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 know what you're asking yourself, "What's a study configuration in Morae?" Study configurations in Morae are often misunderstood. Today's screencast from Conan Heiselt will help you understand what a study configuration is, why they are important and how to use them. It will make your life easier as they help ease the recording and analyzing of all the sessions in a study. The screencast runs 4:23 minutes. Enjoy!

I'm sad to say that this is the last video in the series from the Training department. What a great way to start out 2008! I hope you found them as helpful as I have.

This video was made by Ryan Eash and it's a “behind-the-scenes” or “How we do it” type tutorial. Ryan will show you how he uses the 'Save Frame as'… feature to save a frame of his Camtasia project as an image file, and then import that image into SnagIt Editor to darken it. Then he imports it back into Camtasia Studio as a Custom Callout to add a cool little effect to his videos. He mainly uses it when he is trying to place a text callout, or maybe a PIP, on his screen and the background image is too bright or distracting with what he want his viewers to focus on. It's easier to just watch the screencast and you'll see what Ryan does. :-)

And, I have to note that Ryan got me the video on Friday, but I lost it in my bottomless pit of email. Sorry this was not posted sooner.

Thanks to Greg Davis as he tipped me off to this great screencast from the fine folks over at 37signals. It's a tour of their product Highrise. Click here to view the screencast on their homepage.

I love this screencast because they did a great job using some of Camtasia's features like SmartFocus and ExpressShow. And, I like that they kept their product demo to just over one minute - no easy task!

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Feel free to nominate your own screencasts too.

We're working on future plans for Camtasia Studio and we want to make sure we get the features right. The Camtasia Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein, has created a quick little survey to understand your satisfaction and demand for certain features.

Would you help us by answering our short survey? Click here to take the survey. It's a short 10 questions so it's painless, I promise. We learn more and you get a better product

And, if you take the survery, as a bonus, you'll be entered to win one of 25 free upgrades to the new version of Camtasia Studio whenever it comes out.

Thanks for helping us make a better Camtasia Studio.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Gunnar Bartels at PhraseExpress. I picked this video for a few reasons. For one, it shows how you can use Camtasia Studio's SmartFocus so your video can still be readable even at smaller resolutions. Perfect if you're putting your video on your blog. And, also, Gunnar mentioned that this screencast is his main selling tool. I love that a screencast can be a 'salesperson' 24/7, even when you're not around to demo your product or answer questions.

You can find out more about PhraseExpress here. I haven't tried it out yet, but after watching the screencast, it looks like something I need!

Seen any cool screencasts lately?

Who doesn't need some extra time in the day? I thought I'd try out a new series on the blog and give you some time saving tips. I hope you like them!

First up, saving time with SnagIt. Did you know SnagIt has a batch processing feature? This can save you lots of time. Say you have several images you'd like to resize or maybe you'd like to apply a special effect (like a torn edge). Instead of selecting each file, one by one, and altering them individually, you could use SnagIt's Batch Converter to change them all at once!

Simply highlight all the images you'd like to change and then right click. Select 'SnagIt>Batch Convert Images' from the menu. Then follow the four step wizard! You can read the tutorial here

That's your time saver tip for this week. Do you have any time savers to share? What are you going to do with your newly found free time?! :-)

What are you doing to celebrate Valentine's Day? Are you boycotting it completely, hitting the town on a big date, or hanging out close to home? If you celebrate the holiday, it can be hard to plan for sometimes - ever wonder what your significant other likes or dislikes? Hate spending money on flowers that will wilt quickly or cards that will be thrown away and forgotten? Or maybe you have a secret crush that you are too shy to tell them how you really feel? It's your lucky day! Screencast expert, Molly McDonald aka DemoGirl comes to the rescue! She recently made two screencasts that can help you get through Valentine's Day.

The first screencast is about a new website called GetinHerHead. You can add your likes and dislikes for restaurants, clothing, and other items. That way there is no question about what you want or like. You can see Molly's blog post and screencast about it here. Molly also did a quick screencast about HadToSay - a website that gives you a fun and anonymous way to tell someone you have a crush on them. Check out Molly's post and screencast here.

My vote for a Valentine's Day gift? I say, give your crush or significant other a screencast for a gift. What's better than that? It's a personalized gift plus you can share your feelings and thoughts with them. And, as an added bonus, they can watch your screencast over and over. It will last a lot longer than that bouquet of flowers ever will. :-)

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Kevin Robinson and the CAD Geek team. That's Kevin and I pictured on the left at Autodesk University.

The CAD Geeks have a great blog, Ask the INCAT CAD Geeks, and just about every post has a screencast in it. What better way to learn CAD than to see it in action? Plus it looks like they're using several of Camtasia Studio v5.0's new features like SmartFocus which you can see on one of their recent screencasts here.

Bonus points for using Screencast.com's MediaRoll on their blog - I like that I can find all their screencasts in one spot.

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

This week's Screencast of the Week goes to Tom Johnson of the blog, I'd Rather Be Writing. Check out his blog post here complete with not one, but three Jing screencasts!

I love Tom's addition of a few quick Jing screencasts to not just tell, but also show his ideas and examples in his blog post. It's often easier for me to understand feedback or a bug if someone makes a screencast that walks me through what they are explaining. It's like video voicemail!

And, in effort to be transparent, it looks like our Advertising team is sponsoring this site.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? And, you're free to nominate yourself!

Break out the ziplock bags, suitcase and mini bottles of shampoo that are less than 3 ounces...It's time to head out to some tradeshows!

Up first is Microsoft Mix in Las Vegas! I'll be there March 4 - 7. I'm excited to hear what's going on with Microsoft technologies like Silverlight and there is a great User Experience Track. I'm excited to see the keynote from one of the first tech Evangelists - Guy Kawasaki! And, I'm looking forward to meeting new friends as well as seeing old friends like David Crow, Josh Holmes, Nicole Simon, Jay Goldman and more.

TechSmith will have a booth at the SXSW Interactive Festival. I'll be there March 7 - 12. Have questions about Camtasia or SnagIt? Want to see Jing in action? Stop by! We'd love to meet you and give you a demo.

If you're attending either show or are in the area, drop me an e-mail or call me on my cell, +1.517.410.0030. I'd love to chat with you about future projects, screencasting, product feedback, twitter, hockey, or whatever topic you choose! And, if you can't attend the shows, I'd love to be your roving reporter. Any sessions you'd like me to attend?

And, if you're traveling around that time, look for me in the airport. I'll be the one wearing a SnagIt t-shirt clutching a zip lock bag full of tiny 3 ounces bottles, :-)

Often many of my e-mails and blog posts have emoticons like this :-) posted all through them. It's hard to convey the same emotion in printed words that comes through easily in a conversation with facial expression and in the tone of your voice. That's where a smiley :-) a frown :-( or a wink ;-) can prove to be useful in showing your emotion in writing. Same goes for graphics.

Recently, the SnagIt team added some new, free stamps for you to use with your screenshots. Check out the smiley sets here. Now it's easy to add emoticons to your screenshots. There's a nice spring set in there that will hopefully be useful soon! You can find all of the free stamps here.

What stamp sets would you like us to add next? Add your requests in the comments below. And, don't forget to :-)