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!

Bill Meyers has been busy. And, I mean busy! He's been making lots of screencasts!

I got an email from his this week about some of his recent screencasts. The screencasts are useful so I thought I'd share them with you!

Bill has a lot of experinece in the video world. And, you can tell!

Here are some of his recent screencasts:

• Add background audio track to your Camtasia Studio screencasts. Click here.
• Video Tip of the week - using Sizer to automatically size window when recording screencasts. Click here.
• Green Screen Magic - a two minute guide to chromakey with Sony Studio. Click here.
• A quick guide to getting the most out of YouTube. Click here.

Bill also posted the quick guide to getting the most out of YouTube screencast...to YouTube. You can view it below.

A while ago, Bill also sent a video with his top tips for screencasting which you view here.

Thanks Bill for sharing your knowledge with us. If you'd like to learn more about Bill, visit his site here or here for a case study about him.

I'll add these videos to our del.icio.us bookmarks here so you can find them later.

I love that Camtasia records your screen in real-time. As you know, just hit record and it captures all the action on the screen.

I was poking around the internet and found a great example of why real-time recording is important. I found the following Camtasia Studio on YouTube about an addictive little game, Line Rider.

Have you seen this? You draw sledding course with lines and send a little sledder plummeting down your track. Easier said than done.

Check out the Camtasia Studio screencast below.

You've been warned! Don't blame if you lose several hours of your time tonight playing Line Rider. ;-) And, hey, make me a video of a cool website or application you've found and I'll share it on the blog.

One of the things I love about Camtasia Studio is the fact it can be faster to make a video than to write an e-mail or report.

Lately, I've been making screencasts to show new technology to my fellow TechSmithies and friends. I thought I'd share some of the videos with you (if you don't mind). Nick Gorsline, our Senior Web Designer, sat down to make a screencast about Twitter with me.

I'm addicted to Twitter. Basically it's a social broadcast site - you simply sign-up, add friends and post what you're currently doing or thinking (really, anything) from the web, IM, or your phone...in 140 characters or less. Simple! Now I can show the world how boring I really am! :-)

Actually, I like Twitter because it is conversational. At first I was skeptical of it, but you learn a lot about your friends and contacts that you might not learn through e-mail or blog posts. And, all your favorite techies are on Twitter like Robert Scoble of PodTech, Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome, Marc Orchant from ZDNet and Foldera, Jeff Barr from Amazon, Tablet PC MVP James Kendrick and Kevin Tofel and more...

Click the screenshot below to start the video. It's under 5 minutes.

Twitter has cut down on e-mail for me. I've posted messages on Twitter instead of sending e-mail. And, some of us have been using it for conference meet-ups. I've also met other local techies in Michigan.

If you join Twitter, add me as a friend. You can find me under the Twitter ID, 'Betsy Weber' on Twitter. Original, huh?

To make this video, I used Camtasia Recorder. Then, in Camtasia Studio, I removed a few seconds of the intro and produced it. When listening to the audio during editing, I noticed, I say 'um' or 'cool' a lot. My feature request for the Camtasia Studio team? An 'um' filter, please! I need an automated way to cut all the 'ums' out...or train myself not to say it at all. ;-)

Hardware:

• Dell Latitude D820
• Samson CO3U Microphone

Software:

• Camtasia Studio

Screencast expert Jon Udell recently posted a great screencast here and had a blog post with his screencasting tips here.

I love his point about resizing the application window that you will be recording down to 800x600. It not only helps with file size but it also helps your viewers focus on the action. If you think about it, most of the action on your screen takes place in a very small area. Plus, don't you hate having to use the scroll bars when trying to view a video? The Zoom and Pan feature in Camtasia can be particularly useful when recording a smaller screen. In Camtasia, you can zoom and pan while recording or after you've recorded the screencast during editing. I prefer to zoom and pan during editing - the less I have to do at record time, the better.

I also love his tip about editing. Cut off the extra footage and take the video down to the essentials. The longer the screencast we make, the fewer viewers. I have a hard time keeping our screencasts short, but I'm working on it. I have to learn to shut up! :-)

I also agree with Jon's tip to make screencasts more interactive. I find screencasting with someone is easier and more entertaining. That's how I usually do our screencasts. I prefer not to screencast solo. Plus, you get to hear more than my point of view. I prefer to watch and make interview-style screencasts.

You can read all of Jon's tips here. What tips do you have after watching or creating some screencasts?

Ever use Microsoft Paint? Who hasn't? Some people use it much better than others! That is certainly the case with a video I found this week.

