Blog Pod

Part of our marketing campaign to promote our new iPhone apps was to make overview videos of our apps in action. None of us here at The Apps Pod are film directors, nor did we have a massive budget to get them professionally produced. So we thought lets have a go at doing some ourselves and see how we go.

After much research we discovered that we can make as many videos as we wanted for under £15. OK so they’re not going to win any Oscars but they will show our apps in action and thought we would share this with you.

We purchased an application called iShowU for $20. iShowU makes movies by recording what happens on your screen. To make our apps we simply fired it up in the iPhone simulator and recorded it.  This worked really well however, operating the iPhone with the mouse did not look to great so we looked into resolving that. Eventually we came across some donation ware software called Sim Finger which effectively puts a white disc under the mouse cursor and this is what gets recorded. It really looks so much more professional than a mouse cursor. Sim Finger does more than simply replace the cursor, it also allows you to replace the Carrier name and time in the simulator as well as install fake apple app icons. However, we have had problems with this on xcode 3.2.3

So how does this all work together.

1. Open up Sim Finger in XCode (Its an xcode project, not an application)
2. Build and run Sim Finger and you will see a white rectangular area on your screen with a blank iPhone displayed on top.
3. Open up your iPhone app project in another xcode window and Build / Run that in simulator mode.
4. The iPhone simulator will appear over Sim Fingers blank iPhone automatically
5. Now run iShowU, Select the capture area and make sure the ‘Show Mouse in Recording’ option is OFF
6. When you’re ready press record and use your app

That’s it, you will end up with a decent recording of your app in use. Using iShowU you can also record voice overs, background music and even record yourself in an overlayed window using the app. All for under £15 – amazing value!