Find, Understand, and Extend Development Screencasts on YouTube
Mathias Ellmann, Alexander Oeser, Davide Fucci, Walid Maalej

TL;DR
This paper investigates the use of YouTube development screencasts as a knowledge source, differentiating them from other videos, identifying common topics and tasks, and linking them to API documentation through transcript similarity analysis.
Contribution
It introduces a method to classify development screencasts, identifies key topics and tasks, and demonstrates linking screencasts to API docs using transcript-based similarity measures.
Findings
Ten relevant development screencasts in top 20 YouTube videos
Identified common development topics and tasks in screencasts
Linked screencasts to API documents using transcript similarity
Abstract
A software development screencast is a video that captures the screen of a developer working on a particular task while explaining its implementation details. Due to the increased popularity of software development screencasts (e.g., available on YouTube), we study how and to what extent they can be used as additional source of knowledge to answer developer's questions about, for example, the use of a specific API. We first differentiate between development and other types of screencasts using video frame analysis. By using the Cosine algorithm, developers can expect ten development screencasts in the top 20 out of 100 different YouTube videos. We then extracted popular development topics on which screencasts are reporting on YouTube: database operations, system set-up, plug-in development, game development, and testing. Besides, we found six recurring tasks performed in development…
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