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!

Remember your physics class in high school? This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Joseph Liaw, a high school physics teacher at Hinsdale Central High School.

Joseph has been using Camtasia since version 1.0! He mentioned in a recent email to me, "I actually had used Lotus ScreenCam for Windows 95, and when I found Camtasia, I was in tech heaven!"

Joseph shared with me his Camtasia screencast that he used to create training on using Camtasia in the classroom.

Click the screenshot below to watch Joseph's screencast. You'll even see a little physics in the video.

On a sidenote, I've had a few people ask how you use Camtasia Studio to record Camtasia Studio. There are a few different ways you can do it. You can use the Camtasia PowerPoint add-in to record Camtasia Studio or use an older version of Camtasia Studio.

I've had a few questions lately about creating custom stamps with SnagIt. Yes, it's possible and it's quick. We ship several different stamps with SnagIt, but perhaps there are a few different stamps you'd like to add of your own such as a your company logo to brand or watermark your screen captures.

You can make any PNG, JPG, GIF, TIF or BMP your own custom SnagIt stamp.

To add a stamp, open SnagIt's Editor. In the Paint Tools pane, select the Stamp Tool icon. Click the 'Organize Stamps' button.

Select the Add Stamp button, browse to the folder containing the stamp to add, select a stamp, and click OK. Done!

Want to learn more? Geetesh Bajaj has a great article on creating SnagIt stamps in Photoshop. You can read it here. Or visit his article on how he uses Stamps in SnagIt here.

And, if you don't want to create your own stamps, we have created several sets for you. Download additional stamps here.

I had a great time at Microsoft TechEd this week and have the pictures to prove it!

I was lucky enough to meet up with Steve Smith from the ASP Alliance (see his pic below).

Steve put in a feature request to have a Silverlight output for Camtasia videos. Steve has all the details on his post here.

For more info about Silverlight, visit here or here. And, the Microsoft's website about Silverlight is here.

I want to know what you think. Would you like us to support Silverlight and why? Post here or on Steve's blog. I'll be watching both blogs and sharing the feedback with the Product Managers and Dev teams.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Colton and Aptana. Aptana is a free, open source developer environment for building Ajax applications.

Click the screenshot below to view several screencasts.

I like the screencasts, but I also like the following:

• You'll notice on their home page, Aptana is using a very interesting and creative header (or see the animated GIF below that I created with Camtasia Studio). I really, really like this.

  

  The header consists of multiple screenshots put into a Flash slideshow. You could do something similar by using Camtasia Studio's 'Save Frame As' feature to save frames from your Camtasia Studio videos as a BMP, JPG, GIF or PNG (Find this in Camtasia Studio at: File>Save Frame As... or shortcut key Ctrl+F). Looks like they used Monoslideshow to make the header. I'll have to try this out with some SnagIt screen captures and other pics.
• Aptana purchased the .tv domain for a nice repository for all of their screencasts. If you're making lots of screencasts, you might want to consider purchasing the .tv domain for your site. Which reminds me...get someone to purchase TechSmith.tv.

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

Remember when I wrote about SnagIt's new output for Microsoft Visual Team System? Well, I went to TechEd with one of our Screencast.com developers, Justin Welsch. He made a quick screencast showing the new SnagIt output for Microsoft Visual Team System in action. Much better than a write-up about it.

Click the screenshot below to watch the quick screencast. There is no audio, just a demo of output in action. It runs less than 2 minutes

And, on a side note, here's a pic of where the TechSmith team gathered every night to discuss the events at TechEd - at the fountain in the Lobby with the ducks at the Peabody Hotel! We had a lot of fun staying at the Peabody Hotel. Not a bad place to debrief the day! Here is the history of the Peabody ducks.

Photo by the Peabody

I'm hitting the road again this week. This time AJ Morris from Tech Support will be going with me. You remember him, right? You can read this old blog post and watch a screencast with him here.

