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!

The TechSmith Training Department wanted to kick off January with a bang! They are going to be creating a video a day, Monday through Friday, for the rest of the month! You'll also get to 'meet' the members of the Training team. I know you'll love this new series of videos.

So, let's get started! Our first video is about how to embed your media from Screencast.com to a web page just like the screencast below! Click the play button on the screencast - it is a short one running just under 2 minutes.

And, if you haven't tried Screencast.com yet, give it a try. There's a free trial, so you have nothing to lose. More info is here. It's the perfect place to share a video or any file.

Matt Pierce created this screencast. Matt is the training manager for TechSmith Corporation. Previous to working in the training management role, Matt has been an instructional designer at TechSmith, The Eli Lilly and Company Tippecanoe Laboratories in Lafayette Indiana, as well as for WisdomTools, Inc in Bloomington Indiana.

Matt has a Masters Degree from Indiana University's Instructional Systems Technology department. He has a love of learning and for helping others learn.

When not designing instruction or managing Matt likes to spend time with his wife and three children (they're rascals- each in their own special way), try new foods, and sometimes play his guitar....

Up next in our training video series is a screencast about a useful Camtasia Studio feature called Screendraw. Screendraw allows you to draw on your screen and add objects like a highlight, box, ellipse and other special effects. Screendraw is the perfect way to add impact to your videos and help illustrate your point.

This screencast runs close to 6 minutes. Just click the pic below to start the video.

If you'd like a written tutorial about Screendraw, you can find it here.

Ryan Eash, from our Training Department, made this screencast. Ryan previously worked as an educator, where he held positions at various levels – elementary through higher education. He most recently worked at East Carolina University as an instructional technology consultant, where he assisted faculty members with their distance learning courses and trained teachers on a variety of technology integration tools. Ryan has also taught online courses through ECU, where he utilized Camtasia Studio and prepared numerous video tutorials for instructional purposes.

Ryan has his bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Indiana University and his master’s degree in instructional technology from East Carolina University. Ryan is currently designing and delivering hands-on training workshops around the country for TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio. In addition to the workshops, he is a daily user of Camtasia Studio, which he primarily uses to create instructional videos for various TechSmith products.

Are you finding these screencasts useful so far? Any topic requests?

Sorry about the delayed video - One of our trainers making these videos had sick kids and was tending to them. Sick kids take priority over screencasting.

Our next video is whether Morae Recorder or UserVue is a better fit during certain different circumstances. Click the video below to start it playing - it runs just over 4 minutes.

Thanks for watching this screencast. I hope this video helped answer your questions about when to use Morae versus UserVue. What other screencasts would you like to see?

Conan Heiselt, prior to becoming an instructional designer, worked in the Information Technology field as a Systems Administrator and Engineer. While earning his Masters at Indiana University, he also conducted research on the use of immersive technology and narrative to aid learning. Since then, he has worked for several eLearning companies, designing courses on topics from marketing and business statistics to software testing and programming. Conan currently works at TechSmith where he explores ways to help those who use its usability products to shine.

Up next in the video series from our Training Department is a video about sharing your Jing captures on Flickr. As you know, I love Flickr so I was very happy when the Jing team added the option for me to share and manage my Jing captures there. I like sharing some of my captures on Flickr because people can comment on my captures. And, I can do many things with my captures on Flickr like have them made and printed into a poster, calendar, cards, and more.

Click on the pic below to watch the screencast. It is a quick video that is 3:22 minutes.

And, feel free to add me as a contact on Flickr. I'd love to see your Jing captures! Are you using Jing to share some of your captures on Flickr?

Anton, originally from Germany, just recently accepted a position as an instructional specialist for the Training Department. Prior to that he had been an intern at TechSmith for over four years. As part of that role he created many of the Camtasia Studio and SnagIt tutorial videos in English, German, French, Korean and Japanese. He also has a degree from Michigan State University in Interdisciplinary Studies w/Sociology and a degree in German.

