One of the free author tools I’ve discovered lately is RecordCast. RecordCast is an all-in-one tool for screen recording and video editing that helps everyone turn screenshots into professional-looking videos in just a matter of a few minutes. This can be great for creating a book trailer within minutes just by adding images and effects.

RecordCast | From the blog of Nicholas C. Rossis, author of science fiction, the Pearseus epic fantasy series and children's book

Highlighted Features

One of the things I particularly like about RecordCast is the fact that you get a high-quality recorded video without a watermark—for free. Also, you don’t need to download anything; the whole process is handled online.

The recording itself is pretty flexible: you can screen capture your whole screen, an application window, your webcam, or a browser tab as you need. You can also choose whether you wish to record audio simultaneously or drag-and-drop your favorite background music to the video.

As for video editing, RecordCast has a built-in video editor, so you can add titles, annotations, and effects as you wish. You can also place your logo, book cover, etc. in your video.

RecordCast offers several text animations, which are easy to add to the video. Once you do, you can edit the text color, font, size, alignment, etc. You can also split your video, control your video clips and photos easily on a clean storyboard, and combine or merge multiple videos and photos into one single video.

Once you’re finished, you can save your video under your account for further editing.

The video output resolution options include 480P, 720P, and 1080P, so you can choose either a high-quality video for upload to, say, YouTube, or a low-quality one for your emails.

At the moment, RecordCast is free, so get recording those book trailers!