We're are headed up to Toronto on Thursday night for the Microsoft EnergizeIT event on Saturday, June 16. We'll have a table there to demo SnagIt, Camtasia Studio, Screencast.com, Morae and UserVue.

EnergizeIT is a free event. We'd love to meet-up with you there or even outside of the event. The sessions look great. I'm really looking forward to seeing David Crow and Mark Relph talk about Community.

If you'd like to meet-up for coffee, beer, food, or general geekiness, we'd love to see you...our treat too! Drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell phone (517.410.0030).

And, I'm sure AJ and I will find some time to do a screencast. Any questions you'd like us to answer? AJ does tech support for Camtasia Studio and Screencast.com so he's an expert at both.

Hope to see you there!

I spent the day in Toronto at the EnergizeIT Conference today and had a great time meeting new people, seeing old friends and geeking out...

We got several questions in the booth about Morae. So, I thought I'd share one of the newer videos on our site. There's a 22 minute video that will show and tell you all about Morae, our usability and user experience software product. Click the screenshot below to watch the video.

The video is narrated by Dirk Frazier (pic below). He's a TechSmith Sales Engineer who specializes in Morae and UserVue. You'll find him at the TechSmith booth at Usability tradeshows or on the golf course (he's a great golfer).

We also got in some new Morae Swag to celebrate the recent release of Morae 2.0. I have a couple t-shirts to send out . You'll see the design below - yes, that's an orange with a zipper on it (wouldn't oranges be more usable if the skin had a zipper?!). They're modeled by two of our Morae Developers, David Wecker (front) and Scott Schmerer (back). If you'd like one, please drop me an e-mail.

I also have a few of these fab mini-whiteboards to send out as well. They're perfect to post on your door to let others know that you're conducting usability tests. Drop me an e-mail if you want one.

I'll post in the comments when I'm out of t-shirts and white boards.

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Molly McDonald of DemoGirl.com. Molly has done over 200 screencasts! If that's not a record, it has to be close!

In this screencast, Molly goes over Google Calendar. Molly does a nice job with the title and credit screens and transitions. I also like the screencast because it is short and to the point.

Click on the screenshot below to watch the video. It runs just over 2:30 minutes.

You'll also notice that Molly uses a different 'preloader' (the screen that shows while your video is loading) for her Camtasia Studio screencasts than the normal, stock preloader. If you'd like to customize your Camtasia Studio screencast preloader for your brand or company, check out a screencast from our Senior Flash Developer, Brooks Andrus. Details are here.

And, did you see the tagline on Molly's title screen? 'Screenshots suck. Screencasts rulio!' That made me laugh! I have to agree that Screencasts rule, but I do love screenshots and SnagIt. :-)

If you'd like to share calendars, click the button below to access my Google Calendar.

The Morae and UserVue Product Manager, Shane Lovellette, Video Production Specialist, Kelly Rush, and I are in New York City and New Haven, Connecticut to visit the Usability Professional Association (UPA) local chapters. If you're in the area, we'd love to meet-up. Call me on my cell if you're around - 517.410.0030.

We're also meeting with Todd Follansbee from Web Marketing Resources tomorrow. I'm excited. He's going to take us on his boat. Todd sometimes runs usability tests, using Morae, on his boat! We'll be recording an interview with him so we can show you how he does this. Todd is in the pic below. Todd's dog, Otis, goes along with him when he travels to customers and conducts usability testing.

And, on a side note, I'm happy to support and visit your organization or user group as well. Drop me an e-mail if you'd like us to attend your event. As much as I'd love to attend every event, that's not always possible due to schedules. We can also schedule a webinar to present remotely. But even if we can't attend, I'm always happy to support you. You can download stock presentations and order materials here for your event such as eval CDs, literature and even swag.

I met-up with the fabulous John Bristowe at EnergizeIT in Toronto last weekend. John is a Developer Advisor for Microsoft Canada and a Camtasia Studio user (which makes him not only fab but also very smart in my book).

John brought up an interesting Camtasia idea...why not invite our users to send us feedback and comments with a Camtasia Studio video?

