Camtasia for Mac users may have noticed something different in your screencast projects after installing our free Lion-ready update a couple of weeks ago. It's the good kind of different, not the other kind.

The version history for Camtasia for Mac 1.2.2 includes this rather modest item: "Overall improved recording performance." What, in fact, happened is that our development team rewrote the TechSmith Capture Codec, a core element of our recording engine.

And with today's release of Camtasia Relay 3.1, users of our enterprise product on both Mac and Windows get this new, under-the-hood technology too!

How does this benefit you? First, by making your content look better than ever. Second, by saving you time and hard drive space when working with project files.

Smoother recordings

Any high-motion content you capture will look smoother. High motion content being things like PowerPoint or Keynote animations, a Flash game, a movie trailer (for educational or journalistic purposes, please), and even everyday screen recordings that have lots of activity going on. And because the new recording engine demands less of your system resources (CPU), desktop applications that you're recording should behave much more responsively—more like they do when you're not recording them.

So go nuts and add a little more motion to your screencast projects!

This video illustrates the difference between the old and new capture engine... (click here if you can't see the video below)

Camtasia already did a great job of maintaining visual clarity or sharpness of shapes and text on screen. So the noticeable improvement here is in higher frame rates, resulting in smooth motion that more closely mirrors the original content. Take a look at 00:09, for example, and notice the difference in Captain Jing's hands.

To make this comparison video, our instructional designer, Conan (a.k.a., @camtasiamac), played back a Captain Jing video at 1440 x 900 (a common resolution for laptops) and captured it off the screen. He captured it once with Camtasia for Mac 1.2 and once with Camtasia for Mac 1.2.2, then put both clips together on the canvas at reduced dimensions and produced an MP4. Conan used a MacBook Pro with 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM on OS X 10.6.8, in case you were wondering.

With your own projects, expect to see increased benefit from the new codec as you capture content with more motion and at larger dimensions. The differences can become very extreme at the highest dimensions, as illustrated by another capture Conan did at 1920 x 1200.

Faster transport of recordings

Normally when you boost video quality or framerate, the file size also increases. But somehow our dev team managed to suspend one of the laws of nature and dramatically decreased the file sizes of recordings.

The graph shows comparative recording file sizes for various types of content we tested. Every recording is unique (which is why we left off the units) but the point is, your recording files should be a lot smaller now. By way of example, the Captain Jing capture above was 304MB using the old codec and 94MB using the new one.

If you're using Camtasia Relay, this means it takes less time for the raw recording to upload from your computer to the server. And people using the portable recorder can fit more minutes of recording on a thumb drive.

And Camtasia for Mac users will save a lot of time and hard drive space when storing, backing up, or transporting project files. Handy when you're working with a team or storing your stuff in the cloud.

We realize that this kind of under-the-hood improvement may not seem sexy, but we knew it would help you deliver higher quality videos to your viewers and spend less time doing it...which seemed to us like a win!

Please let us know what kind of impact you see on your own projects, both in terms of smoother motion and smaller recording files. Leave a comment on this post or find us on Twitter, Facebook, or our new Q&A forum.

 

Daniel Foster is the "social media guy" for TechSmith. He enjoys iceboating, ice cream socials, and isosceles triangles. Tweet him up @fosteronomo or put him in a Google+ Circle.

This week's Dev Corner blog post comes from Dan Fiedler is a Security Engineer at TechSmith. What would you like to see future Dev Corner blog posts about?

I've recently been working on making authorization in Camtasia Relay more flexible. Camtasia Relay has always had a notion of role-based access control (RBAC) but depending on how RBAC is implemented in your application you can run into problems extending your security-related business logic in the future.

In this post I'll talk about different ways you might implement RBAC in a .NET web application and potential problems with each approach.

Approach One: Access Level

In Camtasia Relay, users are either Presenters or Administrators. This is represented as a column in the Users table that is tied to a UserAccessLevel enum. A lot of decisions revolved around the user's Access Level: what menu the user saw, what MasterPage (page template) was used, what pages the user has access to, showing/hiding various UI elements, and for many shared pages what LINQ query was executed to retrieve the objects displayed by the page. For example, displaying all presentations for administrators or displaying only the user's presentations for presenters.

