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What I've learned over the past few years is that it is much harder to make a shorter screencast than a longer one. For the blog, my goal is usually around a 3-5 minute video. And, if I'm really pushing it, 10 minutes max. The shorter the screencast, the more I need to prepare. I know I personally prefer shorter videos that I can 'digest' quickly. And, if the screencast is longer, it needs to be really engaging. Otherwise, I prefer the screencast broken up into small chunks.

I asked on Twitter to see what people thought the ideal length of a screencast was. You can see some responses to below. One of TechSmith's Flash Developers, Brooks Andrus, has an interesting post on his blog proposing 120 seconds for video length. Is that long enough? I'm really curious to hear what you think. What's the ideal length of a screencast or Jingcast? How long are you willing to watch? Other thoughts?

This week's Screencast of the Week comes to us from a professional screencaster, Ian Ozsvald of ProCasts!

I liked this screencast for several reasons. Ian made great use of Camtasia Studio's SmartFocus feature - he used it to focus your attention on certain areas of the screen and show greater detail. The audio quality is great on this screencast which is important as viewers are generally intolerant of poor audio. The background audio music was a great touch and added polish to the screencast. And, Ian has a great voice for narration! The screencast runs 1:32 and is short and to the point. Perfect!

Ian gave me some info about how he made the screencast. The video was recorded with Camtasia Studio 5 and audio recorded using his sE2200a mic in Audacity. Visual effects were added using Adobe AfterEffects. Ian mentioned "We went with the screencast-in-monitor effect to give some context to not-so-computer-literate users who might be installing their first plugin for Firefox." Ian also said, "... since Adblock is the top1 (to top3, depends on the week) plugin for Firefox, many first-timers to Firefox try it and have questions, we tried to answer all those questions in this video." Screencasts are a great way to help first time users.

Ian is also publishing a 9-part blog series on how and why to screencast. Check it out here. And, this series formed the basis of a 40 minute podcast interview in Joel Spolsky's Business of Software forums. You can listen to the podcast here and read the discussion here.

You can follow Ian on his blog here or on Twitter here. Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Ever heard the saying, 'Audio is King'? One of the most difficult parts of a screencast is getting quality audio, in my opinion. And, there have been studies that show that the quality of your audio affects your audience's perception of the quality of your presentation more than the visuals. Poor audio = people think poor presentation. Kathy Sierra has a great blog post on the effect of sound on users that you can read here.

I struggle with audio especially when I'm out of a controlled environment. I often like to make videos on the road at events - usually in a noisy conference hall with high ceilings. This is a less than ideal recording situation.

So, I thought I'd round up a bunch of different microphones at work and compare them for you. Matt Pierce, the Training Manager, and I headed to our soundbooth and tested 6 different microphones. We used Audacity to record the audio at 44,100Hz. We tried to have as much consistency as possible, but we had to adjust the audio levels on each microphone. You will see in the screencast what level we recorded at. Also, I made the links a hotspot in the video, so you can click them if you'd like more info about the microphone. The screencast is short - running 1:30.

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The text we used was from the classic book, 'Alice in Wonderland' by Lewis Caroll:

"Alice was not a bit hurt, and she jumped up on to her feet in a moment: she looked up, but it was all dark overhead: before her was another long passage, and the White Rabbit was still in sight, hurrying down it."

Also, you should always check your microphone's manual to see where the most sensitive spot is on your microphone. That will dictate where you speak into it. Hint - it may not always be on top.

We liked the Audio-Technica Microphone as well as the Samson and Lapel microphones. What microphones have you tried that you like? Any tips to share with us and other readers?

Update:

It was suggested that I add prices for the microphones. So, here you go! Note: I could find most of the microphones/webcam cheaper than MSRP on places like Amazon.com.

