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March 2006 Archives

March 2, 2006

The World Needs More Lees!

Posted on Thursday March 2, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I have to tell you about someone I met at FlashForward yesterday, Lee Brimelow. He has an amazing Web site www.gotoandlearn.com chockfull of free Flash tutorials...all made with Camtasia Studio! These are some of the best Camtasia Studio videos I've seen lately.

Like the way his site looks? He'll share the FLA file with you so you can make your own template. So, not only does he make great Flash tutorials that you can watch and learn from for free, but he's also a nice guy!

Lee graciously agreed to do a screencast with us. Watch him talk with Troy Stein about his use of Camtasia Studio and all about his site. In all honesty, I think it's the best screencast we've had on our blog to date. Click the screenshot below to watch it.

We're not the only ones that think Lee is great - last year, he won the FlashForward Award in New York for an education site.

If you're interested in learning more about Lee, visit his website or his blog.

Plus, if you visit, www.gotoandlearn.com, he has a mailing list that will let you know when he posts a new video- be sure to sign up for that.

Anyone out there need a Flash Developer? I suggest you steal Lee...I asked, and he wasn't even remotely interested in moving from Stanford, California to Michigan!

Here's a pic with Lee and I at the TechSmith booth.

To see some pictures of our trip to Seattle and FlashForward, please visit here.

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O'Reilly Emerging Technology - Meet-up in San Diego

Posted on Thursday March 2, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I'm so excited! Next week I'll be attending the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conferencein San Diego, and the lineup of speakers and topics looks amazing!

I'm really looking forward to see people like Jon Udell, whom I (and many others) consider the father of screencasting, and Joel Spolsky, whom I have the distinct honor of co-presenting on usability. See a pic below with Joel from my visit to Fog Creek Software's office last year.

If you're attending the show or out in the San Diego area and want to meet up, drop me a line on my cell phone - 517.410.0030 or catch me on MSN IM - b.weber@techsmith.com.

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March 3, 2006

Camtasia Studio Screencast of Vista

Posted on Friday March 3, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I'm sitting in Detroit Metro Airport after catching the redeye home from the FlashForward Conference in Seattle - and I decided to spring for the overly expensive wifi because I've found something so exciting!

I found a great Camtasia Studio screencast that I can't wait to show off - finally! I've been hoping to see how the next Windows OS, Vista, works beyond the screenshots I've seen posted.

Chris Henley at Microsoft has posted a Camtasia Studio screencast about Vista's Speech Recognition on his blog, Blue. You can read his post about the screencast here.

If you're curious to see Vista in action, check out the video. I may be a little biased (OK, a lot), but I think this video of Vista is much more compelling than the basic screenshots I've seen in the past.

Click the screenshot below to launch the video podcast.

Vista Screenshot

Chris says he has more Vista screencasts planned. Can't wait to see what he shows us in his next video podcast!

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March 10, 2006

Great Camtasia Studio Screencast from O'Reilly ETech and More!

Posted on Friday March 10, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I had an amazing time at the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Show! I have jet lag, but it's well worth it. At the show, I met up with some cool people like Yoz Grahame from Ning at our booth.

Yoz made an amazing Camtasia Studio screencast, plus he detailed the creation process on his blog. If you're interested in screencasting, he has a lot of great tips and tricks and mentions some 'gotchas' to avoid. You can read some of his screencasting tips here.

Click the screenshot below to see his screencast!

I didn't know much about Ning before I saw the screencast, but now I know more - Ning gives you a way to create your own Social Web App in just a few steps. It's easy - check it out here.

There's even an alternate screencast. He used the same Camtasia Studio video screen capture, except he just replaced the audio. Trust me, you want to spend the extra six minutes to hear his alternate version. It's like a Monty Python screencast! Truly brilliant! Click here to view the alternate screencast.

I can't wait to see what Yoz comes up with next.

I spoke on Tuesday with Joel Spolksy about Project Aardvark, now known as Copilot, and usability. Part of the talk was based off of this PDF white paper about User Experience - UX 2.0.

