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!

Come kick the tires on the new TechSmith Learning Center! The Training Department at TechSmith has been working hard at updating our Learning Center. You'll notice the Learning Center has a new look and feel to it so hopefully it is easier to navigate. You'll find lots of training material to get you started on all of our products. And, they're adding new tutorials and videos all the time!

And, I know the Training Department would love to know from you what kind of tutorials and content you need. Would you more training about audio in Camtasia or more information about the different file formats in SnagIt? What would you like to learn more about? Feel free to leave comments here on the blog with your training requests or email training here. I'll make sure the Training Manager, Matt Pierce (pictured below) sees your requests.

This week you get two Screencasts of the Week. I missed last week! This week is all about Camtasia and Silverlight.

First up is Michael Scherotter's screencast and tutorial. Michael is a developer evangelist at Microsoft. Michael's screencast shows a way of integrating Groove with Virtual Earth and then broadcasting it with Silverlight. Michael used Camtasia Studio to capture the screen activity. You can watch the video and read his blog post about it here.

Michael also did a great tutorial about how he made the screencast here.

I also heard from Carl Franklin. He makes a great screencast, dnrTV and podcast, .NET Rocks.

Carl made a tutorial about using Camtasia Studio with Silverlight for a recent episode of dnrTV. You can read all about it and watch the screencast here.

On a side note, you may need to install the Silverlight player. There should be a prompt for the player on the blog posts above or you can install it from here.

Thanks Michael and Carl for sharing your Silverlight videos and tutorials! Have you seen any other good uses of Camtasia Studio with Silverlight?

I have an apology to make to you. I've subjected you to bad webcam video in some of our screencasts. Remember back when Brooks Andrus and I made a screencast at PF Changs? Check out a screenshot of the webcam video below. It's bad, bad, bad! And, I'm sorry.

When I can, I try to use the better DV Camera I have versus my webcam, but if I'm traveling, I don't always want to carry the bigger DV camera, tripod and other gear. And, I always have the webcam hooked up in the office so often out of convenience, I like to use the webcam.

Well, I was excited to see this blog post over at Strobist blog. This is a blog post worthy of a bookmark!

And, you'll see how you can improve the picture from your webcam with a few simple tweaks. 5 tweaks to be exact:

1. For Pete's Sake, Don't Use Your Monitor as a Light Source
2. Soften the Light
3. Kill the Computer's Reflection in Your Eyes
4. Give Your Webcam What it Wants
5. Clean Up Your Background

Any tips you have to add to get better quality video from your webcam? Oh, and after getting tips from the Strobist, I promise I won't make you watch red webcam images anymore.

I'm on road this week and next week in Vancouver, Seattle and Dallas for a few events (Ignite Seattle 4, Gnomedex and more). So, I won't have as much time as I'd like to write for the blog. And, since one of the goals of this blog is to show you inside TechSmith and the people behind the products, I thought it would be nice to have some guest bloggers from some of my fellow TechSmithies.

So, watch for posts from all different departments over the next few weeks. They'll give you their inside perspective, tell you what a day at TechSmith is like, their tips and tricks and more.

And, I'd love to have some guest bloggers from outside of TechSmith. Got a cool project or screencast to show? Any tips and tricks that will help others? Drop me an e-mail...I'd love to show you off.

I hope to see you on my travels! Drop me an e-mail, call me on my cell (517.410.0030) or find me in the airport. I'm the one usually wearing the SnagIt t-shirt.

Have I got a treat for you! Remember Mario Brothers? Pit Fall and Frogger? I would spend hours playing these games as a kid! OK, I admit it - I still play them sometimes...This week's Screencast of the Week will take you back to some of those fun video games!

Last year I attended the PodCast and New Media Expo and I was very fortunate to meet Casey McKinnon and Rudy Jahchan. They make a highly entertaining and original videocast, Galacticast.

And, they even used Camtasia Studio in some of their episodes. Check out 'Knights of Arcadia'.. They used Camtasia to capture old school video game emulators off their computer screen.

Check out the 'Knights of Arcadia' video below. It runs just over 4 minutes.

Galacticast shows are quick watch and made me laugh out loud. I know you'll like them too. Check all of them out here. A very creative use of Camtasia Studio!