This model is difficult to extend. If we want to add another access level to the system, we need to add another value to the UserAccessLevel enum and then find every place (over 200) where we use access level and update those decisions to make sure we take into account the permissions of the new access level.

One feature request is for a more limited administrator access level: a user that can manage profiles and presentations but not all system options. You can imagine how difficult it might be to correctly update every place where access level is used, especially as more and more access levels are added (going from two to three may not be terrible but what about three to four or four to five?). For example:

Another problem with this approach is that users can only have one access level: what about users that want to both administer a system and upload presentations? They need two user accounts under the access level scheme.

Sidebar: ASP.NET Roles

It is useful to understand how ASP.NET supports RBAC before moving on to approach two. ASP.NET provides a set of classes, sometimes collectively called membership providers, to support authentication and authorization. Included in these classes are Role Providers. In general the behavior of these classes is configured via web.config and there is little code to write. For example, here's a configuration of the SqlRoleProvider:

Which can then be used to lock down a directory to specific roles (only users in the user or admin role can access the directory where web.config is located)

We can also make exceptions for specific files (anyone can access rest.ashx)

With this configuration in place, a few things happen during the ASP.NET pipe line. Here's the pipeline in case you aren't familiar:

During the authentication phase, ASP.NET sets up Thread.CurrentPrincipal and HttpContext.Current.User with a GenericPrincipal with the user's roles. During the authorization phase, the user's request is either allowed or denied based on the permissions declared in web.config.

The ASP.NET approach has a couple of benefits and drawbacks. Benefits include:

• Support for RBAC is already built and you don't have to implement yourself
• Authorization is applied early in the pipeline so you can focus on business logic in your page or service (the Execute Handler phase)

Drawbacks include:

• A strict table structure. If your application doesn't follow their table structure you can't use the built in providers (you have to implement the interface yourself.)
• Strict API usage. To use the various ASP.NET Membership providers you have to use the Membership classes which tend to be static method calls and this can be problematic for unit testing.
• Authorization lives (mostly) in web.config and is limited to URL-based authorization. (But we can ask questions like Thread.CurrentPrincipal.IsInRole("Admin")) in our code.)

Approach Two: User.IsInRole

One way to allow a user to belong to multiple roles is to follow the example of ASP.NET's SqlRoleProvider and represent role membership with another table that relates Users to Roles. One problem with this is that to make authorization decisions we need to make a trip to the database to retrieve the user's roles. We can avoid this when the user logs in, we can retrieve the user's roles once and then cache them in the session or in an encrypted cookie (like ASP.NET's forms authentication ticket.)

To further follow ASP.NET's example, I implemented an HTTP module that hooks to the AcquireRequestState that populates Thread.CurrentPrincipal and Context.User with a Generic Principal based on a forms authentication cookie (created when the user first authenticates.) Here's the code for that creates the cookie (which is then added using httpContext.Response.Cookies.Add( authCookie )):

And then the code to populate Thread.CurrentPrincipal / Context.User with a Principal object:

Remember that if we used the .NET provider classes then all of this would be done for us but doing it ourselves lets us customize and use our existing database schema... We could also do this by writing our own implementation of the <a href="MembershipProvider and RoleProvider classes, changing our code to use the membership interface, and hooking the providers up in web.config. The Provider pattern has a few drawbacks though such as being difficult to test and it would also require a lot of code changes to move from the current way Camtasia Relay performs CRUD operations for Users and the way MembershipProviders work.

With all of that setup out of the way, we are free to ask (anywhere in the website) role-based authorization questions without a trip to the database. For example:

So now users can be in multiple roles but our business logic is tightly coupled to the authorization check and if the security requirements ever change then our code will also need to change.

Approach Three: AuthorizationManager

What if instead we asked:

if( AuthorizationManager.IsAuthorized( Thread.CurrentPrincipal, "AddCustomer" )
{
// add customer
}

Our code is no longer tied to one role but instead asks a central AuthorizationManager class whether or not the current principal (user) has permission to perform the specified task.

