Create Cool Twitter Profile Pics with Camtasia Studio
Posted on Thursday December 11, 2008 by Betsy Weber
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As you may know, I love Twitter! If you haven't heard of Twitter, check out a quick informative video here from Common Craft. Twitter has been great to keep up with friends, to get advice and answers to questions, and get feedback from the community.
I noticed something different about Twitter the other day. People's profile pics had started... well, moving! Profile pics in Twitter can be in a variety of file formats include BMP, JPG and GIF - which means you could use animated GIFs as your profile pic!
I noticed this post on Twitter from Nils Geylen. He mentioned how he used Camtasia Studio to create his animated profile pic!
I must admit, I had not put two and two together. The ability to create an animated GIF with Camtasia Studio is one of those options that I just don't think about or use very often. Thanks to Nils for shining the light for me to make an animated GIF for a Twitter profile pic!
Producing animated GIFs in Camtasia Studio is easy. I made a quick Jingcast that runs just over a minute showing you how to do this. Simply select in Camtasia Studio>Produce Video As>Custom Production Settings>GIF - animation file and you're on your way!
If you join Twitter, feel free add me and TechSmith as your friend! If you use Camtasia Studio to create your profile pic, let me know! I'd love to see your profile pic in action!
Comments (14)
This is a great tip. Thanks.
I am actually a big fan of GIF output in Camtasia and prefer it for short 20-30 frame screencasts as the file size is negligible and I can directly upload the media via my blogging client just like any other image. Some examples:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/design/edit-web-pages-like-wiki/3832/
http://www.labnol.org/software/browsers/screencast-how-to-select-multiple-lines-of-text-in-firefox-3/3598/
Posted by Amit Agarwal | December 11, 2008 10:09 PM
Posted on December 11, 2008 22:09
wink, wink betsy :-)
Cool. But how did you do the smiling and winking?
Posted by Peter - Camtasia Guide | December 12, 2008 3:37 AM
Posted on December 12, 2008 03:37
I had 4 different pics that I imported into Camtasia Studio. I set each one to last for 2 seconds and made the animated GIF.
Here are the 4 pics I used.
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=34666709%40N00&q=avatar+betsyweber&m=text
Posted by Betsy Weber | December 12, 2008 4:16 AM
Posted on December 12, 2008 04:16
This would be a good time to remind the excellent Camtasia Studio dev team that people (like me) still use animated GIF for all kinds of cool little projects like this.
So please don't take it out of the product, m'kay?
Posted by Daniel Park | December 12, 2008 6:58 AM
Posted on December 12, 2008 06:58
I've come across a couple of marketing webpages recently that used animated GIF screen capture pretty effectively.
One is PhraseExpress. The other was a Microsoft product page that I can't seem to locate right now.
Animated GIF is old school, but it can be a pretty handy option when you need to put something on a page that auto-plays, is lightweight, and can go anywhere an image can go.
Posted by Daniel Foster | December 12, 2008 8:25 AM
Posted on December 12, 2008 08:25
Glad you liked it Betsy - great av!
We're considering using the animated GIF for our tutorials as well; something between a "moving screenshot" and a "mini screencast". Just like Amit does.
Obviously, the feature is great for this too.
May I point out that unlike classic animated GIFs - which are often based on a series of stills - this option is great for recording up to a 10 second video clip? So no need to actually create each still separately.
Oh, and as I mentioned, this feature would be awesome to have in Snaggit too ;)
Posted by Nils Geylen | December 12, 2008 5:03 PM
Posted on December 12, 2008 17:03
I made two gif files and only the first frame shows up on Twitter. The file works fine in the browser. Anyone else having issues with Twitter messing up the gif files?
Posted by Captain Jack | December 14, 2008 1:56 AM
Posted on December 14, 2008 01:56
I don't think my last post made it so here it is again.
I made an animated gif file then uploaded it to twitter. Only the first frame displays. I made a new file and tested it on a website which it worked just fine but when I uploaded it to Twitter it only displayed the first frame. Anyone have the same problem?
Posted by Captain Jack | December 14, 2008 2:03 AM
Posted on December 14, 2008 02:03
Thank you for this post.
Posted by Larry | December 15, 2008 1:53 PM
Posted on December 15, 2008 13:53
Thank you for this post!
Posted by Larry | December 15, 2008 1:54 PM
Posted on December 15, 2008 13:54
Thank you for this post!
Posted by Larry | December 15, 2008 3:25 PM
Posted on December 15, 2008 15:25
Thank you for this post.
Posted by Larry | December 15, 2008 3:26 PM
Posted on December 15, 2008 15:26
That is super cool!
Learning to use Camtasia is now one of my 09 resolutions!
-Curtis
Posted by Curtis Ludlow | December 24, 2008 1:30 PM
Posted on December 24, 2008 13:30
You can capture video in snagit (function already exists). Once captured, you can then send it to Camtasia and edit into a gif.
:)
Do it all the time!
Posted by brettbum | January 3, 2009 12:58 PM
Posted on January 3, 2009 12:58