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 had a great time at Autodesk University last week. I think I'm still trying to recover! I posted some pics on Flickr from the conference here.

Autodesk made a big announcement at the show. They are getting involved in Second Life! Part of their keynote was done in Second Life! You can find out more about their invovlement in Second Life here.

While out at Autodesk University, I met up with Jonathan Knowles (known in Second Life as Collaboration Source) and Brian Mathews (known in Second Life as Zarf Woodward), in Second Life.

Late last Wednesday night Jonathan and Brian made a quick screencast in Second Life with an update from the show. I got to play 'cameraman' and film them in Second Life with Camtasia.

You can read more about the video and watch it over here on Shaan Hurley's Blog. It's a longer video at 15 minutes.

Anyone want to meet-up in Second Life? My screename is: Tuesday McKay.

Put on your party hats, SnagIt Users...SnagIt 8.2 has been released today! What are you going to do to celebrate?!

My favorite feature? The print enhancements. It would never fail, I'd print my SnagIt captures and they'd be about the size of my thumbnail and usually unreadable. SnagIt 8.2 makes it easier to print your screen captures the same way you see them on the screen. Thank you, SnagIt team! You have no idea how many trees this will save...

I also like the new Callout styles. The callouts were updated with new styles - plain and glassy (I like glassy - so pretty and shiny!). The glassy ones are nice because they're transparent and don't cover up the words or images behind them. Also, you can create and save custom callouts with characteristics like size, shape, color and angle of rotation. This is useful if you want to reuse your custom callouts over and over again.

Planning to run Vista and Office 2007? SnagIt is compatible and ready to capture anything on Vista and Office 12.

And, I love this new feature...we have new SnagIt accessories so I can send my screen captures directly to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, MindManager, or Flickr with one click! I will be putting those to good use, especially the Flickr one (Have I told you lately how much I love Flickr?!)! Check out the accessories page here.

You can find out more information about what's new in SnagIt 8.2 here and download it here. Screencast should be coming later this week I'm told.

What's your favorite new feature or enhancement? What's on your wishlist for future releases?

In addition to SnagIt 8.2 release yesterday, we also have another new release! The German language version of Camtasia Studio v4 has been released!

What's new?

Support for portable media player video formats - Users can easily create M4V videos for video iPod.

Ability to create multiple files simultaneously - This is nice because you can make a screencast and produce it in several different formats (e.g., Flash, iPod, MP3, PowerPoint, etc.)

Audio enhancements (one of my fave new features) - Users can remove background noise and volume variations with one-click. This is useful for professional-sounding screencasts.

30-second previews - Instead of spending time producing your entire screencast, you can see how the first 30 seconds of a screencast will look and sound based on different production options before producing the entire video.

Closed Captioning - Users can synchronize voice narration with text displayed on the screen video to create videos that are accessible to a broad audience.

Shareable production profiles that allow individuals to share their screencast settings with others, helping organizations standardize the look and feel of all screencasts and get new users up and running quickly.

New quizzing and survey viewer interface -users can embed questions and get answers via email.

You can find more information about this release here.

Unfortunately I took Latin instead of German in school. The Camtasia Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein, was kind enough to translate this blog post to German which is posted below. Enjoy!

SnagIt 8.2 wurde heute veröffentlicht. Dazu haben wir auch eine neue deutsche Version von Camtasia Studio erhältlich.

Neuheiten in Camtasia Studio 4

Camtasia Studio produziert Videos für portable Mediaplayers. Benutzer können nun Videos für iPods in M4V Videoformatten erstellen.

Sie können nun gleichzeitig mehrere Videos produzieren in verschiedenen Formatten (z.b., Flash, iPod, MP3, PowerPoint, usw.)

Mit Audioverbesserungen (meine lieblings Neuheit) - können Sie Hintergrundgeraeusche entfernen, so wohl wie Lautstaerken ausgleichen und das mit einem Mausklick. Das macht für profi-tönnende Screencasts.