Here are the bones of the AuthorizationManager class:

The _rolePermissions dictionary links an action to a list of roles permitted to perform that task/action. This dictionary is initialized once based on stored permissions (which could be stored in a config file or database table.) Then if a role gains or loses permissions or we wish to add a role then we just have to change the stored permissions rather than change the code.

I laid out a couple of different ways an ASP.NET web application might implement role-based access control; there are probably a few others. I think that the AuthorizationManager approach will prove to be flexible and extendable but I can't claim that the code in this post is perfect -- let me know if you spot a potential problem.

Dan Fiedler is a Security Engineer at TechSmith who likes breaking things but loves building secure software even more. Since joining TechSmith in 2008, Dan has worked with several teams to help the teams avoid vulnerabilities and implement security features. Dan received his master's degree in computer science from Michigan State University and a bachelor's degree in computer science from Allegheny College.

I always liked the saying, 'Go big or go home!'. Well, it's been one of those kind of days at TechSmith. In addition to Snagit on Mac being released, Camtasia Relay 3 is also ready for primetime!

Easy lecture capture gets easy captioning with Camtasia Relay 3. There are lots of great new features in the new release including:

• Transcribing audio into closed captions for both Flash and Silverlight
• Integrated caption editor to expedite the correction process
• iPad production presets
• Automatic audio input adjustment during live recordings that intelligently boosts or decreases the microphone input
• Improved searchable video features
• Full editing capability offered through a free license of Camtasia Studio 7.1 and Camtasia for Mac 1.2 with each purchase of Camtasia Relay 3
• Screencast.com support for closed captions, HTML5-enabled mobile device playback and improved Silverlight support for an end-to-end hosted solution
• Sonic Foundry Mediasite integration for flexibility, allowing content to be automatically uploaded to a centrally-managed Mediasite's catalog (available later this year)

Camtasia Relay 3 better integrates with Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac so you can add more polish to your videos. Camtasia Relay 3 now comes with a complementary license of Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac.

Read more about what's new here. Look good?

One of my favorite quotes is, "We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak."

And, we've been busy at TechSmith listening to your feedback. I'm happy to share the good news that all products in the Camtasia family are getting upgrades! This includes Camtasia Studio (Windows), Camtasia for Mac and Camtasia Relay (server-based).

Available today are upgrades to TechSmith Camtasia Studio 7.1 and Camtasia for Mac 1.2. They both now work more seamlessly with Camtasia Relay. For example, users can now record a camera stream with Camtasia Studio or Camtasia for Mac, edit it on their desktop and send to Camtasia Relay for publishing/distribution.

What else is new in Camtasia Studio 7.1 and Camtasia for Mac 1.2? New features include:

• Simplified captioning support
• Multiple language support
• Speech-to-text transcription (Camtasia Studio)
• Importing common caption file formats (SRT and SAMI) and sync with video
• Ability to search the content within the videos you create
• Screencast.com support for closed captions, caption-based video search, and HTML5-enabled mobile device playback for an end-to-end hosted solution
• iPad production presets (Camtasia Studio)
• 64 bit Codec Support (Camtasia Studio)

See Camtasia Studio 7.1 and Camtasia for Mac 1.2 for a complete list of what's new complete with tutorial videos

The updates to Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac are available today and you can download the upgrades here.

Also, Camtasia Relay 3 (server-based) is getting an upgrade soon. The Camtasia Relay 3 server software is designed for lecture capture and distribution - capturing a variety of lectures on video and distributing them to many people in different formats.

Some of Camtasia Relay's new features include:

• Full editing capability offered through a free license of Camtasia Studio 7.1 and Camtasia for Mac 1.2 with every purchase of Camtasia Relay 3

• Transcribing audio into closed captions for both Flash and Silverlight
• Integrated caption editor to expedite the correction process
• iPad production presets
• Improved searchable video features
• Screencast.com support for closed captions, HTML5-enabled mobile device playback and improved Silverlight support for an end-to-end hosted solution

The Camtasia Relay 3 upgrade is coming soon. You can see what's new here . I'll post here on the blog as soon as it is available.

