someone who is really good at product videos is something you should 100% outsource even if you're talented with storytelling and motion graphics. It's a distraction from your key priorities, and you don't have enough distance from the subject matter to be objective about what's okay vs great.
I'd like to add that it's really debatable that a video where someone rapidly zips around an interface that they haven't used is actually something people want to see. I suspect that on its own, such a video is often not the huge win that it might seem.
Also, if a process is really easy (press a button, enter a credit card) then you can bet your ass people will soon be tired of seeing the same presentation with different marketing copy.
Things that were absolutely novel at one point include: agent chat widgets in the bottom right corner, presentations that tween and zoom on every slide, infinite scroll newsfeeds, captchas. All timeless things people love more and more every day, right?
I think that product tutorials are somewhat of a black art. On the one hand you have:
1. Keeping the flow moving and the video fast-paced and interesting
2. Adding aftereffects and other visual niceties
3. Pointing out the relevant bits with zooms, highlights, etc...
But on a deeper level, you also have questions of:
1. Am I using the right sample app to demonstrate my use case?
2. Is the feature I'm using bulletproof? Do I need to change something in the DOM of the application since that feature is not 100%? Do I need to not show a piece since it's irrelevant? Do I need to speed through or flip over from things while they're running / fetching / compiling / generating etc...?
3. And, maybe most importantly, what is the message I intended to deliver? Is that a product overview? A documentation-oriented video? A demo for a conference or a customer? Who's my audience? Am I speaking to them?
I've been doing videos for a while, and I found that the second part of the problem is actually not as easy as one would assume.
I applaud great YouTubers for that - they cracked how to do walkthroughs of products that are not only technically interesting, but also visually pleasing.
Your site looks great. Your service is very needed.
My only advice is to stop apologizing for not offering pricing on your website, both here and on your website. Seriously: cut it out. Go right now and remove those <10 words that imply you have something to explain. It's completely normal to have a conversation about something like this before you commit to building it because if you don't have chemistry, you're not going to take the gig.
What you do is the literal best-case scenario for value based pricing. After having read "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" by Blair Enns, some of the comments on this thread feel like mosquitoes trying to get in between your toes.
If you absolutely must, you can say something that alludes pricing that won't get you fired by your board. However, even that is too much word, because what you do only "costs" money until it either a) launches the company or b) keeps a failed company from having spent way, way more.
Okay, maybe I do have a 2nd suggestion. It's not as urgent: consider morphing the 3/5/7 minute "products" into "products" that reflect the typical reason those lengths work eg. "The Product Video", "The Explainer" and "The Demo". Even in this thread, people get hung up on the length instead of the goal of the outcome.
It's much more useful for all parties to think of them not as lengths, but formats.
TL;DR: stop apologizing, consider doubling what you charge
Oh definitely low four figures. Can’t imagine doing it for five figures (maybe I should imagine harder) and for less than that it’s just not an interesting pursuit financially for me (given the amount of work required and how much I think my time is worth).
Low four, so say like $2,000 for a five minute video? Why not list $1,999 for a five minute video on your website? For an open source side project, that's maybe out of reach, for a company, that's peanuts (so they'll readily pay it). Or; how much haggling do you do? It's a very neat product, but how much time do you spend on sales emails to get to a price?
Because the first person to say a number in a negotiation tends to lose.
Because maybe they aren't selling five minute videos. The point is not ever to create five minutes of video. The point is to clearly explain what a product does, and that process is going to be wildly different depending on whether the product makes any fucking sense. You usually don't know if you're going to be able to work with a client until you talk to them.
If someone is sexy and charming, you'll probably go home with them for free. If someone else is neither sexy nor charming, they better be prepared to put something pretty amazing on the table or you're going to pass.
All of what Pete says is true. I'm just putting forth that having a ballpark number is useful frame of reference because you don't know how many people aren't calling because they don't want to engage with the unknown so I think you're losing more business than you think. But, it doesn't sound like you're short business in the first place, so what I'm saying isn't relevant.
Oh, half the fun is the sales calls. It’s very much something I can delegate off to a person on my team, but this is relatively new and so the volume is not that large yet. I also really enjoy them!