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

Rich Boys has been with TechSmith for just over a year. He came here from the University of Michigan where he worked in various IT roles for the previous 12 years. There is always a fun rivalry between the UM and MSU grads at TechSmith. Go Blue!

So you want to capture lectures and presentations with Camtasia Studio. Are you worried that your faculty and presenters will find the recorder interface too complex or confusing?

We are exploring ideas to make the process easier on the recorder and very interested in your feedback on the subject.

1. How much feedback should we give the presenter that the recording has started?
2. Should we notify them if the audio is not capturing anything?
3. If we expand beyond just Windows what other computer operating systems should we get a recorder working for this sort of solution?
4. Finally, what are your preferred media formats for the output and where do you prefer to have these files stored, do you have your own web servers or Learning Management System?

So if you have an idea on what you would like to see in a lecture or presentation capture drop me a line. Help us make the product that would fit your needs.

Another week, another late Screencast of the Week. My apologies. I was unfortunately delayed and stuck at the airport so I was unable to blog last night, but it gave me time to think.

So, along the flight theme, this week's Screencast of the Week is a Camtasia Studio recording of a Flight Simulator game.

Now what I really like about this is the idea of recording a live event in order to learn from it. You could play the game, crash the plane and not realize what you did to make the mistake. Or, you could play the game, record it, crash the plane, and watch the Camtasia recording and learn from your mistakes to improve your skills.

And, isn't that better? Practice, watch the screencast and learn from your mistakes...on the flight simulator...not on my flight. ;-)

After working at TechSmith for about three months, I am happy to report I still believe it’s an amazing place to work. I could launch into a big list of many little reasons that combine to form the overall goodness, but instead I’ll try an analogy that might get the main points across.

I am surrounded by very smart, motivated, and empowered people. This environment provides us in the Documentation department with the freedom and resources to pursue avenues beyond what people often associate with a Technical Writer. (Think really dry PDF manuals.) One recent topic of conversation around here has been rethinking this whole antiquated title. For example, maybe Information Developer or Help Solutions Developer is a better representation of what we do at TechSmith. Comments? Our team is working on many “new” types of resources. This includes using a blog as a content management system for the Jing Project, going way more graphical in the upcoming SnagIt, proactively soliciting focus group feedback, and experimenting with an enterprise wiki for possible future use.

Mike Curtis is a Technical Writer who is married and has three young children.

Backup, backup, BACKUP! Save, save, SAVE! I know, I know, I don't always take my own advice and I have been burned. Who hasn't had some sort of system failure or lock-up and lost that masterpiece screencast they were working on?

I heard from Darrell Icenogle recently. He shared with me an issue for screencasters that is rarely talked about. He thinks that backup is an issue for screencasters:  And, I have to say, I agree!

You've invested a lot of time and effort into a screencast, right? Well, then shouldn't proecting and saving all the video, audio, graphics and metadata assets be important too?

Darrell searched for remote, automated backup services and found two that are either free ( for up to 2 gigabytes of storage) or cheap ($4.95/month unlimited).  And, one service he looked at, Mozy, was just named one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Websites of 2007. 

Darrell's done all the work for you - he researched the services, used them, and made screencasts about them. You can watch his screencast about Mozy here. And, his IDrive-E screencast here.

Darrell also wrote some in-depth blog posts on the subject here and here.

Be sure to thank Darrell and start backup those screencasts!

My sister has a fancy digital camera. Its a Nikon D50 that takes great photos.

While house boating at Lake Powell last week, she surprised me with basic questions about Photoshop. I thought, “How could she know everything about her camera and not know her software?”

Really dumb assumption, I know.

Coming back to work, I decided I don’t want to make dumb assumptions anymore.

I want to know what you know. I put together our Camtasia Studio survey to learn about you and how you use Camtasia.

It’s about 15 questions. Your answers will be me be less ignorant.

Click here to take the survey.

When you're done, feel free to check out my vacation pix with my sister's camera. The high-flying, good-looking guys are my brothers. The beautiful children are mine. :-)

Troy Stein is the Camtasia Studio Product Manager. You can read more about him here.