What do you think about the new features? Will you use them?

One of my favorite publications is InfoWorld. I always learn something from their articles and product reviews. Plus I also have a soft spot for InfoWorld because it is also where Jon Udell started the conversation that coined the term 'screencast' back in 2004!

This week at TechEd in New Orleans, I caught up with Brian Chee. In addition to being wonderful, Brian is a senior contributing editor at Inforworld and is also the director and founder of The Advanced Network Computing Laboratory at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

I grabbed a quick video with Brian on the Expo floor and he shared how InfoWorld uses screencasts, what his readers think of the screencasts, his tips for a new screencaster and also how they use Camtasia Relay at the University of Hawai'i. It's a quick video that runs less than 3 minutes long.

I also posted some pics of our trip to New Orleans and TechEd here. You'll see pics of beignets, creative uses of cable ties, pics from the TechSmith booth, kilts, the Mississippi River and more!

We're celebrating today at TechSmith and we hope you'll join in too! We're happy to introduce Camtasia Relay 2! If you're new to Camtasia Relay, it gives you enterprise-wide screen recording and enables multiple people to record meetings, training, lectures and more with just three clicks. Once recorded, the files are automatically sent to the server and made available for viewing online, on an iPod or just about anywhere.

What's new in Camtasia Relay 2?

• Searchable video - Viewers can jump directly to the content they need by searching for a word or phrase that the presenter said or displayed on a slide (Flash and Silverlight formats only).
• Visual table of contents
• Better support for multiple displays
• Audio at a glance - Camtasia Relay displays the audio levels for all connected microphones and guides presenters to choose the best one.
• Moodle notifications
• Enhanced profile creation - A new, step-by-step interface helps admins quickly set up profiles while eliminating file and format mismatches.
• Silverlight output

These are just the highlights about what's new in Camtasia Relay 2. If you want to learn more, my partner in crime, Dave McCollom, TechSmith's Education Evangelist has posted more details about the new release here.

Curious about Camtasia Relay and need more information? We have some free webinars. We have separate webinars for administrators and presenters - sign up for one or both here. To learn more and get started right away with a free trial, visit the Camtasia Relay home page.

We owe you a big thank you for the last 10 years... This month we're celebrating Camtasia's 10th birthday thanks to you and your support. Camtasia was launched at Comdex in November 1999.

A lot has happened over the last 10 years. Camtasia now supports both the PC and Mac. Camtasia Relay joined the Camtasia family. We've added support for many different file formats like SWF, MP4, WMV and MOV. And, we're always working on new features and functionality.

Jon Udell gave the 'video screencapture' medium a name and coined the term, Screencast. Technology keeps changing over the last 10 years. Hard drives keep getting bigger, internet connections get faster by the day, YouTube arrived, and iPods and other mobile devices showed up on the scene.

We compiled a fun timeline below that shows some Camtasia milestones, advertising and logos, reviews, feature releases and technology milestones. Check out the timeline below.

I went on a hunt around the office to find some old Camtasia memorabilia. We snapped some pictures with some fellow TechSmithies having fun with Camtasia's old logos and boxes. I made a video below showing them off. It's a short video that runs less than 2 minutes long.

;

And, I need your help... If you have a few minutes to spare, please send me a photo with yourself holding a sign about Camtasia (I heart Camtasia or similar sign) or a Camtasia box. I'd love to make a video showing off all of you! Email the pics to me.

Also, to celebrate, Sales is having a sale on Camtasia Studio. For a limited time, save an extra 10% on already-discounted volume licenses of Camtasia Studio, Snagit, or both in a bundle. Details are here.

I hope you'll join us in the celebration! Where would you like to see Camtasia go in the next 10 years?!

Good news! We've been busy at TechSmith working on Camtasia Relay! And, I'm happy to report that we have a new release of Camtasia Relay available.

And, if you are an existing Camtasia Relay customer, the new version is a free update! You can find more info here!

Not familiar with Camtasia Relay? Camtasia Relay makes it easy for instructors and presenters to record live lectures, training or presentations on a Mac or PC and publish the videos automatically in multiple formats (for Web and portable media devices). Your audience can view and listen to the recorded lectures and presentations online linked via Blackboard, iTunes U, or on mobile devices such as the iPod or iPhone.