I treat these more as discovery sessions than anything else. It’s also how I’ve landed on the exact pricing points I have - talking to people, especially when early, is a great experience.
There’s also something to be said about showing prices only in calls - people hate it here (or in general), but there is value to showing the price at the end of the call and not at the start. You get to show the thing to the person, get them excited, and then the price point looks a little different.
The trick is tailoring the sales call to the person - if I can convince them that they should keep me around since I provide a good service, they might pay the price.
Also, there are always discounts as the guy above mentioned;)
As an aside, what I normally do is reply to each form submission with a personal video and an overview (albeit a short one) of what I think the project should look like given their demands. I then drop a price and get on a call, if they want to.
Many do! And the ones who don’t still get a taste of how I think like and perhaps want to talk some more about other things - this is a side-business productized service; I mainly contract with technical startup companies to do their GTM.
It’s actually looking like it’d be a pretty decent lead funnel for that too!
Man, going out on my own was a great fucking decision.
The other day, the Synchrony chatbot was able to remove a fee that they had previously agreed to remove (delays on their end created a late fee on my end). I was shook.
But yeah, 99% of the time the bots are as useless as IVRs. "Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. For quality assurance, your call may be monitored or recorded."
I'm a founder at Yarn (YC W24) – we're building in this space and launching on HN soonish.
We often see teams combining ScreenStudio with products like iMovie, AfterEffects, or Veed. Other products in the space to check out are Tella.tv, Kite, or Descript.
For more advanced motion graphics, you'll often need a freelancer or agency.
Feel free to drop me a message (email in bio) to talk through options!
I’m a dev lead who is a rusted on Linux user, I’ve always hated that ScreenStudio is Mac only since it’s a great product. Any plans for Linux support? I would love the ability to dem stuff and have it actually look pretty.
The problem is that a lot of the details requires macOS accessibility permissions (identifying active window, measuring cursor movements), so there's non-trivial platform specific code.
For product demos specifically, best bet might be a Chrome-extension-based product like Arcade!
ScreenStudio is really good, I use it for all of my capture. Main feature I find missing is ability to reorder or combine multiple recordings into one clip, or add audio from within the app.
Yep although to be precise it's a pay-for-a-year-of-updates model, and the underlying macOS APIs in this space change significantly between minor and major macOS releases, so ymmv in terms of "pay once forever". (For upcoming features like shareable links, they'll presumably move to a part-subscription pricing model.)
A lot of fragmented promise for video editing amongst these different apps. Hopefully someone will make a comparison chart for these. Good luck on your launch!
Unfortunately this is one of the places where Linux really doesn't have any good options. While there are definitely raw capture options for Linux, there isn't anything as nice as Screen Studio or Screen Flow or Camtasia for quick, short videos with basic editing.
I work for https://www.canvid.com, and we recently released a beta version of our product, which is similar to Screen Studio but designed for Windows. If we see enough interest, we may even release a Linux version around Q3.
This one was quite pointless. It's someone scrolling some web page from top to bottom, with a few gratuitous zooms and some mouse pointer movement. What am I supposed to take away from this? I can't even read all the text, and there's no voice-over, so really all it communicates is "we have a web page that says supercharge your growth with AI"
Others mentioned ScreenStudio (which is awesome), but if you don't need all of its features (or can't afford it at the moment), I've found ScreenRun to be a great alternative: https://screenrun.app/
It's browser-based, but there's a Mac (and Windows I think) companion app that records the screen with click-tracking for zooming (as it's not possible with browser screen sharing just yet). It's somehow limited compared to ScreenStudio, and the interface feels cheaper compared to a native Swift app, but for my needs it gets the job done.
Hi everyone! I'm the CEO of Arcade (who a few people have already mentioned...thanks!).
+1 to that being ScreenStudio.
Sometimes people import ScreenStudio videos into Arcade to add branching, annotations, and get analytics about who is engaging with the tool.
We're about to announce a big release on May 17th which will be very relevant - we're going to show how you can capture beyond the browser and get even more powerful analytics (https://www.linkedin.com/events/7189307779977818112).
