This strategy of recording seminars is already widely used in fields where using a simple video camera or audio recorder is insufficient to make a useful recording of a seminar. This will generate an additional revenue stream for the organizers and makes the knowledge available to a broader audience. Organizers of seminars may choose to routinely record complete seminars and make them available to all attendees for future reference and/or sell these recordings to people who cannot afford the fee of the live seminar or do not have the time to attend it. Screencasts are useful tools for ordinary software users as well: They help filing report bugs in which the screencasts take the place of potentially unclear written explanations they help showing others how a given task is accomplished in a specific software environment. Students can record video and audio as they demonstrate the proper procedure to solve a problem on an interactive whiteboard.

Educators may also use screencasts as another means of integrating technology into the curriculum. Creating a screencast helps software developers show off their work. Screencasts can help demonstrate and teach the use of software features. ScreenCam, however, is a federal trademark in the United States, whereas screencast is not trademarked and has established use in publications as part of Internet and computing vernacular. The terms 'screencast' and ' screencam' are often used interchangeably, due to the market influence of ScreenCam as a screencasting product of the early 1990s.

Udell selected the term 'screencast', which was proposed by both Joseph McDonald and Deeje Cooley.

In 2004, columnist Jon Udell invited readers of his blog to propose names for the emerging genre. An example of screencasting: A video showing how to change a photo using 'levels' in GIMP.

Screencast matic