The Visual Lounge lets you find out about TechSmith behind-the-scenes. Watch screencasts and videos from other customers, meet up with your fellow TechSmith users and staff, and get more tips and tricks!

I'm a Navy brat. Every summer my dad would go on active duty and my mom would load my sister and I up in the car and we'd head out on a road trip to meet-up with him for vacation. We'd hit the road and visit Washington DC, Chicago, Rhode Island, Norfolk... wherever he was stationed. It was a great way to see the country. I've always loved a good road trip!

That's one reason I was so happy to be picked by GM to head on a road trip from Lansing, Michigan to Austin, Texas for SXSW! TechSmith will have a booth at the SXSW conference (booth 124) in Austin, March 12 - 16. Hopefully I'll have time to meet-up with some of you on the road or at the conference!

Tiffany Wood, the Snagit Product Manager, Kathy Jacobs, Social Media Credit Analyst and OneNote MVP, and Kyle Mulka from Twilk and I will be heading out March 09 on our drive to Austin.

I'll post some updates here that are relevant to you. And, we'll be flooding Team Lansing blog will all the details of the trip, video and pics. And, you can follow updates on Twitter: @betsyweber or @LANChevySXSW I will also be posting pics here.

And, as I prepare for the trip, I can't get this old jingle out of my head! Do you remember this one?

I hope to see many of you on our trip or at SXSW in Austin! Drop me a comment or email if you'd like to meet-up! I'll be posting our route soon!

I'm always amazed at the screencasts I see Camtasia users create. And, you're in for a treat with this week's Screencast of the Week! I heard from Anthony Osborn, at Red Gate Software about a recent screencast they made. This video is just a little different... in a good way for many reasons!

I love this screencast because Red Gate does a great job with storytelling to make this screencast engaging and interesting, You get to see inside <a href="Red Gate and hear their story of how a group of programmers were taken out of their office and spent a week living by the seaside to work on a product idea. I loved seeing behind the scenes at Red Gate. By escaping their daily grind, they were able to create a product, SQL Search, for use searching SQL Server databases.

Many product videos focus strictly on product features, specs and technical details. I like this screencast because this one shows the human side and the people behind the product. Who better to hear about the product from than the people who made it. You really get to see their personalities and connect with them. Plus it is interesting hearing from multiple people.

Anthony makes great use of many of Camtasia Studio's features like multiple audio tracks, PIP, screen recording, zoom & pans, transitions, captions etc... Plus, the video's musical track was written by a co-worker's band (Macca) so getting copywrite permission was a breeze.

Click the pic below to watch the video (give it a few seconds to load):

Anthony describes how this was created:

I was asked to create a product video telling the 'coding by the sea' story after the event had happened so it was an unusual way to work. However, the team had come back from the coast with some great photos, a good story and a new product. I really wanted to communicate the human side of this story to our customers and so used multiple voice narrations running behind these images. I also added in a quick screen recording of our product (SQL Search) to give a tempting glimpse and encourage viewers to find out more.

After making this screencast, Anthony has several tips to share:

• Step away from your PC and storyboard your idea first on the back of a piece of paper, cardboard box or whatever is available to you

• Pay as much attention to your audio as you do to 'what's happening on the screen'

• Static photos with a good voice narration work very well because your speakers can talk more freely without a camera in their face and videos with moving heads + lips need a really high frame rate to look good so you'll save on overall file size without them. If you want to further improve engagement add a little zoom + pan to these photos

• If possible, get lots of people involved in your video - it will give your video a 'team feel' & more momentum - they'll also chip in ideas, spot your spelling mistakes, poor color choices, hic-ups etc.

• Keep it short - let people see the 3 minute version not the 33 minute version

Credits:
Edited & produced by: Anthony Osborn
Script writer: Phil Scott
The original 'coders by the sea': Alex Davis, Robert Chipperfield, Dominick Reed & Nagashree Manjunath
Photography: Dominick Reed
Musical soundtrack: 'Ever wondered' by Macca
Microphone (a good amateur one): Sony ECM-MS907
Camera (not that you need a fancy one): Canon 5D SLR
Edited in: Camtasia Studio 6

What do you think of this style screencast?

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email me!

Have you ever created the perfect screencapture with Snagit - maybe you added text or other objects to your capture and then you saved it. And, if you're like me, then you decided to change something - maybe resize the text or remove an arrow. Well, no need to recreate that capture from scratch after you learn this Time Saver Tuesday trick! You'll be able to save time and create a file you can modify any time.

Meet the .SNAG file format. Save your screencapture as a .SNAG file and you can open it later to modify or edit the vector objects (Lines, Arrows, Shape, Highlight, Paintbrush, Stamp, Callouts and Text tools) any time.

The .SNAG file format is a Snagit Editor-only file. If you need to use your image outside of Snagit environment, like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint for example, you just save the final .snag file as the image format of your choice (like a .png or .jpg). When saving in these other file formats, the vector objects will be flattened and made a permanent part of the image.

To save your image as a Snagit Capture File:

1. Click the Application button.
2. Hover over Save As to expose the menu.
3. Click Snagit Capture File.

What is your Time Saver Tip? Email me if you'd like to be a guest blogger and share your tips and tricks!

I'm on the road with my buddy, Screennoms, in the Big Apple, New York City, this week for the O'Reilly Tools of Change conference. You can see some pics from our adventures here. Would anyone like to meet-up? They still have ice skating at Rockefeller Center! Anyone want to take a few laps around the rink?

I'll be home just long enough to do laundry before heading down to Atlanta, Georgia for the HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) Conference on Saturday, February 27.

I'd love to meet-up in NYC or Atlanta. Drop me an email or call me at 517.410.0030 if you're around. And, I'm always looking for travel advice. Where should I go? What should I see?