If anyone is interested, I can upload the PowerPoint slides. Let me know.

Click here for some pics from our trip out to San Diego for the O'Reilly show.

Hat tip to Jon Udell for posting the Ning screencast on his blog.

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March 11, 2006

Camtasia Screencast of the Week - Answers.com

Posted on Saturday March 11, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Jay Bailey at Answers.com sent me this Camtasia Studio video - I was enthralled!

Click the screenshot below to launch the screencast:

Want to make your own screencast like this? Jay said it took 200 PowerPoint slides to create this type of screencast recording. The PowerPoint slides had very little automatic animation because he needed control over the timing.

He told me, "It's almost impossible to do it perfectly from beginning to end. So I actually did in lots of pieces, so that if I screwed up a specific element, I could weave in a cleaned up copy."

I asked Jay for his tips in making a presentation like this and he sent me the following tips and tricks:

  1. Don't even attempt to record it all in one go. Camtasia makes it simple to record in sections that you can patch together (auto-name so you can quickly F10 and get to the next section without changing your voice tone, volume, etc.)
  2. Use selected images repetitively to allow to watcher brain to "rest" with a familiar image. Otherwise, it can be a lot to absorb. Also, don't use a lot of PowerPoint's animation, except to make elements appear and vanish. This style is sort of the answer to all that over-used PPT stuff.
  3. In product demos in general (and this one in particular), make sure to modulate your voice often, changing speed and tone. The goal is to achieve ongoing variety in both the images and the sound. Unless viewers have a real vested interest, many will drop off in the middle unless they feel like it's a conversational experience rather than a speech.
  4. Use your keyboard to advance slides in PPT, not the mouse. I found that the sharp mouse click tended to get picked up over the mic.

For more information about using Camtasia Studio and PowerPoint together, visit here.

Good luck making your screencasts! E-mail me or post links to them here. I'd love to show them off.

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How do you test GPS usability in a moving car? With Morae!

Posted on Saturday March 11, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I was just alerted to this news story from one of my RSS feeds! Morae was used to test the usability of a GPS navigation system. What's great about this is that you could not have tested this in a traditional usability lab. They needed a portable solution to test a handheld device, and that's where Morae came in.

Read more about the news story here.

And, you can visit our website for an interview with Rob Tannen, PhD, is Director of Human Factors at Electronic Ink, for more information.

This is more of the more unique ways I've heard Morae used. Anyone else have Morae stories to share?

As an added bonus, I was just sent a video made Camtasia Studio from Todd Follansbee of Web Marketing Resources. He shares how he does usability testing of a Web site with Morae. Click here to watch his video.

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March 15, 2006

TechSmith User Conference?

Posted on Wednesday March 15, 2006 by Betsy Weber

So...I need your input, blog readers.

If we were to have a TechSmith User Conference about all things SnagIt, Camtasia Studio and Morae, would you attend?

No, I wouldn't make you come to Michigan in January! If we were to do this, we'd have the conference in a more central geographical location. It would run one or two days, and it would probably feature top user tips and tricks, feedback sessions with the development teams, tutorial sessions, and conference papers.

There are no guarantees that this will happen – currently, I'm just trying to find out if there's enough interest.

Or, if you didn't want to travel, would you consider doing an online user conference?

I'd love to hear what you think - thanks! Comment away!

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March 16, 2006

What does Camtasia Studio have in common with Jolt Cola?

Posted on Thursday March 16, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Camtasia Studio won the Jolt Product Excellence Award last night at the Software Developer Magazine conference, SDWest!

Camtasia Studio was up against other great products in the Utilities category, including SnagIt and FogCreek's Copilot.

If you're interested in more information, here's a link to information about the award and a list of all the finalists.

Camtasia Studio has been on an award streak lately. Other awards recently won by Camtasia Studio include:

  • Technology & Learning Magazine's Award of Excellence
  • Presentations Magazine's Standing Ovation Award
  • SIIA CODiE Finalist for Best Technology Solution - Corporate Learning

For more information about Camtasia Studio's recent awards, visit here.