Hey mister Arcade CEO, from a fellow entrepreneur and extension developer (there are dozens of us!), have you found any pros/cons of building in the extension space versus a typical web app?
I basically exclusively build extensions because I strongly believe most startups and devs overlook the space
Sorry for the delay here. Extensions are great. There's plenty of examples in this space that have become big companies (Loom, etc.) Chrome also has the highest market share, and even upstarts like Arc Browser are built on Chromium so they work on those platforms. The only real downside is that they're difficult to test and deploy frequently (there's always a lag between pushing a new update and it being deployed, unlike when you own your own release schedule) so it's annoying to constantly have to discover when your extension was updated.
I'm guessing they mean overlaying the screen recording on top of a 3D render of a phone or laptop to show them being used "on device" instead of just as a flat screen recording.
It was my first time using all these tools. It took me a couple days to make the video. Premiere is a bit of a beast, but by just asking ChatGPT how to do everything, I was able to get up to speed with it pretty fast.
It's also kinda sad we're at the point where a video of someone scrolling a webpage with an oversized mouse is considered a 'sleek demo', it wasn't even a smooth scroll at that.
I have a gitlab CI job to update my demo .gif's every time I update my application; always ensures that things are up-to-date and provides gif/video recording that I've ran specific commands (perfect for auditors!)
I'm linux-only so can't say for macos, but I use OBS to record and Kdenlive[1] to edit. It will take a bit more effort to get some of the effects like the zoom as Kdenlive is full video editing software, but it's a skill that IMHO is well worth the 45 mins to an hour it takes to get comfortable.
Not a direct alternative per se, as it is meant for coding, but https://syphon.github.io/ - I used to use this years ago and it worked great then for screen captures.
Hey, while being on that topic and somehow related. There seems to be kind of a default company that creates those catchy tech marketing videos, explainers etc: https://sandwich.co
Recently I was preparing video for my YC application [1]. I've used RecordOnce[2] and actually it worked pretty great - I've recorded my actions together with voice. It transcribed voice to text and then used text to voice again to render the video. For me, as a non-native speaker, this was really great. And I could edit voice description of my actions post-recording - worked like a breeze. It still rough around the edges, but nonetheless I highly recommend it (for reference - until now I've used Screen Flow for multiple years)
I tend to use TechSmith Camtasia. It will do all that stuff, and also lets you add all kinds of active overlays and effects.
ScreenFlow is also good.
But it's still a lot of hard work, making these. I suspect that AI tools can help, but, in the aggregate, it still needs a skilled eye and hand, to make stuff look good, and not obnoxious.
It's sort of crazy YC is backing so many hundreds of companies that there's this level of overlap. I assume one pivoted into this?
Still, crazy to imagine all the YC companies competing with each-other these days. I've even seen YC-backed 'incumbents' being disrupted by new YC-backed startups.
Value isn’t zero sum, or more accurately, most spaces are not winner take all so there is room for multiple great companies to be built. Every company I’ve ever started, I even make a point of reaching out to the competitors in my space to meet the founders. These frienemies are often some of the most fun people to compare notes with. We generally don’t share everything but enough for the conversations to be productive.
One way to do it completely free is OBS + Kdenlive. The interface for both leaves something to be desired but both open source and have all the features you would want (though sometimes buried in menus)
Presentation is close to entertainment business, a whole domain in itself. Takes time to master the craft but you can take inspiration from parody bits like "Every BBC series about the universe": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOA5vnUt00c
From the linked video, I saw video panning with mouse movement and zoom-to-clicks ... I think Camtasia can do those? For sure on the zoom, less sure on the panning. Camtasia is commercial and cross-platform.
Added benefit is that I think Camtasia is relatively easy to pickup compared to other tools I've tried to use.
When I started creating demos for our startup, I started with Shotcut, it is pretty awesome and simple to start with. VN editor is also a good option if you are just starting your journey. And combine your screen recording with some animations and images.
Hope this may help you.
It's done in two steps, first use loom to record the mouse movement in much higher res than needed and then use resolve to zoom, follow and frame as needed.
The Mini wouldn't make anything like what's in the demo. It's good for multi-camera-angle, one-take videos. But it would also require cameras, lights, mics, etc. And you'd want at least a Mini ISO so you can fine-tune everything in post.
