Screencast’s Embed fuction is definitely still in beta even though they sent out a big announcement this week making it sound like they were all ready to go. Their embed function consists of an image with links back to their site. The image…

My note to them:

I just tried the “embed” function. It was a bit disappointing.

First, it doesn’t actually show a screenshot of any of the videos (a la youtube).

Second, it just links them to your site rather than having the player embedded locally.

Hopefully I’ll be notified when they make these upgrades.

So, of what use is Screencast at this point?

  1. possibly they could save money for “power users” (compared to self-hosting), especially those who can use their Premium, add-on and rollover plan.
  2. maybe under some circumstances (like on the homepage) it would be cool to have a playlist of recent vids people could go through, but it needs to be a true embed.
  3. It appears that they are going to host flash video as true, interactive flash, so that could be a major difference with all the other players.