In my view, slideshow videos are one of the easiest formats to create for YouTube. They’re also useful for people to follow along – you can usually switch to a screen shot if you need to show how to do something on a web page. And they allow you to gather your thoughts before you take the plunge and create a video.

PowerPoint

Since 2010, PowerPoint has included the option to export your presentation as a video. You can include narration with it and there is plenty of help on the main Microsoft site as well as on sites like YouTube that will help you to create professional slideshow videos if you’ve got this software already installed on your computer.

Google Hangouts

At the other end of the price extreme (because it’s currently free) is Google Hangouts.

This has added to the various tools that YouTube already includes to make videos easy to create and one of the options is to record all or part of your screen.

All you need to do is start a Hangout and follow the instructions. Google will then do all the hard work of recording the slideshow or any other part of your screen as well as your voice whilst you narrate the video.

There are a few things to be aware of when using live screen capture like this.

The first is to turn your phone to silent otherwise it seems to have an annoying habit of ringing at a critical point in your presenttaion.

The same thing goes for any instant messenger software such as Skype – if it merely flashes at the foot of your screen that’s a distraction, if it bleeps as well that will almost certainly get picked up on your recording.

It’s also worth doing a test run to make sure that everything works as smoothly as promised.

Specialist software

This is my favourite option for video creation software, whether it’s for slideshows or anything else.

The software that regularly gets recommended is Camtasia and that’s with good reason. At the time of writing, it’s on the 8th version which means that it’s had plenty of time to work out what people expect it to do and also to make sure that there’s lots of support.

Camtasia will do near enough anything you want and will do it solidly and predictably.

One snag is that the price tag can be outside the range that you’re comfortable with.

The other snag is that because it includes so many bells and whistles it can have a high learning curve, even for simpler tasks until you’ve done them a few times.

A good alternative is a program called Screencast-o-matic.

It’s not as feature-laden as Camtasia but it includes all the basics and there’s a good chance those are all that you’ll need to create good quality videos to use in-house or post on the web.

Both programs come with a trial version which means you can check out the one that’s best for you.

If you’d like more help, check out my video creation crash course here.