It's a live video mixer that you can use to switch between various sources of input - say, a demo device (or, in my case, a device under test), a front camera (or two) facing the presenter, a top camera showing how the presenter interacts with the device... supports a bunch of transitions, and if you get yourself the ISO variant, it records all audio and video tracks uncompressed together with a bunch of metadata that allows you to import the exact same cut as it was broadcast, and fine-tune aspects of it in post to get a refined video.
I'm saying I've used, and seen used, this tool to make very cool investor pitches and videos. It's not specifically the mouse zoom thing, but more generally a great way to make super high quality, professional looking pitches when you need to show things that are live.
I don't know about other demos but that one in particular would be trivially easy to create using KDE's desktop effects zoom feature and OBS screen recording (tell it to record a specific window).
You could try using something like Synth[0]! You can hook it up to a database, it'll generate some json describing the shape and types of your data based on your database (or you could write the json yourself), then you can use Synth to generate fake data and directly insert it into your database.
Full disclosure, I'm the maintainer, but it's not like it'll cost you anything.
I'm trying to do this exact thing, but I want it to be in vertical video format for Instagram Reels. Do any of these software allow you to record screen captures so it will fit nicely in a vertical vid? i.e. not a horizontal video with black bars and below
I would prefer the version of this comment that lacked the excessive condescension. You could communicate the idea that you wish tactics like this wouldn't proliferate without denigrating the people you're talking to.
I found the comment to be informative and the condescension thought provoking. I guess it’s because the disparagement cuts both ways. There is criticism for the marketer who uses these techniques as a cheap ploy and for the consumer who lets the Trojan horse enter because “ooh a horsey”.
Obviously the post could have been more pragmatic, but then bland? Not everyone enjoys onion even though the flavour is remarkable.
But in a way the “denigration” is like the pretty demo effects. It dresses the whole comment up in something that pops out and here we are having been derailed from the op subject
Calling people "the chimp troupe" with "3 inch brains" is not a good way to communicate your ideas. For sure not to the people you're calling chimps, but also not to anyone else except people who both agree with you and have similar contempt for others as you do.
Wow no stranger has ever said that to me before and I really liked it, thank you! /desperate acknowledgment
I don’t write, no social media either. Just staying in my place, a lurky digital hermit since the 90’s
Several folks have already mentioned that the real value of screen capture tools is to create assets that can be used by a person whose job it is to explain abstract concepts to an audience. I would go so far as to say that if you're a founder, hiring someone who is really good at product videos is something you should 100% outsource even if you're talented with storytelling and motion graphics. It's a distraction from your key priorities, and you don't have enough distance from the subject matter to be objective about what's okay vs great.
I'd like to add that it's really debatable that a video where someone rapidly zips around an interface that they haven't used is actually something people want to see. I suspect that on its own, such a video is often not the huge win that it might seem.
Also, if a process is really easy (press a button, enter a credit card) then you can bet your ass people will soon be tired of seeing the same presentation with different marketing copy.
Things that were absolutely novel at one point include: agent chat widgets in the bottom right corner, presentations that tween and zoom on every slide, infinite scroll newsfeeds, captchas. All timeless things people love more and more every day, right?
https://syntaxcinema.dev
I think that product tutorials are somewhat of a black art. On the one hand you have:
1. Keeping the flow moving and the video fast-paced and interesting
2. Adding aftereffects and other visual niceties
3. Pointing out the relevant bits with zooms, highlights, etc...
But on a deeper level, you also have questions of:
1. Am I using the right sample app to demonstrate my use case?
2. Is the feature I'm using bulletproof? Do I need to change something in the DOM of the application since that feature is not 100%? Do I need to not show a piece since it's irrelevant? Do I need to speed through or flip over from things while they're running / fetching / compiling / generating etc...?
3. And, maybe most importantly, what is the message I intended to deliver? Is that a product overview? A documentation-oriented video? A demo for a conference or a customer? Who's my audience? Am I speaking to them?
I've been doing videos for a while, and I found that the second part of the problem is actually not as easy as one would assume.