What better way for you to convey your feedback and ideas to us? Also, in my experience, it's often faster to make a video versus typing my comments and feedback.

Don't have a place to host your video to share your feedback with us? Make use of Screencast.com's free 60-day account.

So, who's going to send me the first feedback screencast? Not feeling inspired? Here are some questions to give you a start for your screencast:

• What's the one feature in SnagIt, Camtasia, Screencast.com, Morae or UserVue that would make your life easier?
• Have our products changed the way you do work? How?
• What would you like me to blog or screencast about and why?
• What topics would you like to see tutorials or training on?
• How can we make you happier?
• If you were President of TechSmith, what would you do?
• Random question: If you could pick one superpower, invisibility, super human strength or flight, which one would you choose and why?

A couple TechSmithies are headed to the NECC tradeshow next week. If you're in the Atlanta area or attending the event, we'd love to meet-up with you! A few members from our Training Department will also be attending the show. This is the perfect time to get some tips and tricks from them.

Also, the Detroit Tigers will be in Atlanta playing the Atlanta Braves on Sunday night. If you're interested in heading out to the game with the TechSmith crew, let me know. It'd be fun to get a big group together to see the game. Maybe we could even screencast at the ballpark?! Any volunteers?

Drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell (517.410.0030) if you'd like to meet-up.

And, to get you into the baseball mood, check out this neat Camtasia Studio screencast I found at Baseball-Reference.com. This site has all sorts of baseball history and stats from 1871 to now! Click the screenshot below to watch the video. The video runs about 5 minutes.

I was looking at our User Forums the other day and the topics seemed a little confusing to me. We have a 'Basic' and 'Advanced' Forum for each product. I mean, what constitutes a 'basic' question versus an 'advanced' one? What's the difference anyway?

So, how would you feel if we changed up of the forums a little? For each product have something like this:

• Questions and Answers
• Tips, Tricks and Techniques
• Feature Requests
• Gallery (a place to show off your cool projects and work)

On a side note, if you need tech support, visit Tech Support's site here. Tech Support does not monitor the forums at this time...

Thoughts? Other ideas?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Pival, also known as the Distance Librarian.

Paul recently uploaded one of his screencasts made with Camtasia Studio to Viddler which is a site where you can upload and share your videos. There are some cool features in Viddler, like the ability to tag specific spots within your video. So, I can send someone to the exact spot I want them to start watching in a video - this way they don't have to watch the entire video or try to find the time I tell them to start watching it at. I also love that you can post comments on Viddler at specific spots in the video and everyone can see or respond to them. It's like community screencasting!

You can click play on the video below to watch Paul's screencast. If you'd like to read Paul's blog post about Viddler, click here.

Viddler will take the following formats: .mov, .mpg, .mpeg, .wmv, .aviSo, you have several choices for your Camtasia Studio screencasts since Camtasia will creat .mov, .wmv and .avi videos. And, it looks like Viddler will scale your videos down to 540 x 360 so that can change the quality and clarity of your screencast. But you can switch to a full screen mode so you can watch your video at the original dimensions.

And, I love the subject of Paul's screencast - Meebo. If you look on the right hand side of the Visual Lounge, you'll notice that there is a little widget that you can Instant Message me directly. Try out Meebo on your own site or blog - it's great!

Anyone else using their Camtasia Studio videos on Viddler? What's your experience been?

PowerPoint and OneNote MVP, Kathy Jacobs, recently wrote a blog post with a great SnagIt trick that I just had to share!

Ever need to fill in fields on a PDF? I have to do this periodically for contracts or sign-up sheets. And, if you're me, you can't fill out the form online because you don't own Adobe Acrobat. So, you know the drill...then you have to print it, write in your name, contact info, sign away your life, and fax it back. Too many steps for me. What to do? Well, Kathy saves the day and will show you how to use SnagIt to fill out those fields on a PDF form using SnagIt!

You can read Kathy's SnagIt and PDF trick here.

Got any SnagIt tips you'd like to share?