In his free time, Anton likes to play soccer, listen to music and spend time with his 5 roommates and 9 animals (3 dogs, 3 cats, 3 rats).

Up next in our training video series we have a training video all about custom profiles in SnagIt. As you know, SnagIt comes with several default profiles like Region or Object Capture. How many of you have made your very own custom profile? One that fits your project perfectly? I found myself tweaking the default captures but never saving them. I end up setting up these same capture options routinely so I finally set up a custom profile in SnagIt. I saved time for my captures and life was better!

Well, we're going to show you in the latest video how to:

• Build a capture

• Save a custom profile

• Set a hotkey for your custom profile (extra credit)

Click on the video below. It runs just under 5 minutes.

Start creating your own custom capture profiles in Snagit - you'll save time and they'll make you look good. Now who doesn't want that?

Chris McQueen is working on his degree in Instructional and Performance Technology from Boise State University.

Previous to TechSmith, Chris was a Technical Writer for a software company in Idaho and worked with the faculty at Brigham Young University-Idaho to help them integrate technology into their curriculum.

Currently he works with the SnagIt and Jing team. He loves his new Michigan home and doesn’t mind taking care of his kids when they’re sick. :-)

Our next video from the Training Department is all about adding and using markers during recording in Camtasia Studio. Why would you want to do this? Several reasons...as much as I try, I usually (ok, always end up flubbing some words in my screencasts. By adding a marker at those points, I can quickly find them again when I go to edit my recording. Or, if you're recording a screencast about many topics maybe you'd like to break it up with a table of contents. Markers help you find new sections or topics in your videos quickly.

Click on the video below to launch the screencast. It runs about 5 min. 34 sec.

I hope you find markers and this screencast useful! This screencast comes from Ryan Eash on the Training team. You can see his bio here.

We have some exciting news about the TechSmith User-to-User Forums. We have some new moderators right from the forum community to help out in there! They're all very knowledgeable on TechSmith products. And, chances are that you have already 'met' them if you've visited the forums as they're each active and helpful in the forums.

Here's a little bit more about each of them:

Richard Campbell (forum name: campbell79)

Richard is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the University of Rio Grande.

His videos have been shown off multiple times on the Visual Lounge here. He has also authored several accounting books. You can see Richard's vita here.

Manny Carvalho (forum name: Manny Carvalho)

When I was 9, my family emigrated to the USA from my native Portugal. As an Analytical chemist I learned about computers in graduate school. I actually minored in Computer Science and learned how to program in Fortran. It was main frames and punch cards back then at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 70's. Computers have modernized many of the analytical techniques and made them significantly more useful. Since we retired and moved to the beautiful north Georgia mountains, computers have become a time consuming hobby. I enjoy learning about them and helping people where I can. I certainly have learned quite a bit from helping others. Due to this activity, I was awarded a Microsoft MVP in the Windows Shell/User category in October 2003 and again in 2004.

John Kirk (forum name: srsuptech):

As soon as I started using SnagIt several years ago I was hooked on TechSmith software. Like many of you the use of SnagIt is what introduced me to Camtasia. I have been using Camtasia Studio since version 1.0 During the day time I use Camtasia and Vegas at work while at night I use Camtasia to create short tutorials as a freelancer. Over the past years I have gotten to know many of the great people at TechSmith include the "GREAT" Betsy "Blogger" Weber.

Daniel Park (forum name: danielpark)

Daniel is a former TechSmithie who departed back in 2003 to start dappertext LLC, his own consultancy that specializes in content creation. And for screen video, Camtasia Studio is his tool of choice. He flies all over the world to do Camtasia Studio training for companies, government agencies, and academic institutions, but he spends most of his professional time actually creating tutorials and marketing spots for organizations that lack the time or talent to do it themselves. He’s the author of Camtasia Studio: The Definitive Guide, now in its third edition (for v5). He lives in Huelva, Spain.

