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:
- 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.)
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Comments (2)
Superb Screencast. It's rare for an ADD guy like me to sit through an 8 minute plus presentation. This is the kind of screencast that keeps you riveted to the information.
Excellent key points. Good audio and the powerpoint slide/images made me remember the key points. I immediately downloaded the Mac answers.com widget. Too bad there wasn't a link to Jay's email :-(
Posted by Len Charnoff | March 13, 2006 9:28 AM
Posted on March 13, 2006 09:28
Hi Len,
Jay posts his email at the end of the movie.
You'll have to watch it again. ;-)
Betsy Weber
Posted by Betsy Weber | March 13, 2006 10:29 AM
Posted on March 13, 2006 10:29