I looked all over for bottles of Jolt to celebrate with, but couldn't find any in the stores. Do they only sell it only online now?

So, congrats to Camtasia Studio and the other finalists! We're in good company...

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PowerPoint to Video and DVD with Camtasia Studio

Posted on Thursday March 16, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Guess what happened in a meeting this morning? Tech support team members were talking about how many calls they get from people asking how to put Camtasia Studio videos to DVD.

The best part? I already wrote an article about this for Indezine.com last year, and I thought it might help you, too.

If you'd like to take your Camtasia Studio videos and put them on a DVD, check out this article here. Even though it was written for Camtasia Studio 2.1, it still should work fine, as most screens still look the same.

Any other articles or tutorials you'd like to see? I'll see if we've already written an article on it. Or, I'll see if we can get it written.

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March 17, 2006

Stand by me, stand by me...

Posted on Friday March 17, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I'm often asked to attend user group and other meetings to present about SnagIt, Camtasia Studio and Morae. While I'd love to attend every meeting, I can't always go. (You know, the job, husband, dog, and various activities like knitting, gardening and concerts tend to sometimes get in the way.)

So, we have the perfect experiment idea! If you'd like TechSmith to present at your meeting, I have access to Live Meeting, plus a webcam and microphone. We can try presenting to your group remotely! We can run a short presentation followed by Q&A in real time.

E-mail if you're interested in having us babble on about our products and other techie topics. I promise not to subject you to too many of my bad jokes, but you'll get some. I mean, we want it to be like real life, right?

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March 20, 2006

Camtasia Studio Playback Controls

Posted on Monday March 20, 2006 by Betsy Weber

We've gotten some flack here for taking away the old playback controls.

This is our fault and we apologize.

The good news is... we're listening.

We're bringing back the old playback controls in 3.1.1 (due out April -- I'll post an exact date when it becomes available).

But, if you like 3.1.0, and wish to use the playback controls from 3.0 now, rest assured there is a workaround that may meet your needs.

Please note: this is a temporary fix. This is not supported by technical support, but it should get you up and running with the old controllers plus give you the benefits of the 3.1 features.

Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, has made a great video. Follow along!

View the how-to video http://www.projectstreamer.com/users/troystein/CS3_controllers/

Also, if your Flash file plays back in a Web page with a non-white background, see step 4 below for instructions.

The following steps will help you use the old controllers.

  1. Close Camtasia Studio.
  2. Make a back-up of the original playback controllers and config_template files:
    1. Create back-up copies of three (3) files.
    2. The first two can be found in:
    3. C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 3\Media\Studio\SWF
    4. Select these two files: fp7_controller.swf and fp8_controller.swf.
    5. Rename them to: Original_fp7_controller.swf and Original_fp8_controller.swf.
    6. The third file can be found in:
    7. C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 3\Media\Studio\HTML
    8. Select the following file: config_template.xml
    9. and rename it to: Original_config_template.xml
    10. This will allow you to revert back to the old controllers and xml file if this workaround does not meet your needs.
  3. Download the Modified Files
    1. Download a zip file containing the new controllers and config files from:
    2. http://download.techsmith.com/camtasiastudio/replacements.zip
    3. Unzip the folder to your desktop.
    4. Open the folder on your desktop and copy these files: fp7_controller.swf and fp8_controller.swf
    5. To the following location: C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 3\Media\Studio\SWF
    6. Open the folder on your desktop and copy the following file: Config_template.xml
    7. Paste it to the following location:
    8. C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 3\Media\Studio\HTML
  4. Produce a Flash file
    Open Camtasia Studio. Add a short clip to the timeline for testing purposes. When you publish your files, choose Flash (SWF and FLV). The flash file will produce with the modified controllers. You'll notice that we've added a volume control to the old controller. See step 6 below to change this setting.
  5. Changing the Background Color (optional)
    If your videos are playing from within a white HTML page, disregard this step.
    If your videos play inside a non-white HTML page, you will need to modify Camtasia Studio's output.
    1. Open the source of the HTML page you produced.
    2. From the edit menu, choose Replace or Control-H.
    3. Under Find What: enter FFFFFF (six F's)
    4. Under Replace With, enter the value that matches your pages background color. For example "00000" for black.
    5. Save the HTML file - be sure to save it as an HTML page and not as TXT file.
    6. Double click the HTML file to view the changes. You may have to reload your browser page to get the color changes to be accepted.
  6. Removing the Volume Controls (optional)
    If you would rather not have the volume controls as part of any of your HTML pages you produce, then you'll need to go to:
    1. C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 3\Media\Studio\HTML
    2. modify the following file: Config_template.xml
    3. Right-click it and choose to Open With and select Notepad.
    4. The fifth line down should read: <HasAudio type="Boolean">$SWFHasAudio</HasAudio>
    5. Remove the following: $SWFHasAudio
    6. And replace it with a zero, so that it reads: <HasAudio type="Boolean">0</HasAudio>