30-Sekunden Produktionvorschau- Statt das ganze Video zu erstellen, können Sie die erste 30 Sekunden des Videos produzieren und viel schneller die Qualität des Videos und Audio testen bevor Sie das endgültige Video produzieren. Mit dem Vorschaumanager können Sie auch die Dateigrösse und Qualität mehrere Videos vorschauen und vergleichen.

Flash Closed Captioning - Benutzer können die Beschriftinung mit ihren Videos synchronizieren damit sie von einem weiterreichenden Publikum gesehen werden.

Produktionprofile machen es schneller Ihr videos zu produzieren. Ins besonders, ist es **viel** leichter Windows Media videos zu erstellen, und zwar mit höheren Qualität. Sie können auch die Profiles mit anderen teilen um anderend zu helfen die gleiche Qualität zu erreichen wie Sie.

Nun, sehen unsere interaktive Tests und Umfragen professioneller aus in Version 4.

Mehr Information finden sie hier.

Der Camtasia Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein, hat das Text für das blogpost to übersetz. Seine Deutsche Lehrerinnen sind an seine grammatische Fehlern nicht schuld. ;-)

The SnagIt Product Manager, Tony Dunckel, and the Lead SnagIt Developer, Paul Middlin, geek out over SnagIt v8.2 in this new screencast.

They'll walked you through all the new features and enhancements of SnagIt v8.2.

Click the screenshot below. The screencast runs about 15 minutes. The video is also available for the iPod or MP3 so you can take them to go. Enjoy!

In case you missed it, Jon Udell announced today on his blog that he's leaving InfoWorld to be an Evangelist at Microsoft!

Many of you know, the screencasting movement began with Jon's blog post in November of 2004.

Jon was instrumental in developing the screencasting trend. He named it, defined the terms, explored it and continues to educate about the concept today. Jon interviewed himself to announce the news on his blog. You can read the post here.

Jon Udell has had such a profound affect on screencasting, TechSmith, Camtasia and me. Congrats, Jon! Everyone at TechSmith wishes you nothing but the best on your new adventure!

Many years ago I attended a great workshop all about blogs hosted by the AMA in Chicago. At that conferece I met Stepahn Spencer (pictured below), from Netconcepts. We chatted after the conference at a group dinner and he taught me so much in that short time about blogging and search engine optimization (SEO).

This week's Camtasia Studio screencast of the week comes from Stephan Spencer. Stephan recorded a 1 hour screencast all about optimizing your blog and RSS feeds for search engine optimization (SEO), which many of you will find useful. I learned a lot after watching it and have a list of changes for the Visual Lounge Blog and RSS feed after watching it.

Click the screenshot below to start to screencast. The video runs about an hour.

To learn more about Stephan, visit here.

I've been trying to learn more about video in general. Since I travel so much, I never have time to take classes so I've been scouring the net to find screencasts and tutorials.

Recently, I found Aanarav Sareen's (see pic below) screencasts at Creative Cow. Aanarav has created some Camtasia Studio screencasts with amazing tips and tricks about Premiere Pro. Aanarav has worked with CNN and other major broadcasters so he knows what he is talking about. Check out his screencasts here.

You read an interview with Aanarav here and read his bio here.

Any nominations for next week's screencast of the week? I wonder if anyone will send me a holiday screencast (hint, hint!)?

Way back in September (yes, I'm behind), at PowerPoint Live, Kathy Jacobs sat down with me to show me what's new with OneNote 2007, one of my favorite programs.

Not only is Kathy a PowerPoint MVP, but she is also a OneNote MVP. She's the expert and has even written a book about OneNote.

OneNote is a quick way for me to take, share and organize notes. I usually draft my blog posts, plan projects and write longer emails in it. And, it has a great option for searching all of your notes so you can easily find them. I love love love OneNote! Did I mention that I love OneNote?! I also love that OneNote autosaves your content. As soon as you type it, OneNote saves it so you never have to worry about losing your data if your computer crashes. I use it all the time and often use it instead of Word.