I applaud great YouTubers for that - they cracked how to do walkthroughs of products that are not only technically interesting, but also visually pleasing.
I'm a bit of a video nerd, I guess. I started out way back when doing these little nuggets of absolute terribleness (oh my god the thumbnail) https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlM7w0mARnn4ytxM6s-0b...
And happy to say I improved a little bit from then :)
(that website's pretty new, comments more than welcome)
Some point before we've bargained on the pricing, or after? :-)
Your site looks great. Your service is very needed.
My only advice is to stop apologizing for not offering pricing on your website, both here and on your website. Seriously: cut it out. Go right now and remove those <10 words that imply you have something to explain. It's completely normal to have a conversation about something like this before you commit to building it because if you don't have chemistry, you're not going to take the gig.
What you do is the literal best-case scenario for value based pricing. After having read "The Win Without Pitching Manifesto" by Blair Enns, some of the comments on this thread feel like mosquitoes trying to get in between your toes.
If you absolutely must, you can say something that alludes pricing that won't get you fired by your board. However, even that is too much word, because what you do only "costs" money until it either a) launches the company or b) keeps a failed company from having spent way, way more.
Okay, maybe I do have a 2nd suggestion. It's not as urgent: consider morphing the 3/5/7 minute "products" into "products" that reflect the typical reason those lengths work eg. "The Product Video", "The Explainer" and "The Demo". Even in this thread, people get hung up on the length instead of the goal of the outcome.
It's much more useful for all parties to think of them not as lengths, but formats.
TL;DR: stop apologizing, consider doubling what you charge
Thanks brother!
that looks super neat and I'd love to do those for people. if there was a way to get those kinds of jobs, one-off, I'd give it a try. RIP taskrabbit.
Because the first person to say a number in a negotiation tends to lose.
Because maybe they aren't selling five minute videos. The point is not ever to create five minutes of video. The point is to clearly explain what a product does, and that process is going to be wildly different depending on whether the product makes any fucking sense. You usually don't know if you're going to be able to work with a client until you talk to them.
If someone is sexy and charming, you'll probably go home with them for free. If someone else is neither sexy nor charming, they better be prepared to put something pretty amazing on the table or you're going to pass.
Yeah, yeah, scrap what I said - let's go with Pete.
All of what Pete says is true. I'm just putting forth that having a ballpark number is useful frame of reference because you don't know how many people aren't calling because they don't want to engage with the unknown so I think you're losing more business than you think. But, it doesn't sound like you're short business in the first place, so what I'm saying isn't relevant.
As the greatest singer in our generation said so succinctly in one of her latest hits:
Yeah, my receipts be lookin' like phone numbers If it ain't money, then wrong number
It's kind of like that for me, if phone numbers were five digits!
I treat these more as discovery sessions than anything else. It’s also how I’ve landed on the exact pricing points I have - talking to people, especially when early, is a great experience.
There’s also something to be said about showing prices only in calls - people hate it here (or in general), but there is value to showing the price at the end of the call and not at the start. You get to show the thing to the person, get them excited, and then the price point looks a little different.
The trick is tailoring the sales call to the person - if I can convince them that they should keep me around since I provide a good service, they might pay the price.
Also, there are always discounts as the guy above mentioned;)
Many do! And the ones who don’t still get a taste of how I think like and perhaps want to talk some more about other things - this is a side-business productized service; I mainly contract with technical startup companies to do their GTM.
It’s actually looking like it’d be a pretty decent lead funnel for that too!
Man, going out on my own was a great fucking decision.
If the agent chat actually works, I like it.
But yeah, 99% of the time the bots are as useless as IVRs. "Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed. For quality assurance, your call may be monitored or recorded."
I'm a founder at Yarn (YC W24) – we're building in this space and launching on HN soonish.
We often see teams combining ScreenStudio with products like iMovie, AfterEffects, or Veed. Other products in the space to check out are Tella.tv, Kite, or Descript.
For more advanced motion graphics, you'll often need a freelancer or agency.
Feel free to drop me a message (email in bio) to talk through options!
For product demos specifically, best bet might be a Chrome-extension-based product like Arcade!
I really don't like these demos, they are really nauseating to me.