So, this brings us to another point: if you ever have feedback about the products, please feel free to e-mail me and I'll send it to the appropriate teams. Comment here on the blog, or use the feedback form on our Web site - http://www.techsmith.com/company/contact/productfeedback.asp

What else do you want changed or updated? We're listening!

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March 22, 2006

SnagIt Profiles Demystified

Posted on Wednesday March 22, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Often I do the same screen capture over and over...Region capture, torn edge effect, saved to a file in .jpg format. Ever do routine screen captures like me? I got really tired of manually setting up that same screen capture over and over. Did you know you can save your favorite or most commonly used screen captures with your own custom SnagIt Profiles? And, even share those profiles with others?

Microsoft Word MVP, Dian Chapman has a great SnagIt tutorial this month about Custom Profiles in her newsletter, TechTrax. Check it out - She's a lot more articulate than I am, so I'll let her walk you through it step by step. Click here to read the tutorial.

If you're looking for more great tips and tricks about using computers, sign up for Dian's newsletter here.

On my last trip to Chicago I was lucky enough to meet up with Dian and Greg Chapman. She gave me a great insider's tour of the Windy City in her convertible! Here's a pic from our visit...Greg Chapman (far right) is pretending to shoot me at the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in North Chicago!

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EnSharpen Announcement

Posted on Wednesday March 22, 2006 by Betsy Weber

How many of you know about our fourth product, the EnSharpen Video Codec for QuickTime?

Well, we've just come out with a new release!

What's a codec you ask? Codecs, which stands for compressor/decompressor, are applied to audio, video and image files to compress their sizes. The benefit is that the files don't use as much disk space when stored or as much network bandwidth when streamed.

Back to the EnSharpen codec - EnSharpen 1.1 came out yesterday. This release was created for use on Macintosh computers equipped with Mac OS X v10.4.4 or later, using Intel processors and Power PC processors.

This is a free update for Macintosh edition EnSharpen customers.

EnSharpen integrates with Camtasia Studio, QuickTime Pro, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Snapz Pro, iMovie and all other Macintosh and Windows authoring and editing tools that allow access to third party video codecs for QuickTime.

Here's a little factoid for you - EnSharpen is the first delivery codec to provide Macintosh users with lossless quality and a high compression ratio. EnSharpen also enables all AVI video files encoded with the original TSCC codec to play in the QuickTime Player on the Macintosh and Windows platforms.

Again, this is a free upgrade for current EnSharpen for Mac customers!

For more information, visit EnSharpen's Web page here.

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March 24, 2006

Custom Button Hack in Camtasia Studio MenuMaker

Posted on Friday March 24, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Tech Support recently had someone ask if there was a way to use custom navigation buttons in Camtasia Studio MenuMaker. The customer asked, "Is there a way to produce custom buttons in MenuMaker? I see there is a file containing .cmmbtn files, so how can I produce one of these myself? I'd really like to use text - rather than arrows - for navigation."

I thought the rest of you might be interested in this as well, so I bugged one of the developers, David Cheng, to make a screencast about it.