Click the screenshot below to start the screencast. It runs just under 10 minutes. Kathy shows me the new features and some tricks in the new version of OneNote 2007. We recorded this screencast in an uncontrolled environment so we did not have the ideal recording conditions between the audio and lighting, but it should be tolerable.

If you'd like to try out OneNote 2007, you can visit here to give it a try.

Any requests for the next screencast?

With the latest release of SnagIt version 8.2, we changed the way we draw our callouts in order to make them look nicer. What's the trade-off for better looking callouts? Now, when you open a .snag file created in older versions of SnagIt, the new callouts in SnagIt 8.2 will not match.

We had intended to put out a zip file with the stamps that would match the SnagIt 8.1 callouts so you could at least replace your callouts with stamps and text to have it match up. But...with all the release activities, it slipped our minds to put the zip file out for download.

You can download the stamps here.

You can open the "organize stamps" dialog from the stamps tool and add these PNG files to your custom stamps. Then, you can replace the callouts you have with the stamps in the zip file and add the text boxes on top of them.

I'm told that a tutorial will be posted shortly. I will link to it here on the blog and on del.icio.us.

Not the ideal process and we should have prepared you for the issues. Please accept our apologies...

I love it when people share their knowledge, don't you? Lawrence Liu over at Microsoft is doing just that. And, we all get to benefit!

He recently posted on his blog about using Camtasia Studio to create screencasts. You can read the post here. He also showed off some great SharePoint screencasts as well as some of his feedback on how to improve them.

And, he also made a "Recording a Screencast Demo with Camtasia Studio" white paper. You can check it out here (note - it's a Word doc).

I have to say, I was hooked on Lawrence's white paper as soon as I read his intro. He says, "Camtasia Studio is an awesome product..." I agree, but you know I'm biased. :-) His white paper will walk you through making your screencast from start to finish. It's a great resource.

I've bookmarked Lawrence's white paper in Del.icio.us here. Have you found any good resources to share?

Remember way back in September when we launched a new Web-based service for remote user research called UserVue? We had an update to UserVue this week.

So, what's new with UserVue?!

• You can now view markers in the .WMV file.
• You can facilitate, observe and record UserVue sessions in the Microsoft Vista environment. Basically, you can run all of UserVue's components on Microsoft Vista.
• We've added the ability for Marker information to be saved in a CSV file. That way you can easily open this in a spreadsheet application. Markers are also indexed in the WMV file and can be viewed in Windows Media Player.
• We have also increased the ability to work through the most common firewalls.

If you would like to learn more about UserVue, watch the screencast here and visit UserVue's homepage here

We've heard some great stories about how people are using UserVue. Check them out here. You can even watch a screencast about how Andrew MacNeill, a software architect at AKSEL Solutions, is using UserVue here.

And, there's a trial of UserVue so you can try it yourself.

If you've tried UserVue, what did you think?

I was inspired by Podcast expert, Leesa Barnes blog post about what to get your favorite podcaster for Christmas. That got me thinking...what would be the ultimate gifts for that screencaster in your life?

I divided the gifts up into three price levels - 'Loved-One', 'Liked-One' or 'That cousin you don't really know much about'...

Loved-One:

DVCam with mini tripod (we're partial to a Sony HDCam around here)

Adobe Premiere Elements - so they can tape and do some editing to the DV footage (export to AVI or WMV to use with Camtasia Studio)

Professional studio mic or USB Condenser mic (I've been using the Samson C01U)

Professional light/light kit

Camtasia Studio :-)

Liked-One:

Webcam (high-end one like the Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000 or Microsoft)

Lapel mic or headset microphone

2 x fluorescent neon tube lights (to turn vertically and use for lighting)

SnagIt :-)

That cousin you don't really know much about:

Webcam (whatever's cheap at Best Buy)

Standing garage halogen light (for decent lighting on the cheap)

Fun extras? How about green posterboard or fabric for chroma key green screen. We have a new green screen at TechSmith (we'll be putting that to good use in 2007!). And, they'll need something to show off their screencasts like a video iPod.

What's on your list?