* Samson C03U - $210.00 USD (MSRP)
* Lapel Microphone (available at TechSmith.com) - $49.95 (USD)
* Logitech QuickCam Communicate Deluxe Webcam - apx $79.99 USD (MSRP)
* Blue Snowball - $99.00 USD MSRP)
* Logitech Headset - $39.99 USD (MSRP)
* Audio-Technica AT2020USB - $249.00 USD (MSRP)

I'm sitting in the San Francisco Airport waiting to catch the red-eye flight home to Detroit so I thought I'd sneak in a quick blog post. I was out in California for Social Web FooCamp. I met a lot of amazing people who are shaping the future of the web, social networking, the social graph, and new technologies. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb showed me one of the coolest (and scariest?) Firefox extensions I've seen in awhile called Identify. Basically, you install the extension and then when you're on a social network or media site, with the press of two keystrokes you can pull up profile information for a person on a wide range of sites they participate on (like Twitter, digg, Flickr, etc). And, in some cases, even phone numbers and mailing addresses! This is a good way for you to see if there is more information about yourself out there than you want to share.

Marshall did a great write-up on the extension here and even included a nice screencast made with Jing so you can see the extension in action. I liked Marshall's screencast because it is a great way to show off new tech. It's quick and to the point.

Time for me to catch my flight! Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Hey Camtasia Studio and Jing users! Are you up for a challenge?! I thought so! MindBites has a screencast contest and the grand prize is $1,000!

I know what you're asking yourself. Self? So, what is MindBites? Well, MindBites is a website where you can find, publish, sell and distribute video tutorials and how-to lessons (on the MindBites site, on your own site, and across the web). You can find instructional videos on everything from Calculus lessons to Photoshop tutorials.

Now, how do you win the screencast contest? Simply register at MindBites and then create and upload an original screencast tutorial. The lesson must be instructional in nature, focused on tech (e.g. software, development, or gaming), at least three minutes long, and meet the standard MindBites lesson guidelines. You can find the rules here.

What can you win? Well, there are two prizes - The Grand Prize winner will receive $1000 plus a copy of Camtasia Studio and Snagit. There is also a People's Choice Award winner who will walk away with $500 and a copy of Snagit!

So, what's the timeline?

* April 21st - Contest and weekly People's Choice voting begins
* May 18th (11:59 PM CST) - Entry Deadline
* May 19th - Daily People's Choicevoting begins
* May 26th (11:59 PM CST) - Daily voting ends
* May 27th - Winners announced

How do you vote? Simply login or register as a user (don't worry it's free and painless), click on the "All Entries - Vote!" tab here and add your vote to your favorite. And, as an added bonus every time you vote, 10¢ goes to the Youth for Technology Foundation (up to $1000)! Vote - it's for a good cause!

If you're on Twitter, you can follow along at @mindbites for reports on the contest and the hashtag to use on Twitter to tag contest tweets is: #cast4cash

And, in the interest of transparency, I have to let you know that TechSmith is a sponsor and I have the honor of being a judge.

I would love to see a Jing or Camtasia Studio user win this contest! And, I'm looking forward to seeing the great screencasts you create! Make me proud!

What would you do with the $1,000 if you win the Screencast contest?!

A big part of my job is to listen. I am the conduit between you and the company and I need to make sure the different teams at TechSmith hear your feedback. Feedback often comes in through a variety of channels including email, our website, in person at a tradeshow or online in a blog post, on Twitter, and other places.

When I attended Microsoft Mix09 earlier in the year, I noticed they had a cool program running before the keynote presentations that visually showed everything people posted on Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, Digg and blogs with the conference tag, Mix09.

What if I could do the same thing at TechSmith as a fun way to show off feedback? We have an all-staff Monday Morning Meeting at 8am and all each lunch together on Fridays. I found out they used a little app called Flotzam at Microsoft Mix. So, I loaded Flotzam on the computer in our main conference room and have started running Flotzam during those all-staff events!

It's free and entirely configurable to show your choice of keywords. I like this screencast because Flotzam is easier to understand when you see it in action.

Click the screenshot below to go to the Flotzam website. They have a nice Camtasia Studio screencast on the homepage! It runs just over a minute. My only recommendation is to have a full-screen option of the screencast so we can see Flotzam in all of its glory. Enjoy!

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