David Cheng, TechSmith Developer

David said, "Keep in mind that these techniques are not officially supported. I'll try to help you as much as possible, but it may not work as well as you like." So, you've been warned!

If you're feeling adventurous, David has written a tutorial (see below). And, click on the screenshot below to watch his screencast:

Each cmmbtn file is a zip archive containing the following files:

  • button.xml
  • normal graphic
  • mouse-over graphic
  • pressed graphic

All the graphics are the PNG file format.

In order to make your own custom cmmbtn files, there are two major steps:

  1. Preparing the PNG files
  2. Creating the cmmbtn file

Preparing the PNG file
There are 3 PNGs that represent the look of the button, depending on the mouse activity above the cursor. All three files must have the same dimensions, as well as an alpha mask. The clickable region of the button is defined by the alpha mask. I don't have much experience with the creation of 32-bit PNG files with alpha masks, but I imagine you'd create them with something like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro.

You'll note that all the buttons we included are grayscale. This is so we can colorize them based on the template that is chosen. When you create your own buttons, you can create whatever colors you'd like and just choose not to colorize them in the button options.

Creating the cmmbtn file
Here are the steps you can take to create the actual button archive:

  1. Go to the Media\MenuMaker\Buttons folder and make a copy of one of the .cmmbtn files. Call it "My Button.cmmbtn".
  2. Rename it to "My Button.cmmbtn.zip" and extract the files.
  3. Open the button.xml file in a text editor
  4. Change the <FileNormal>, <FileHover> and <FilePressed> takes to refer to your png files. The other tags aren't really used.
  5. Modify the GUID to something else random. Each button has to have a unique GUID, so just change any of the numbers to another hexadecimal digit (0-9, a-f).
  6. Remove the .zip extension from "My Button.cmmbtn.zip", make sure it's in your Media\Menumaker\Buttons folder, and the new button should show up in the buttons dialog! The name it will take will be "My Button" or whatever you name the cmmbtn file to.

Anyone doing this? I'd be interested to hear. Also, is this something you'd like to easily do in future releases of Camtasia Studio?

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The Results are in for the Morae Outrageous Lab Contest

Posted on Friday March 24, 2006 by Betsy Weber

The results are in for the Morae Outrageous Lab Contest

Congratulations to all who entered the Morae Outrageous Lab Contest! It was fun to read all the submissions and to see what the labs were like before and after the Morae makeover! It was hard to pick a winner - there were so many great entries! I'm glad to see the Apple video iPod go to a nice new home...all the way over in Finland. I showed great restraint and didn't even open it.

First place (Apple's video iPod)

Mike SolaMikko Sola, usability consultant, WM-data, Finland

Before: "All of this sounds very technical and hard labor, and believe me, it was. We would not trade back to our previous system unless we would be paid double from our clients.

After:"We have performed several tests with Morae and found it to be useful and a productive environment for performing usability tests."


Second place (webcam and pocket drive)

Scott KincaidScott Kincaid, Director of Usability Services, Usability Sciences Corp.

Before: "To record the computer screen, we had to actually mount a camera on the wall behind the participants and capture the image over their shoulder. A 20 minute highlight tape took 1-1.5 days to create."

After: "We needed to create a quick 10 minute highlight from the findings... by using Morae we were able to create and compile this whole piece within 30 minutes."


Third place (Morae lamp and motherboard notebook)

Artie PajakArtie Pajak, usability analyst, University of California, San Diego

Before: "The camera is shooting over the participant's left shoulder and his face is in the mirror. Don't miss the tape dispenser... heavy enough to keep the bottom from sliding off the table."

After: "I've got a portable lab. Morae has allowed me to get rid of the cables, the TV, the MiniDV tapes, the Wal-Mart mirror and that heavy tape dispenser!"


Fourth place (Morae coffee kit)

Ron PerkinsRon Perkins, Principal, Design Perspectives

Before: "My friends called it the 'James Bond Kit'; two black cases full of hardware and wires. I called it a huge headache."

After: "Set up time is about 10 minutes including laptop booting up. It is reduced to about three steps and two plug ins.