What's new?

• Support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 operating systems

• The addition of publishing using WebDAV opens access to more media servers such as Microsoft Sharepoint.

• Improved Real Media outputs.

• Smaller MP4 file sizes for easier and quicker file transfers.

• Enhanced LDAP integration for simple use and better integration with more LDAP directories.This makes it easy for an IT staff to quickly and easily set up and assign recording profiles for organizations based on the needs of the presenter and their audience.

If you're like me, when researching and learning about a new product, I like the combination of seeing the product in action (videos and screencasts) plus some write-ups and reviews to understand it. Sometimes if I'm really lucky, I can get a live demo of the product at a tradeshow or other event.

If you learn like I do, you're in luck. I just got word from the Camtasia Relay team that they're doing live webinars weekly. So, if you would like to see the product in action or have questions for the team, you can attend one live. Details are here. There is one webinar for Presenters and a separate one for Administrators.

I hope you're able to attend! Do you find webinars useful? If so, would you like to see them for our other products?

Call me a nerd, but I love trying and testing new software! I love being able to give feedback and help shape the new product. And, you will never hear me complain about getting an early look at the new software!

With that in mind, I need your help! Help us beta Camtasia Relay. We need 25 committed volunteers to start (we may open it up to more). We do have some special requirements for this beta test. We would need you to have a server at your site. The beta period will consist of conference calls in February and testing in March and April.

Requirements for the beta:
• Test the product for a minimum of 5 to 10 hours a week.
• Install the product within 48 hours of receiving it.
• Complete provided test cases within one (1) week after each beta release is installed.
• Promptly report on defects found during beta testing.
• Regress defects found with product refresh code.
• Participate in conference calls, as scheduled.
• Answer survey questions, as needed.
• Periodically report feedback to development on reliability, stability, and readiness of product for the marketplace.
• Provide feedback regarding product documentation and help systems.
• Participate in the TechSmith Beta Test Program under a formal Non-Disclosure Agreement.
• Provide the required hardware to adequately test the product in a test environment.

Benefits to the beta sites:
• Early access to product code.
• Involvement in development cycle, which includes the ability to influence the final code and submit enhancement requests prior to release.
• Free technical support throughout the duration of the beta test period.
• More stable code due to multiple individuals testing in many environments.
• One-on-one contact with the Development team, Product Management, Marketing, etc., through weekly conference calls.
• Relationship-building opportunities with other beta sites around the world.
• Improved documentation.

It will be painless, I promise. :-) Beta testing sound good to you? If so, please fill out this survey here. The Camtasia Relay Team will review your submission quickly and let you know if you have been accepted. Big thanks! We appreciate it!

Would you like to learn more about Camtasia Relay and see it in action? If you're in London at the end of February, sign up for a Camtasia Relay Boot Camp hosted by Stewart Milton of BlueOrange.

During the boot camp, you'll learn how Relay automates everything and makes it easy to capture and share your knowledge with your colleagues, clients or students.

All attendees receive:

• Free tuition and 30-day Relay trial software.
• Unique opportunity to try Relay at the first UK event to celebrate its launch.
• Personal advice and help from Stewart Milton, Techsmith expert and Business School mentor.
• Opportunity to learn how screen video capture enhances eLearning in a relaxed and fun environment

And, I'm sure Stewart won't make you run laps or do push-ups in this boot camp! Find out more info and sign up here.

I'm happy to share with you that we have a new product in the Camtasia family - Camtasia Relay 1.0 is here!

What is this Camtasia Relay thing? Well, it is an easy and streamlined way for anyone at your organization to record lectures, presentations and meetings. As a presenter, you can walk into the room, select your profile settings and everything from the recording to the formats the recording is produced into to the location where you will publish your files is predetermined. When you're done with your presentation, no need to hang out while your video produces or make technical decisions. You can just leave the room and a central server does all the work for you by automatically processing and publishing your video. Easy, right?

Top features include

• Easy recording on Mac or PC - Yep, you heard me right. Recording on the Mac or PC.
  