Justin Welsch is the lead developer on Screencast.com and has been with TechSmith since 2001.

First I’ll give you some background. Screencast.com is TechSmith’s answer to a long standing problem our users have. Once you have created your content with SnagIt or Camtasia how do you deliver it to your viewers? After all, you don’t create a shiny new tutorial video for yourself! Screencast.com was designed to be a hosting solution that is integrated with our desktop products. This closes the circuit from content creation to delivery.

TechSmith has traditionally created desktop software that runs on Windows. So when we were given the green light to design and implement a hosting solution it was a large task in itself to figure out how we were going to build a full-featured and robust web application. We drew on resources from all over the company. We pulled in web developers who maintain our corporate website. We had UX (user experience) specialists to help design a user interface. We brought in documentation and training people to write help documentation and create tutorial videos. Initially, Screencast.com was to be a hosting site for Camtasia Studio videos so we had members of the Camtasia Studio team to represent that product’s interests. There was a quality assurance team member who kept everything in line. Finally we had some of our desktop developers to round out the team (I was part of this group).

In order to manage this hodge-podge of a team, the company decided to use an agile development methodology. We did this for two reasons. The first is that TechSmith wanted to move away from the traditional waterfall method now that we were getting bigger. It just was not efficient enough for our size and was not a good fit for the product development culture at TechSmith. The second reason we used agile development was that it was thought to be a good fit for a web-based product. Desktop applications generally have development cycles of several months. For many reasons including lead time for marketing and pressing discs, once a new version is released it might be a while before another version is released. In contrast, a web-based application has the ability to be updated a lot more quickly. Since the files that contain the application actually reside on our servers (rather than on your desktop, as in traditional applications) we can change the code when we want.

The “agility” of web applications demanded a software development cycle that was flexible and able to have a quicker turnaround time. The answer lied in so-called agile development practices. If you’re wondering what “agile development” means, so were we at the time. Basically, it comes down to keeping the actual team responsible for creating the product in control. The theory is that since the team is the closest to the product they are the best judges of how to implement features, fix bugs, and deal with issues that should arise. In practice this means that the team gets a great amount of autonomy to operate as they see fit within a block of time (called a “sprint”, which is anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks long). Each team member is assigned tasks and is accountable for their completion by the end of the sprint. If a task ends up taking more time to complete than originally estimated or there are emerging issues that have to be dealt with, the team has the authority to either reduce the scope of tasks or drop them altogether. You can see how agile development looked like a good fit for creating a brand new application that was outside the core competency of the company.

We started out with an agile development implementation called Scrum. It is a team-based approach to agile development. It attempts to facilitate communication between team members and people outside the team (such as the marketing and executive groups). Items that need to be worked on are entered into a backlog, which is then prioritized. Since this is agile development, the priorities can change. For each sprint, items are selected from the backlog and presented to the team. The team then decides what can be done in the given timeframe of the sprint. Once a realistic amount of work has been identified, team members are assigned tasks and then work begins. To keep everyone on track and up to speed on the team’s progress one of the main components of Scrum is a daily meeting where each team member gives a status update.

We started our first sprint in June of 2006. We were given a launch date of around 3 months in the future, which coincided with the release of Camtasia Studio 4.0. Our web developers concentrated on the front end and the help portion of the site. Our desktop developers worked on the back end, web API, and client communications from Camtasia Studio. As you can imagine there were many issues to be dealt with right from the get-go.

One of the biggest was whether to use a LAMP stack or Microsoft stack. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It is the defacto open source solution for web applications. The Microsoft stack generally uses Windows, IIS, SQL, and .NET. Our web developers were more comfortable using LAMP where as our desktop developers were more familiar with a Microsoft solution. For better or for worse (and you could argue it was for worse), we came to a sort of compromise. We would use PHP for the front end and IIS and .NET (running on Windows, of course) for the rest. If you talk to almost anyone who deals with web systems, they’ll tell you that while a solution like what we did is theoretically possible it is not even remotely recommended. Alas, given our launch time frame and the resources we had to work with this is what we went with.

Another huge issue that we had to overcome was inter-team communication. This was to be the first time two product teams (Screencast.com and Camtasia Studio) were to work together in a concerted effort. We solved that problem by having the developer working on the Camtasia Studio client that would communicate with Screencast.com be an active participant in our daily scrum meetings.