Honorable Mentions:

Phil Ohme, Certified Human Factors Professional, Intuit, Inc.
- For leaving $200,000 in lab setup costs to switch to Morae

Todd Follansbee, VP, Web Marketing Resources LLC
- For bringing along his lovely dog Otis on his Morae journey

Robert Thompson, Usability Analyst, Option One Mortgage Corp.
- For reducing both the time and stress levels involved in usability testing

Tobias Limbach, senior research consultant, argonauten360, Germany
- For the most creative pre-Morae cable simile: "All cables ended below a desk so you had to root through a massive black, dusty heap, bundled up like spaghetti. Not the type of spaghetti you curl up and suck down tutto bene, oh no, more like the type you get on your fork and instantly they slap in your face - que."

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March 25, 2006

SnagIt is 'Drop Dead Useful'

Posted on Saturday March 25, 2006 by Betsy Weber

We had a SnagIt party on Friday at TechSmith. We're celebrating the perfect 5-Star rating PC Magazine awarded SnagIt 8. SnagIt was the only program to receive a perfect rating out of the 11 utilities included in the Incredibly Useful Utilities category. We are in great company - two of my other favorite apps were also in the same category...Google Earth and Trillian.

To read more about SnagIt's 5-Star rating, visit PC Magazine here.

See SnagIt's other awards here.

And, if you want to learn some new SnagIt tips and tricks, I found this great SnagIt 8 tutorial over at the Homemade Tutorials Blog.

Pics from our party are here on Flickr.

Join in the celebration! I'm sending out SnagIt care packages to the first ten people who comment here on what they like about SnagIt and how it helps them. If you're one of the first ten people to comment, make sure you e-mail me your mailing address and t-shirt size. Ready, set, post!

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March 27, 2006

What's in a Name?

Posted on Monday March 27, 2006 by Betsy Weber

I'm hearing a lot of terms thrown around for videos, and I'm getting confused. Am I the only one?

Jon Udell coined the term 'screencast' which I'm partial to. Since you're 'broadcasting your screen' on your blog or Web site, it seems logical. That's how I usually refer to Camtasia Studio video online.

I've also been hearing videos referred to as Vodcasts, Vidcasts, and Video Podcasts. The Tablet PC bloggers over at GottaBeMobile.com are calling Camtasia Studio videos on the Tablet PC...Ink Shows. Ink Show makes sense to me - I definitely like it for Tablet PC Camtasia Studio videos.

Chris Henley over at Microsoft is calling them Podcasts on his Blue Blog.

Tim Fahlberg at CoolSchoolTools.com is calling his Camtasia math videos: MathCasts.

Paul Pival, the Distant Librarian is calling them Librarycasting.

Anyone hear other terms? What do you think Camtasia Studio video on blogs should be called?

On a side note, I found this nice article online about the seven things you need to know about screencasting. It has an education focus, but the information is useful. Check it out here.

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March 29, 2006

Undocumented Camtasia Studio Features

Posted on Wednesday March 29, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Shhh, can you keep a secret? I'm going to let you in on a few undocumented features in Camtasia Studio.

Brooks Andrus, our Flash guru, put together a few examples about how to customize your Flash table of contents, as well as a couple of other features. These are more for super users than beginners, since they aren't supported by tech support. In order to use these customizations you'll need to download the .xml file provided below each example. Then you'll need to open the config.xml file found in your project folder and compare it to the downloaded config.xml file to see where the changes need to be made.