Ute Simon (forum name: ute-s)

Ute Simon started working with PowerPoint in 1997. She is working in IT training and support with a large international advertising agency. Training the employees in PowerPoint and other Office programs and helping them to solve their software problems is her daily business. Furthermore she develops templates and optimized presentations for clients and colleagues. But she also shares her knowledge in the German and international Microsoft PowerPoint newsgroup and other communities. Together with a team of nine other PowerPoint experts she maintains the website http://www.ppt-user.de, offering tips and tricks for users and presenters and issuing a monthly newsletter (in German).

Please welcome our new Forum Moderators! I'd like to extend a big thank you to each of them! And, remember, if you need tech support, visit here for support.

It's a new year and that means tradeshows are starting up again!

Tomorrow I head to San Francisco for my very first Macworld. TechSmith will have a booth there. Stop by booth #4329 - we'd love to chat with you.

The SnagIt and Jing Product Manager, Tony Dunckel, and the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein will be there to hear your feedback too!

For more information about TechSmith and Macworld, please visit here. You can also sign up to be put on a list for more information about our Mac development efforts on this webpage.

Hope to see you there! Drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell at 517.410.0030 if you'd like to meet-up.

And, if you can't make it to Macworld, check out our calendar of events here and maybe we can meet-up at another event. We're adding new events to our calendar all the time.

I've never been to Macworld before. Any advice?

Screencast guru, Beth Kanter recently celebrated her birthday with a challenge for her blog readers to raise money for the Sharing Foundation. You can read the challenge and blog post here.

And, Christine Martell responded with a "Bethcast" for Beth's birthday! What better way to celebrate to celebrate a birthday than with charitable donations and a screencast?! You can see Christine's Bethcast here.

What I love about this Bethcast is that it is creative and different. I love the content too - Christine talks about the power of using images which is something that we care about at TechSmith.

Happy Birthday Beth! I hope you get your birthday wish and your challenge is met. And, I hope we see many more screencasts from Christine.

Have you given a screencast for a gift? What did the recipient think?

PS - Here's my shameless plea...My birthday is June 30th - you know what I want, right?! ;-)

Ever upload a wrong file or have outdated content? Well, sometimes you need to delete that content. Matt Pierce made a quick screencast for the Training video series all about deleting media in Screencast.com.

Watch the video below to see how to delete media - It’s a short one at 1:26.

What training videos would you like to see next?

Every so often (OK, often), my desk gets so messy that I have to take a break, file papers, move equipment, reorganize my books, clean and purge!

Well, the same thing goes for files. Often you need to move or organize your media. It's easy to do in Screencast.com. Why would you want to do this? Well, so you can quickly and easily find your content later which makes it easier to share.

Check out this quick screencast all about how to move and organize your media on Screencast.com. It runs just 2:20 minutes long. Enjoy!

My mother always taught me to share and share alike. Now, granted, I didn't always want to do this with my older sister growing up. But, now, I love to share, even with my sister - my mother would be so proud. One of the great things about Jing is that it makes it easy to share the screen captures and screencasts you create with it!

Anton Bollen made tonight's screencast that is all about creating your own embed and share code in Jing. It runs just under 5 minutes.

Make your mother happy and share your knowledge with Jing. :-)

I was having so much fun at Macworld yesterday that I ran out of time to post the Training video! So, today is your lucky day! You get two screencasts!

First up is one from Ryan Eash about Camtasia Studio. This video is about saving out PowerPoint slides as images, and then importing them into Camtasia and adding voice narration. This is an alternative from recording voice using the add-in toolbar…and it gives some flexibility with being able to “extend the current frame” in voice narration, and being able to resize the image clips on the timeline a bit easier than video clips. This same process could also be used for creating title clips in PowerPoint and importing them into Camtasia Studio as well.

The next one is all about Morae from Conan Heiselt. This video is about troubleshooting Morae when observing takes place across networks. Networks vary immensely and sometimes users run into snags.

Have you ever heard the saying, '“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.”? Well, I'll definitely be following that rule this week and sitting on the edge of my chair listening!