I recently used Paint, and, it wasn't pretty. Here's an example of me trying to write my signature using only Paint and my mouse. It is legible enough, but it certainly doesn't match my real signature or look very good.

So, here's the amazing Camtasia video. Somehow the author is able to draw a realistic car using only Paint and a mouse! He's not even using a Tablet PC!

I also like the video because they use a little known feature in Camtasia Studio. Did you know that you can speed up or slow down your clip speed? If you right click on your timeline, you should see the menu below.

Click on 'Clip Speed'. From there you can speed up or slow down your clip.

This is a handy feature. Especially if you'd like to shorten a lengthy video or slow down a clip to add additional audio.

We also had a video about this in our '30 Camtasia Studio Videos in 30 days' series which you can view here.

What amazing Camtasia Studio videos have you seen lately?

There are so many great screencasts cropping up out there its hard to decide on just one 'Screencast of the Week'.

This week's honors go to CAD guru, Robin Capper. He did a screencast about an app I can't live without, MindManager by MindJet. He made the video to share with IT about how he documents the design related applications. You can read more here. Check out the video below.

I love to use MindManager to plan big projects and brainstorming. Plus it works well with Tablet PCs and Wacom Tablets. It helps me communicate more clearly and visually. Plus, it works great with SnagIt. There is a SnagIt Output accessory for MindManager which lets you add your screencaptures to your maps in a single click. You can download and learn more about the SnagIt Output here.

And, I had the honor of meeting Robin at Autodesk University last year. Remember? He used Camtasia Studio to win a free trip from New Zealand to attend the conference!

In interest of full disclosure, I was given the latest version of MindManager, but in the past I have purchased my copies.

Remember way back here when I blogged about storyboarding your screencasts?

I was hanging out at a bookstore the other day and found something really fab! I'm addicted to these Moleskine notebooks for many reasons (thick paper, nice pocket, etc). So, I was really happy to see that they now make a storyboard notebook! Plus, it's the perfect size little notebook to jam in your pocket or backpack so you're always ready to scribble down your screencast and movie ideas.

Or, hack a regular Moleskine notebook and add the storyboard frames yourself. There's an article and instructions here. Looks pretty easy and there's a PDF template.

And, if you'd like a free storyboard, I uploaded the storyboard template that we use at work here and here.

I also found a neat video showing how an illustrator uses a Moleskine notebook to storyboard. Wish my storyboards looked that good! See the video below.

What tools have you found to help you with your screencasts?

Ever pause your Camtasia Studio video during record time? Sometimes while paused, you might need to move your mouse to perform some functions. The problem with that is if you do not return your mouse to where it was when you paused your recording, you will end up with a jerky mouse movement in the video at that point.

While, it is nice to have your cursor back to where it was before pausing it is definitely not such an easy task. But, check out this little gem from the forums posted here!

There's a little app called GetMouse that can not only save your current mouse coordinates but also put the cursor back to those coordinates! You can read more about it in the forum thread here.

Jerky mouse and cursor movements no more! It's great to see users sharing these tips in the forums.

Richard Campbell...where were you when I was taking accounting?

I was never good with numbers... It was always more work for me to get average grades in accounting. It just didn't come naturally to me. It's no wonder why my checkbook is always a little off (never in my favor!). But, I like to think there's still hope! I'm seeing more math screencasts crop up lately so that gives me a chance to review and learn from them.

I was excited to see Richard Campbell's screencast. It's about how he uses gotomeeting.com in his internet accounting class.

You can see this week's Screencast of the Week here.

If you visit Richard's homepage here, you'll notice he has a tagline at the top that says, "Bringing the Excitement of Accounting to Multimedia". I love that!

What have you learned from a screencast lately?

Anyone interested in meeting up later this month? I'll be in San Diego for O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference March 25 - 30.

If you can't attend O'Reilly ETech, let me be your roving reporter. What would you like me to investigate for you?

I'm also attending DemoCampETech...in a Vault! Yes, a vault! See the pic below (Pic from the Marriott website)!

More details about DemoCampETech on David Crow's fab blog here.

Call me on my cell (517.410.0030) or e-mail me if you're in the area and want to meet-up! And, I'm looking for people to screencast with, although it's certainly not a requirement to meet-up.

Lee Brimelow is my hero!

You might remember Lee from this post about when I met him last year at the FlashForward Conference. See? That's Lee and I in the TechSmith booth at the show.

I just got word that Lee has launched a new tutorial site, ContentPresenter.com that is full of tutorials, all made with Camtasia Studio, about WPF (If you'd like more info about WPF, visit Microsoft's site here).