Team management became another looming issue. We had three major obstacles. The first I already mentioned: inter-team communication. The second was figuring out how Scrum worked and adjusting the team and the company to work within the Scrum framework. The third was pulling together two differing development cultures. The web development staff and the product (desktop) development staff had evolved in different ecosystems and under different sorts of leadership. We tried to take the best of both worlds, along with the new idea of Scrum and mix them together into something that could help us meet our goals. It was quite the challenge and something that turned out to be an iterative refinement. As I write this we are still refining agile development in terms of the Screencast.com in particular and TechSmith in general.

Work progressed throughout the summer of 2006. As our launch date approached it was evident that the amount of work left to do was too much to accomplish by the established launch date. Camtasia Studio felt the same and so our launch dates were pushed back. This gave both teams breathing room to finish up some features that were taking more time than anticipated and to do thorough testing to ensure a quality product. Finally on October 17, 2006 Screencast.com was launched to the public. The launch was coordinated with Camtasia Studio 4.0 and we saw Camtasia Studio customers taking advantage of the integration of Screencast.com.

The birth of Screencast.com was a learning process for the company. Everything about Screencast.com was new to TechSmith. Agile development, inter-team coordination, and this being a web-based application were all unknown quantities from a development standpoint. From the perspective of the rest of the company, marketing and selling a web application and working with a team using agile development were all something everyone had to learn. The fact is TechSmith is still learning about what we have created and we will continue to grow from this experience as a company.

One of the funniest presentations I've ever seen at a conference was by Laura Chappell. In the presentation, she displayed passwords and Instant Messages she had captured from other conference attendees (all identities were kept confidential, of course). You would not believe the things people picked for passwords or conversations they were having at the conference! Laura is an expert at network analysis, network forensics, and security so she was demonstrating some vulnerabilities in the security and network.

That brings us to the Screencast of the Week. Among other things, Laura makes 'animated articles' with Camtasia for Novell. You can check out her articles on a variety of subjects here. I like these monthly animated articles versus your typical text newsletter. As you know, sometimes text is not enough.

Laura also has an Internet Safety for Kids course that she has created Camtasia Studio videos to supplement the training materials. You can view the course materials here (click the screenshots on the left hand side to view the Camtasia Studio videos. Best of all, it's free! Note: the content is created for adults to protect kids and is not safe for work. It is also not for kids to view due to subject matter.

You can learn more about Laura here or here. Thanks for making our networks safer and the world a better place, Laura!

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

Our A/C isn’t working and it’s about 90 degrees in my department!

The lights are burnt out in my office!

The dishwasher is overflowing! What should we do?

Hi, my name is Renee and these are examples of the many calls I receive each week here at TechSmith. My official job title is Customer Service Manager, but I also wear many other hats. One of those hats is the “unofficial space allocation/facilities manager/broken desk/there are ants in my office /the toilet is plugged again/my chair is broken………..manager”. I’d like to see someone try to fit that on a business card!

I can always rely on these calls to spice up my day. Since moving to our current location in late 2002, we have added over 100 employees. We started out in one large building and we were quite excited about it, as we had just moved from a two building location. Two buildings just seemed so inconvenient. Well, that didn’t last long as we soon had to expand to a second building in May 2004, a third building in July 2006 and a fourth building in May 2007! We used to refer to the buildings by their addresses, but by the addition of the third, it soon went to Buildings #1, #2, #3, and eventually #4 because all of those address numbers just got plain confusing!

I am a veteran of moving at TechSmith, as I’ve occupied 5 different office/cubicles in my 5 years here. I don’t mind much at all - I actually welcome the change of scenery. However, I’ll admit that I do occasionally get confused. In July I took a week off for vacation. When I came back, I couldn’t remember for the life of me what the address was of my newest building. I actually had to walk down the hall and ask someone where I was!

All of these growing pains are welcome ones to me because it means that TechSmith is a successful company. I’m glad to take these calls, because in my eyes they mean growth and job security! But don’t get me wrong, I do hope that we can all be under one roof sometime in the near future, as it would make my life much easier!