As I generally don't like videos with many/fast transitions like many popular YouTube videos and movies are, I'm probably a minority in this regard.
It's browser-based, but there's a Mac (and Windows I think) companion app that records the screen with click-tracking for zooming (as it's not possible with browser screen sharing just yet). It's somehow limited compared to ScreenStudio, and the interface feels cheaper compared to a native Swift app, but for my needs it gets the job done.
+1 to that being ScreenStudio.
Sometimes people import ScreenStudio videos into Arcade to add branching, annotations, and get analytics about who is engaging with the tool.
We're about to announce a big release on May 17th which will be very relevant - we're going to show how you can capture beyond the browser and get even more powerful analytics (https://www.linkedin.com/events/7189307779977818112).
Happy to answer any questions here as well.
I basically exclusively build extensions because I strongly believe most startups and devs overlook the space
P.S. It's ms. ceo ;)
https://tiffzhang.com/startup/
It semi-randomly creates the site of a recently-launched startup. It is nine years old now, and completely nailed the overused style of the time.
The company names are also excellent. I wonder how many accidentally became real.
Like Screen Studio, Kite lets you record your screen and automatically zoom in on the action.
But with some key upgrades:
- Combine multiple recordings
- Add text scenes with animations
- Place your recordings on a 3D device like a phone or laptop
- Add music and AI voiceovers
With lots more in the works.
It's still early, but we have lots of startups using Kite regularly for feature-launch videos. We're live on Mac OS and have a waitlist for Windows.
Get in touch if you have pain points in this space. Happy to chat any time!
https://kite.video
What does this mean?
It was my first time using all these tools. It took me a couple days to make the video. Premiere is a bit of a beast, but by just asking ChatGPT how to do everything, I was able to get up to speed with it pretty fast.
Do these tools provide HMI automation, where you script the mouse movements/clicks/scrolls during the recording?
We use this for really nice terminal only demos. Highly recommend even though there are some minor rendering issues if you are using special fonts.
https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs
I have a gitlab CI job to update my demo .gif's every time I update my application; always ensures that things are up-to-date and provides gif/video recording that I've ran specific commands (perfect for auditors!)
[1]: https://kdenlive.org/en/download/
Examples you may know:
1. https://humadroid.io 2. https://recordonce.com
ScreenFlow is also good.
But it's still a lot of hard work, making these. I suspect that AI tools can help, but, in the aggregate, it still needs a skilled eye and hand, to make stuff look good, and not obnoxious.
Yarn - Make Videos Like The Best (W24) https://yarn.so Kite - Product Videos Made Easy (S23) https://kite.video
It's sort of crazy YC is backing so many hundreds of companies that there's this level of overlap. I assume one pivoted into this?
Still, crazy to imagine all the YC companies competing with each-other these days. I've even seen YC-backed 'incumbents' being disrupted by new YC-backed startups.
One way to do it completely free is OBS + Kdenlive. The interface for both leaves something to be desired but both open source and have all the features you would want (though sometimes buried in menus)
https://www.remotion.pro
You can do similar with more effort video editing software like DaVinci Resolve
1: https://medium.com/hackernoon/adding-visual-effects-to-your-...
I haven't used Journey, but it seems promising for product Tours: https://www.william-troup.com/journey-js/
For more sleek promo videos, I would work with a professional.
For example this one is probably better for ad etc:
https://x.com/bolt__ai/status/1786058021531238661?s=12
Added benefit is that I think Camtasia is relatively easy to pickup compared to other tools I've tried to use.
We use Loom + Davinci Resolve - it's nowhere near as smooth as screenstudio
how can this be done? if the monitor resolution is say 1600 x 900, how can it record the frames and/or mouse movement in higher resolution than this?
https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/atemmini/techspecs...
And some hdmi cameras
Easy to make these videos, edit, match music to it, etc.
But if you want a nice 90s edit of every 1h sales demo meeting check out DemoTime.
We are looking for tools that can generate fake data(may be based on our small set of data) for live demo setup.
Full disclosure, I'm the maintainer, but it's not like it'll cost you anything.
[0] https://www.getsynth.com
smdh.
It’s called screen studio.