Can't meet-up in New York City or Atlanta? You can see our entire event schedule here. Maybe we're coming to your city later in the year!

This week's Screencast of the Week is actually a series of Jing videos (Jingcasts) from introNetworks! You can see all the videos here. I liked these Jingcasts - they're quick, personal (introNetworks CEO, Mark Sylvester, introduces himself in the Jingcast) and, I like Mark's new slang word - 'Jingspeak'!

I asked Mark about his experience using Jing and here's what I heard from him:

Jing = EASY as anything I have ever used. We use it EVERYDAY. I love the interface on my Mac and because it is so simple I tend to think in Jingspeak - meaning, can I do something in 1 min on Jing that would take 5 min in an email, answer is usually yes! Using it to show clients and prospects the nuances of our platform in bite sized chunks of five min has been incredibly effective.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Throughout the day I'm working in a variety of programs. I'm guessing you do the same. And, I'm often adding screenshots all over - I'm using them in my email, on Twitter, in a project plan in OneNote, as a title screen in a Camtasia Studio screencast and more...

You can save yourself some time and a few steps by using Snagit 'outputs'. With Snagit outputs, you send your captures directly from Snagit's Preview Window directly to the program or website of your choice with a single click. No need to save the capture and then find the saved image and import or paste into another program (that's way too many extra steps!).

You can download the Snagit outputs here. We have a Snagit output for: Screencast.com, Camtasia Studio, MindManager, Fog Creek FogBugz, Visual Studio Team System, Blogs (Movable Type, TypePad, WordPress.com and LiveJournal), Snagit Notes, Instant Messenger (Skype and AOL Instant Messenger), Flickr, and Microsoft Office (Word, OneNote, Excel and PowerPoint).

What other programs would you like to send your Snagit screen captures directly to? What would save you time?

I walked into our main office building today and immediately smelled a sweet treat! I was quickly reminded that today is a very special day here in the Midwest! We're celebrating Paczki Day (pronounced "poonchkey") at TechSmith!

Walter Pelowski brought in not one dozen, but 22 dozen paczkis into TechSmith today! Check out this quick 2 minute video that Kelly Rush and I got with Walter to learn about what a typical day is like for him at TechSmith as a Customer Solutions Engineer and learn all about paczkis and this special day!

And, in case you're wondering, 'Just how healthy is a paczki?'... Let me do the math for you. Walter brought in 22 dozen paczkis! That's 264 of these traditional Polish doughnuts which is more than one per person at TechSmith. Depending on the filling, a paczki typically has around 450 - 700 calories and 25 or more grams of fat! Grand total calorie count for all the paczkis = approximately 118,800 - 184,800 calories and around 6,600 grams of fat!

Here are a few more facts about Paczki Day - It originated as a day where Polish families would use up all the sugar, fats and fruits in the house before fasting for Lent. Paczki Day is similar to "Fat Tuesday" and "Mardi Gras". In the Detroit, Michigan area, they even have a Paczki Day Parade to celebrate!

You can see a few more pics of the paczkis at TechSmith here. Too bad you can't smell or taste them. Come visit us next year and try one! Anyone interested?

Up next in our behind the scenes interviews at TechSmith is Dirk Frazier. Dirk is the Product Manager of Jing and Screencast.com.

The video runs just over 8 minutes. Dirk fills me on his background, different roles he has had at TechSmith, what a typical day is like for him as a Product Manager, the exotic place he was born and... we also talked about the 5 minute screencast limit in Jing.

We've gotten a lot of feedback in the past about the 5 minute screencast limit in Jing. And, we'd love to hear your thoughts about the 5 minute screencast limit in Jing? Is it long enough or are you just getting started on your screencast? Chime in on the comments below.

The Jing Team and Dirk need all the feedback they can get to improve the product. Please send your feedback to the Jing team directly using this form. The more feedback and insight you can share as well as why you need something added or changed, the better. With your help, we can make better products!

Who would you like us to interview next at TechSmith?

I love watching the Super Bowl every year. Shhhhh, but don't tell anyone - I really just watch for the commercials. If my hometown team, the Detroit Lions, ever made it to the Super Bowl, I'd watch the game. :-)

I have to admit, one ad really caught my attention! Google ran an ad that was a screencast! And, that's our Screencast of the Week this week! I'm not sure the technology Google used. Regardless of that, I am happy to see screencasting hit big time. And, reports show that it cost over $2.5 million for a 30 second commercial. This has to be the world's most expensive screencast (and maybe most viewed screencast?)!

I loved this screencast - interesting story, the typing, cursor movement and zooms kept my attention, and nice background music! All wrapped together in a beautiful screencast! Almost made me a little teary! I love that a simple screencast can evoke that much emotion!

What'd you think of the screencast?

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email me or post in the comments!

Kelly Rush and I have been wandering the halls of TechSmith for our behind the scenes interviews. Cathy Nagle-Ervin left a comment on one of our recent videos requesting an interview with someone from Tech Support.

So Kelly and I headed down to our Tech Support department to grab some video. Meet Kate Sumbler, one of our seven Technical Support Specialists. Tech Support gets over 2,000 calls a month plus 2,000 emails for help on eight different products. And, they have written over 1,300 articles to help users. In this video, Kate will share with you what a typical day is like in Tech Support and how they can help. You'll also find about out the really unique gift her husband just got for her. The video runs just under 4 minutes.

Kate references this tutorial in the screencast about sharing files between Camtasia Studio (PC) and Camtasia for Mac.

By the way, we have a new YouTube channel - Channel TechSmith. We're adding new videos all the time. To keep up with the latest and greatest videos, we'd love it if you friended us or subscribed to Channel TechSmith.

Who else would you like to see us interview at TechSmith? How about our President, Bill Hamilton? What questions do you have for him?