The example below demonstrates a custom Table of Contents (TOC) color, Iridium:
http://www.projectstreamer.com/users/bandrus/custom_toc_bg_color/ Iridium.html

Download the config.xml file that corresponds to custom TOC background colors here:
http://download.techsmith.com/blog/custom_toc_bg_color_config.xml


screenshot of config.xml


This example demonstrates alternating TOC row colors:
http://www.projectstreamer.com/users/bandrus/custom_toc_alternate_row/ Iridium.html

Download the config.xml file that corresponds to alternating TOC row colors here:
http://download.techsmith.com/blog/custom_toc_alternate_row_config.xml


screenshot of config.xml


This demonstrates alternating TOC row colors based on the depth of the TOC hierarchy:
http://www.projectstreamer.com/users/bandrus/custom_toc_alternate_ depth/nested_toc_markers.html

Download the config.xml file that corresponds to alternating TOC row colors based on the depth of the TOC hierarchy here:
http://download.techsmith.com/blog/nested_toc_markers_config.xml


screenshot of config.xml


This example illustrates how to add a horizontal scroll bar to your table of contents, as well as how to play around with the blending modes that were introduced in Flash 8. Brooks liked the psychedelic desktop effect that you get when you apply the "difference" blending mode. I have to agree with him!
http://www.projectstreamer.com/users/bandrus/custom_toc_scroll_ video_effect/custom_toc_scroll_video_effect.html

Download the config.xml file that corresponds to this example here:
http://download.techsmith.com/blog/custom_toc_scroll_video_effect_ config.xml



If you customize your Flash table of contents, let me know. Send me links to your videos - I want to have your content shine and show it off on this blog!

Let me know if you like information like this. I can bug the developers for more in depth screencasts about this or other topics.

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Are you passionate about SnagIt, Camtasia, or Morae?
You could be in a book...

Posted on Wednesday March 29, 2006 by Betsy Weber

When I attended the O'Reilly Emerging Tech show, I had the pleasure of sitting in on a workshop conducted by author Kathy Sierra. She has a great blog too!

She's working on a new book about passionate users of tech products. She defines 'passionate users' as people who are "always learning, growing, and improving in some way related to the tool." So, if you'd like to share your story with her, she might include you in the book!

You can read more about what she's looking for and how to contact on her blog, Creating Passionate Users.

I hope you'll share your stories with her. If you're not passionate about our products, I hope you'll share with us what you don't like - so we can improve!

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March 30, 2006

Want to Screencast your lectures? Randy will tell you how!

Posted on Thursday March 30, 2006 by Betsy Weber

Are you interested in screencasting, but don't know where to start? I just heard from Randy Manteufel at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He did a whole workshop on just that!

Randy Manteufel

Randy's workshop covered the basics of how to screencast lectures and share them with students. He used a Tablet PC, Microsoft Journal, and Camtasia Studio, plus a microphone. He uploaded the files into a WebCT course page and linked for student access. Randy also shares his preferences and techniques.

The best part? Randy recorded the workshop with Camtasia Studio! So, even though you and I did not attend the workshop, we can still watch the event. It's just like being there! Except, I can watch the screencast at 1:00am in my pajamas on the couch at home. And, I can watch it over and over! Okay, it's almost better than being there.

Click the image below to watch the screencast:

screenshot

Randy also has tips for recording lectures and presentations. Here's what he had to say:

The workshop was for faculty who are potential first-time users of Camtasia and teach quantitative courses like engineering.

Tips:

  1. Use Microsoft Journal on a TabletPC (I really like the HP Compaq tc4200)
  2. Produce Macromedia Flash (swf) files, 800by600, 2 frames/sec
  3. Skip the QuickCam and picture-in-picture, at least for lectures
  4. It is very tempting to use technology to blow through material, so I have to force myself to slow down and show each step in the derivation or solution
  5. Launch onto the Internet in the middle of a lecture to show a dynamic simulation or video clip or something. It piques the interest of students when you show something with action that is beyond the textbook

Randy sent examples of other screencasts, like these from his engineering courses about statics. Thanks Randy, I was trying to forget that stuff...

http://engineering.utsa.edu/~randymanteufel/Feb9/Feb9.html
http://engineering.utsa.edu/~randymanteufel/Feb14/Feb14.html

and ME 4239 Thermodynamics II:

http://engineering.utsa.edu/~randymanteufel/Feb13/Feb13.html
http://engineering.utsa.edu/~randymanteufel/Feb15/Feb15.html

Anyone else capturing their lectures or presentations? E-mail me! I'd love to show you off! Share your tips and tricks with us.

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March 2006 Archives

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