• Automatic processing and publishing handled by the server - Predetermined profile settings automate everything from the recording settings, to the formats the recording is produced into, to the destinations where produced files are published.

• Multiple file formats - Produce your recordings in Flash and iPod video (MP4), audio (MP3), Camtasia Studio (CAMREC), Windows Media (WMV), along with others... Plus, you will have the ability to produce one recording into any or all of the formats above.

So, are you wondering how does Camtasia Relay differ from Camtasia Studio? Basically, Camtasia Studio is for individuals who typically edit their recordings and choose how to produce the video and where it should go. Camtasia Relay, on the other hand, is for teams and organizations to do recording. Typically the recording would not need to be edited (note: you can edit your Camtasia Relay content using Camtasia Studio), and production and publishing are handled automatically by a central server.

Here are some additional resources for you to learn more about Camtasia Relay

• Comparison chart: See Camtasia Studio vs Camtasia Relay side by side here.

• Product Tour: Check out our product tour for all that Camtasia Relay has to offer.

• Newsletter: If you'd like ongoing information about Camtasia Relay, you can sign up for the Camtasia Newsletter.

• Licensing: Affordable and flexible licensing - No monthly, annual or per-seat fees. Camtasia Relay can grow with you. As the number of recordings your organization creates increases...so can your server capacity. You can easily upgrade to the next level at any time.

So, how are we using it at TechSmith? We have a mandatory Monday Morning Meeting every week at 8am. In this meeting, we go over company news, product information, new hires and other information that all staff needs to know. And, we've even had marriage proposals in our Monday Morning Meetings! They are not to be missed. But I am often on the road so I end up missing a lot of the meetings. Consequently, I'm often out of the loop. But, we've been eating our own dogfood at TechSmith and and have been using Camtasia Relay to record our Monday Morning Meetings. Now I just subscribe to our feed and I can see what happened at the meeting regardless of where I am in the world! It has been invaluable!

I hope you'll give Camtasia Relay a try and please feel free to share your feedback and input in comments on the blog or via the formal feedback form here.

Hey Blog Readers... I've got some insider news just for you! We've been working hard on a new product called Camtasia Relay. And, it's finally ready for beta testing.

So, what is Camtasia Relay? It is lecture and presentation capture for the masses - perfect for businesses and academia. Say you are a professor and you want to capture and share your lecture. Camtasia Relay makes it easy for you to do this - there is a simple recorder that's easy to use (see pic on the left). Step in the classroom or the boardroom, tell Camtasia Relay to record and deliver your presentation. After you're done recording, Camtasia Relay does all the work for you. You can automatically produce the recording into different formats, name the files and copy the files to different servers. There is an automated distribution system to share your recorded presentations easily.

This is TechSmith's first server-side offering. And, no new hardware is required - Camtasia Relay runs securely on your existing networks, Windows servers, PCs and Macs. The Camtasia Relay recorder runs on the local machine. It records full motion video so you capture exactly what happens during a lecture or presentation.

We've been eating our own dogfood and using Camtasia Relay internally at TechSmith. We've always had a mandatory Monday Morning Meeting for all staff at TechSmith. That's our time to get up to speed on company wide news and events. We've been using Camtasia Relay internally to record the Monday Morning Meeting. That way everyone knows what happened in the meeting. This is perfect for me as I often miss the meeting if I'm traveling. I no longer have to be out of the loop on any news or company wide discussions.

We're having a public beta. Sign-up starts today for 100 qualified people (you must have your own server). You can apply for the beta test here.

You can find more information about Camtaisa Relay here. And, you can watch an intro video and see Camtasia Relay in action here.

Rich Boys, the Product Manager for Camtasia Relay, sat down with me last week to explain what Camtasia Relay is, who it is for and how you can get in on the beta. The video runs about 3 minutes long.

Materials used to create this video:

* Sanyo Xacti HD1000 Camcorder
* Dell Latitude D820
* QuickTime Pro
* Camtasia Studio
* Screencast.com for hosting

Stay tuned - we'll be doing regular screencasts and videos about Camtasia Relay!