One of the ways I love to use Camtasia Studio is to combine still shots with narration and background music. I've even been known to use these types of videos as gifts for friends and family members. What a great way to show off a recent trip or highlights from a family gathering, celebration or holiday.

I was happy to see this Camtasia video from Chris Austin about his trip to China this year. By using Camtasia Studio, his still shots, some narration and background music, he was able to create a fantastic video. You can view the video and read all about it here. He'll even tell you how he created it here!

Chris has a blog that is full of great Camtasia Studio tips and tricks. Start digging through it here. And, he offers Camtasia Studio training here as well.

Who do you nominate for next week's Camtasia Studio Screencast of the Week?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a blog post worth with a picture? A lot more than a blog post without images! Remember when Kathy Sierra talked about the value of words + pictures Movable Type, TypePad, LiveJournal and WordPress.com.

What does that mean for you? It means with one click, you can easily add images to your blog! Illustrate your ideas and thoughts, spice up your words, show off your personality…

Want to see the new Blogging Outputs in action?

Check out this quick Screencast... Bet you didn't know I was a fashion blogger in my spare time. Just kidding…

Blog away. Add images! I'd love to see how you're using the new Outputs…post links to your blog posts using the new SnagIt Blogging Outputs in the comments here.

So it's my turn to be insightful, possibly witty, and otherwise provide you all with information (knowledge) that will help you to learn. After all, isn't that what training guys do?

When Betsy asked for guest bloggers - I admit I jumped at the chance. She suggested that I talk about some of the presentations that we've given recently at NECC in our tradeshow booth. Well, with the chance of risking never being invited back, I think I'll present something else.

So as an Instructional Designer I know that each of you go about learning and using TechSmith's products in different ways. You probably each have your own unique slant on how and what you would like to learn about, well, anything.

So this is my chance to reach out and talk with you. As an instructional designer, I want to hear about how you like to and would like to learn TechSmith's software.

• What instruction do we need to provide to take you well past the point of being a blah user to a boastful user?
• What topics would you like to see and why?
• What presentation method (I won't name any for fear of skewing the results) do you learn best from or at least like to learn from?

You can e-mail me here with any feedback or ideas.

So here's the bonus, because I'm a training guy, I really can't pass on this opportunity to help you to learn. We use Camtasia Studio all of the time to create tutorial videos -so I thought I’d pass on the first chapter of our training manual that we use in the Camtasia Studio workshops we teaches. Click here to download it. (PDF 83.2 Kb)

Also, we've have a lot of other tutorials for Camtasia Studio and the other products, which you can checkout at our Learning Center.

Matt Pierce is the Training Manager for TechSmith Corporation - born and raised in Michigan, and having lived lots of other places, has fallen in love with learning and trying to understand how to best help others to learn. He is a nice guy and although Betsy cringes every time he says it - he's happy to be writing on the blog!

Note from Betsy...I would never cringe!

Did you ever go camping as a kid? Every summer, I looked forward to a big camping trip. I loved making new friends, learning and trying new things. Well, this weekend, try a different kind of 'camping'! Make new friends and learn new things at VlogEurope and PodCampUK! Camps are 'unconferences'. You can learn more about them here.

First up is VlogEurope which is on September 1 -2 in Heidelberg, Germany. Some of my favorite vloggers and screencasters will be there like Raymond Kristiansen. If you're like me and can't make it to the event, they are live streaming it here! And...if you can't watch live, they will also be recording the sessions and posting them here on Blip.tv.

PodCampUK is also happening September 1 - 2 in Nottingham, UK. If you're not lucky enough to attend in person, there are lots of chances to participate online. You can listen to the live audio stream here. They''ll also be posting on Blip.tv here. If you're on Twitter, you can follow the PodCampUK Twitter stream here.

And, they are also having a virtual PodCampUK in Second Life! Click here for the Second Life URL - that will take you directly to the right spot in Second Life for the event. If you attend the Second Life event, look for me! I'm 'Tuesday McKay' in Second Life.

So, head to camp this weekend - in the UK, Germany or online. Make new friends and learn new things! No sleeping bag required!

And, yes, in the interest of transparency, TechSmith is a proud sponsor of both events.