Screencast of the Week - Camtasia Studio Rescues an American Gladiator
Posted on Sunday October 26, 2008 by Betsy Weber
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Ever dream of being chased up a tower of padded mats closely followed by a muscleman who is trying to throw you over the edge of the mountain toward your impending doom?! Well, Tiffany Florentine was up for the challenge! That's Tiffaney pictured to the left (pic from the NBC American Gladiators website). She recently tried out to be a contestant on American Gladiators.... and made it to the competition with some help from Camtasia Studio! Blog readers, you're in for a treat with the week's Screencast of the Week!
I heard from Robin Moore, one of Tiffaney's co-workers at Deloitte Consulting, about Tiffaney's plight to make the competition of American Gladiator.
Tiffaney had made it through the second and third level trials, but needed to submit a 10 minute video that "sold her story" to the team of judges to make the next level. The kicker? She only had a 48 hour notice to shoot and submit the completed video. Lucky for Tiffaney, Robin had experience with video.
Tiffaney and a friend went out that night to film her. They got some footage of Tiffaney running around Michigan's state capitol in Lansing wearing only her signature spandex in 18 inches of snow! Now that is dedication! It's hard to look tough when you're freezing!
Early the next day, Tiffaney brought Robin the footage on a flash drive to start making the video. There was only about 9 hours left to work on it before it had to be in the overnight mail. To Robin's surprise, she had raw video files straight out of the camera. Not the converted files. After Robin downloaded the files, it took her a while to even find the right codec so she could view the videos. And, Robin wasted another hour looking online for anything that could convert the video into a readable format.
Robin had used Camtasia Studio countless times for software capture (Robin used it extensively. We worked together on Morae training videos several years ago), but never tried it for full-motion video. She decided to give it a shot. And, the good news was that Camtasia Studio was able to import and manipulate all the video files Robin needed. And, they were back on track! Robin and Tiffaney spent the next 6 hours glued to Robin's monitor splicing about 40 video clips together and mixing in some photos, transitions and fun music to complete a 10 minute video. They produced the video, burned it on to a CD and drove, I'm told recklessly, to the latest overnight pickup location they could find. Tiffaney almost tackled the delivery guy who was on his way out of the parking lot. They had made the deadline!
With Camtasia Studio's help, Tiffaney was able to win her contestant role!
Check out Tiffaney's Camtasia video here.
And you can read Tiffaney's bio on NBC's American Gladiator website here.
And, Tiffaney writes of her own experience on the show here.
I think Robin and Tiffaney make quite the team, don't you? If you disagree, Tiffaney may chase you down and tackle you! :-) Thanks Robin and Tiffaney for sharing your fantastic journey and Camtasia Studio video!
