Recording demos that look and sound professional

Whether you're recording a Vision Demo for the website or a Standard Demo with feature videos, what you produce represents your company. These are the guidelines we recommend every Consensus customer follow when recording or presenting a demo.

One headline rule: great video with bad audio is worse than great audio with bad video. Spend money on a decent microphone or a quiet recording environment before you spend money on cameras and lighting.

Video

• Resolution at least 1080p. If your screen capture looks grainy, change the screen recorder's capture settings.
• Show the authentic you — keep your webcam on. People connect with faces, not voices in the dark.
• Don't show brands or logos from other companies in your recordings unless you've cleared it with them.
• Backgrounds should be professional but realistic. Most webcam software has background blur or virtual background options if your real space won't do.
• Hide your corporate email, calendar, and chat windows before recording. Personal mistakes here are common and hard to undo.
• Check your bookmarks bar for anything non-professional. Easiest fix: hide the bookmarks bar entirely while recording.

Sound

• Sound should be clear with no background noise. A headset microphone almost always beats a built-in laptop mic.
• Avoid "popping" — the harsh thumps from plosive consonants. A pop filter or careful mic positioning fixes most of it.
• No background music. It distracts and creates licensing risk.
• Speak clearly and at a moderate pace. Many of your viewers are non-native English speakers — speaking too fast loses them.

Policy and content

• Make sure your demo complies with your company's content policy. When in doubt, check with marketing or legal.
• Don't show customer employee names or company names / logos unless you have the right reference agreement in place with that customer.
• Verify the demo actually shows what you set out to demonstrate. Watch it back end-to-end before publishing.
• Make sure the content is up to date. A demo from 18 months ago with old UI screenshots is a fast way to lose buyer trust.
• Slides should be the corporate-standard template and should be used sparingly. Live software is preferred — that's the whole point of a product demo.

A simple pre-publish checklist

Before you publish a new demo, run through this checklist. If a colleague is available to gut-check, even better.

• Audio is clear, no background noise, no popping.
• Video is 1080p or better, webcam on, professional background.
• No personal info visible (email, calendar, browser bookmarks, unrelated tabs).
• No customer data, third-party logos, or content that violates NDAs or reference agreements.
• Demo content matches the title and description — viewer gets what they expect.
• Slides on-brand and used sparingly.