I was honored to be invited to the the DLD-Conference this week in Munich. There are so many great speakers and attendees like Nicole Simon, Tom Rafferty, Niklas Zennstrom, Marissa Mayer, Esther Dyson and even Martha Stewart and Naomi Campbell (do you think I could get Martha or Naomi to start screencasting?!)

If you could ask any of the speakers one question what would it be?

If you're in the Munich area and would like to meet up for beer or your beverage of choice, let me know! My cell phone is +1.517.410.0030.

How many times have you quit watching a video because the audio was bad or unpolished? Audio is just as important as the video.

Today's screencast is from Matt Pierce and all about basic audio editing in Camtasia Studio and runs just under 3 minutes. Take your screencasts to the next level and learn a few audio tips from Matt. Enjoy!

TechSmith's Rich Recording Technology synchronizes video of the user including their audio and facial expressions, system activity like mouse clicks, Web page changes, and dialogue boxes, and the test application into one file that is indexed and searchable. You can read more about here. Today's video, from Conan Heiselt, is about how to use and search all of that data that Morae Recorder and UserVue capture to find some really neat things about what participants are doing. The video runs just under 3:30 minutes. Enjoy!

Up next in our video series from the Training Department is a screencast from Anton Bollen. In this video, he'll give you a look behind the scenes of the Training Department to show how they use SnagIt create some of the arrow callouts that they use in their Camtasia Studio videos. It runs just under 4 minutes. Enjoy!

You're going to love this video! It shows a secret way to add background music to your videos even when you have both Audio 1 and Audio 2 tracks being used! How? Well, it's a multi-step process, but in the end it frees up the Audio 2 track and makes it possible to add some quiet background music to the overall video. Check out this screencast that Ryan Eash made to see how he does the trick. The video runs just over 4 minutes.

As a little disclaimer - don't feel like you have to add background music. That's not what we're advocating with this screencast. It's not always needed for some videos. Use it at your own discretion. And, if the music takes away for your viewers learning by being distraction, don't use it.

Something exciting is in the air...Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt and Jing Product Manager, and I are out in San Francisco at the VizThink conference. And, we're surrounded by the rock stars in the visual world. I can't wait to hear talks led by Cliff Atkinson (he's a SnagIt user!), Nancy Duarte, Kevin Cheng and Christine Martell (remember, she made the 'Bethcast'?). I'm sure Tony and I will be learning a lot this week.

And, our booth at VizThink is next to MindJet, the makers of MindManager software! As you know, I'm a big fan of mindmapping, and often use MindManager to plan a variety of things from blog posts, to project planning, and everything in between. I have to admit, something I never thought to use it for was vacation planning. And, that leads me to this week's Screencast of the Week. GottaBeMobile has a great 'inkcast' that shows how to do just that - plan your vacation using MindManager from start to finish! You can see the blog post and screencast here. And, there's even some singing in this screencast!

And, in the interest of being transparent, I should mention that MindJet sent me a copy of latest version of MindManager (I have purchased several copies in the past) and we do sponsor GottaBeMobile (I've been a long time fan too).

Have you seen any creative screencasts lately?

Did you know you could make your SnagIt captures interactive? You can add a hotspot to your SnagIt screen capture and specify parts of the image that, when moused over, will display text or images, or when clicked upon, will open a Web page. Why would you want to create these types of screen captures? Well, you can add a hotspot on an image so a helpful hint or explanatory illustration pops up when you mouse over the hotspot. You can read more about this feature here.

And, if you can save your SnagIt screen capture with a hotspot in three different file formats - SWF, PDF and MHT. Chris McQueen will take you through each of the file formats and show you their strengths and weaknesses so you know what you'll get with each choice. Enjoy!

It's nice to share! And, we've got a special treat to share with you, blog readers! Training has created a set of 7 additional callouts that you can download and use with Camtasia Studio! Anton Bollen has made a video that explains exactly how to install the callouts, how to use them and what they allow you to do. He'll also show you how to remove any of the callouts that are no longer wanted, all in just under 5 minutes!

First, watch the screencast below. Then, download the .zip file with the callouts here. Be sure to share this with others and pass it on...it is the nice thing to do!