Happy holidays from all of us at TechSmith! We have so many things to be thankful for this season and we're especially thankful for you. We're not just thankful at the holidays, but we're thankful for you all year long!

That brings me to another subject. We had some great holiday cards made this year. They're actually calendars with some fun ideas on what to do with all those old CDs you might have lying around. If you'd like your own copy, you can download the PDF here. They're made to fit in a CD holder (instructions included in the PDF).

I have some extra calendars. If you'd like me to send you one of our calendars, drop me an e-mail and include your name and shipping info.

Got any other ideas on what to do with all those old CDs?

Happy holidays!

Anyone headed out to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January?

If so, I'd love to meet-up! E-mail or call me on my cell phone (517.410.0030) if you'd like to meet-up at CES or in Las Vegas.

Not sure of my schedule yet, but I will be in and out of the Bloghaus and the Tablet PC and UMPC Dinner as well as meeting up with Camtasia users like the LabRats, GottaBeMobile, Neo-Fight, Long Zheng and more.

Let me be your roving reporter at the show. Is there anything you'd like me to check out? I'll be posting a lot of pics to Flickr throughout the show. And, if I'm feeling daring, maybe I'll even shoot some video although I'm debating dragging equipment around the crowded show floor. I'm clumsy enough without having to juggle a video camera and computer.

I was going through our inventory the other day and found a few extra copies of some great books and DVDs. Rather than have them sit around, I thought they should be put to good use.

I have 2 copies of the Flash 8 Video book by TechSmith friend, Tom Green (remember him from here?) and Jordan Chilcott.

Which reminds, me...The Flash 8 Video book is from Friends of Ed. They're running a Flash Video contest called Video:FLV'ED, through December 31. You can win a copy of Camtasia Studio among other great prizes like an Apple Macbook. Details are here.

Also, remember last year when we went to Fog Creek Software's office to use Morae to conduct usability testing on their new product, Copilot? You can read all about it here or here. While we were there, they were filming a documentary called, Aardvark'd. I have a few extra copies of the Aardvark'd DVD up for grabs. Also, Aardvark'd is being shown on the Documentary Channel - looks like you can catch it on January 5.

And, I have a few autographed books to share from Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software and Fog Creek Software fame! I have 3 copies of the following:

Joel on Software - If you don't know Joel, you should. I'm a huge fan of Joel's blog, Joel on Software - I learn something from him in every post. This book is a collection of some of the best articles from his blog. You don't have to be a developer to gain value from this book (or his blog) - It's useful for anyone in product or project management, managers, designers...heck, this book is useful if you work with or know a developer!

User Interface Design for Programmers - This is an entertaining and valuable book that teaches you about good User Interface (UI) design. My favorite chapter is chapter 13 - Those Pesky Usability Tests. Joel talks about "The Joel Uncertainty Principle" which states, "You can never accurately measure the usability of a software prodcut". You'll have to read the book to find out more! It also goes over how to conduct usability tests that actually work. You can read more about the book here. This is a great book for all you Morae and UserVue users out there.

The Best Software Writing I - I loved this book. When I heard about Joel's book being about software writing, I was skeptical that it would be engaging. Believe it or not, the essays are interesting and from a wide range of contributors!

All of the books by Joel Spolsky are autographed. How cool is that?! Keep in mind that all of Joel's books are good for just about anyone - you don't need to be a developer.

I'm not going to make you jump through any hoops for these or conduct some elaborate contest. I just ask that you put the books to good use and read them. Maybe give yourself some good karma and pass them on when you're done. E-mail me if you'd like one of the books or Aardvark'd DVD. I'll post in the comments when all the books and DVDs have found new homes.

I've said it before, I'll say it again...A Tablet, together with Camtasia Studio, is magic!

I was poking around on YouTube and found Sycra, who has made several interesting screencasts using a Wacom Tablet and Camtasia Studio for drawing tutorials. I found myself actually sketching along with the screencast. Click on the video below to launch a recent screencast from Sycra.

I wouldn't be surprised if you find yourself sketching along to the screencast too!