If you have not already done so, check out Lee's other amazing Web site www.gotoandlearn.com. His site is full of free Flash tutorials...all made with Camtasia Studio! It does look like he's rewriting the site right now, but you can still access the videos.

And, since we're talking about Lee, I thought I'd re-post the Screencast we made with him last year at FlashForward for the newer readers of the blog. In the video, Lee talked with Troy Stein about his use of Camtasia Studio and his website. Plus he gives some great advice too. Click the screenshot below to watch it. It runs just under 15 minutes.

I'll see Lee at the Dx3 conference in Boston in May. Anything you want me to ask him? Maybe I can get him to do another screencast with me.

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

Woo hoo! Camtasia Studio v4.0.1 was released yesterday. Camtasia Studio now plays nice with Vista!

Download your upgrade from here (should be free if you purchased Camtasia Studio 4.0). Or, from Camtasia Studio, go the 'Help' menu and select 'Check for Upgrade' (see pic below).

I know a lot of you use Logitech webcams. I use one too. And, we also sell them in our online store. Just to warn you, there are known stability issues with the 10.x versions of the Logitech webcam drivers on Microsoft Vista and XP. No Logitech webcam driver will consistently work with Microsoft Vista.

If you're using Microsoft XP, please install the Logitech webcam driver from the installation CD-ROM for reliable results.

We have contacted Logitech about these issues and are waiting for them to provide more stable drivers.

To learn more about this update, visit here.

Now, I'd love to see some screencasts from you on Vista! Send them my way so I can show them off. And, as always, we're looking for feedback. Let me know how things are working for you when you run Camtasia Studio on Vista.

You may have noticed that almost every blog post I write includes a picture, screenshot or some sort of graphic. And, I've used SnagIt in some way for just about every one of those images for the blog. Blog posts with images are more interesting and enable better communication. One of my favorite bloggers, Kathy Sierra, talks here about the value and science of why words plus pictures help with effective communication. And, Kathy talks here about why you should add graphics to your blog, book or presentation plus why people pay attention and respond to graphics.

I think we're all in agreement about how valuable visual communication is. On those lines, I was so happy to see that Rick Strahl (that's his pic below) has built a SnagIt Screen Capture Plugin for Windows Live Writer (Windows Live Writer is an app for composing blog posts)! He even makes the plugin and code available on his blog. He's done all the work so you don't have to!

Here's a pic from Rick's blog showing what the SnagIt plugin looks like inside of Windows Live Writer.

Rick used SnagIt's COM Server which makes it easy to incorporate SnagIt functionality into your application. You can out more about it here.

You can read more from Rick on his blog here. Looks like he's out in Hawaii. I think I need to head out there to do a screencast with him! :-)

Has anyone else used SnagIt's COM Server to add SnagIt's screen capture functionality in your app?

Beth Kanter takes this week's Screencast of the Week award.

I love Beth's screencast about tagging which you can read about here. The content is wonderful and the production is great! I think Beth used just about every feature in Camtasia Studio! I love the organization and visuals she used in the screencast. There's a graphic below from her screencast about tagging.

Click the screenshot below to launch the screencast.

Beth has assembled a great list of screencasts which you can see here.

And, check out Beth's Screencasting Primer here. The Screencast Primer will take you through an intro to screencasting and how to get started. Really, it has everything you need to get up and running.

You can read more about Beth here.

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

Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, was recently interviewed by Tom Cone over at Screencast Central. You can check out the interview here. You can hear how Troy uses Camtasia Studio 4 plus get his tips and tricks. You can hear Troy's thoughts on screencasting too.

I'm in the hot seat for an interview next week with Tom about screencasting and SnagIt. Anything you'd like us to cover?

And, if you haven't visited Screencast Central yet, give it a whirl. It's got lots of a great resources to get you started on your screencasting journey.

If you look at my desk, you'll find lots of sticky notes. Stuck to the monitor, stuck to the desk, stuck to each other...you get the idea. It's not pretty or effective.

The clever SnagIt team has come out with new outputs for SnagIt - SnagIt Notes and Skype Output.

SnagIt Notes are similar to the sticky notes all over my desk but they're sticky notes saved on my computer's desktop. They're are a cleaner, more efficient way for me to capture web pages or articles that I want to remember to read later. And, they're an easy way remind myself of keyboard shortcuts, tasks, appointments, passwords, or even my shopping list...

What I like about SnagIt Notes is that they can stay open even when SnagIt is not running or after you reboot. You can learn more about them here.

You can find out more about the Skype Output here. If you need someone to try the Skype Output with, feel free to send them to me. My Skype contact is: betsyweber

You can download the new Outputs here. What other programs would you like to see SnagIt Outputs for?