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!

This week's Screencast of the Week has it all - mountains, roads, half-pipes and road rash!

I heard from Jay Bailey of RapidFire Video recently about some of his recent screencasts. Jay's "philosophy" is that you have less than a minute and a half to tell your story. That makes his approach to screencasting very creative and fast paced! You can read more about his philosophy here.

Jay uses PowerPoint and Camtasia to help tell the story. Jay mentioned to me that in order to concentrate completely on both the voiceover and the video elements, he actually records the audio on its own and reads it as naturally as he can. Then, while his audio recording plays in the background, he runs through the PowerPoint and does a Camtasia screen recording. Using PowerPoint's Presenter mode on a separate screen, he knows which slide is next. Then he imports both to Camtasia for editing and fine-tune the sync of each image with its corresponding words. Exporting to various sizes and formats is important as some clients use these as a "Digital Business Card" and actually want to e-mail a small WMV file, while others upload it and send a link. Still others want to embed it, with the Flash player, on their site's home page.

Jay uses stock images from iStockphoto and Dreamstime...

Check out one of Jay's recent screencasts - it runs just over 2 minutes.

Jay Bailey is the CEO and Creative Director of RapidFire Video, and was previously Director of Marketing at Answers.com, a Top-20 website, where he developed his unique video style and technique. Originally from Los Angeles, he lives in the rolling hills just south of Jerusalem, Israel.

Congrats, Jay! You are the Screencast of the Week! Any nominations for next week?

We asked, you responded! Remember last month when I asked for your tips to share with a new screencaster here? We compiled all of your comments from this blog post, as well as comments from the Education blog and our Newsletter. Big thanks to the 40 people who responded. I appreciate it!

From your responses and tips, we created a booklet "What would you tell a new screencaster?". Download your free copy here. If you left us a comment, your name will be listed in the booklet! Now, if I could just meet up with all the contributors and get a signed copy, I'd be all set!

The booklet has several sections including: General Tips, Content & Planning, Before Recording, During Recording, and Editing & Production.

The top tips (by number of mentions):

* plan out screencast &
do practice takes
* create a script/storyboard
* shut down apps to free up memory & avoid pop-up notifications
* use a good mic

Download your free copy here and feel free to share the PDF with others you think would find it useful.

Thanks to all who shared their knowledge and tips! What else would you like to learn from others about?

I'm starting the Bill Myers fan club! I've blogged about him several times before. Bill's been using Camtasia Studio to create training DVDs and CDs. And, he has recently created a free tool to quickly build custom user interfaces (also known as front end menus) for Camtasia movies placed on CDs.

Bill has been nice enough to make his CD creator public for anyone to use. You can see his free CD User interface builder, along with a short video showing how to use it and what can be created with it here.

Don't you love it when people share?! Thanks, Bill!

Have you seen any other useful tools to use with Camtasia?

I recently heard from a Camtasia Studio user, Vivek Joshi who is a Product Specialist at IDV Solutions which happens to be right down the road from TechSmith in lovely Lansing, Michigan! :-)

Vivek has a hobby website he works on in his spare time called FindYourAuto.net. Vivek wrote an article about the site and entered it in a contest at Microsoft. In addition to his article, he also included a Camtasia Studio screencast with his submission. Others in the contest submitted only articles. With his screencast, Vivek was able to not only tell, but show what was cool with his website. And, he won first place! Screencasts can give a competitive advantage!

Kelly Rush, our Video Production Specialist, got a quick video with Vivek to hear about his FindYourAuto.net and how he's using Camtasia Studio. Check it out below. It runs less than 2:30 minutes.

Hardware used to create this screencast:

• Canon HF200 camera
• HP HDX18t laptop

Software:

• Adobe Premiere CS4
• Camtasia Studio

Congrats Vivek! Can't wait to see what you create next!

Got a great use of one of our products or some tips and tricks? Drop me an e-mail or leave a comment - I'd love to share your story!

How many of you screencasters thought people would be asking you for your autograph?! It could happen! I'm getting in line to get Len Charnoff's autograph!

Len's Camtasia Studio screencast was just shown on national television on a popular news show in the US, the Today Show!

How did Len's Screencast end up on the Today Show?

Len discovered a site, Yard Sale Treasure Map (YSTM). On Len's blog, Time Saving Tutorials, he did this screencast review of YSTM. YSTM mentioned Len's screencast on their 'About' page. Len noticed he was getting a lot of traffic to his blog that he was getting a lot of hits from YSTM. Then he received an email from DailyCandy.com saying that one of their editors was appearing on the Today Show and wanted to use his screencast. The Today Show picked up the story and the rest is history as they say!

You can see Len's screencast in the video below. You can also hear Len's voice in the background! Len's screencast appears in the segment around 2:00 minutes into the video.You can hear Len's voice in the background!

Bravo zulu, Len!

Where will your screencasting take you?! I'll be the first in line to get an autograph from you!

Calling all Camtasia users! There have been some great resources cropping up on the internet for screencasters and Camtasia users that I wanted to share with all of you.

First up, check out Scrast. Scrast is a site all about screencasting. Scrast launched earlier this year and they've been adding more content, tips and tricks and tutorials all the time. They have a nice section with 'Tips for better Screencasts' and a section dedicated to Camtasia.

Also, Camtasia Studio expert, Lon Naylor has set up the Camtasia Users Group. There are already 155 members sharing tips, tricks and techniques in the group. I love the tagline for the group, "Simply useful Camtasia stuff!".

Have you found other useful sites for Camtasia users and screencasters?

I think we may have a new world record... 1,000 screencasts! I just heard from Bill Jelen, aka Mr Excel, that he's completed his 1,000th screencast. And, each screencast was created with Camtasia Studio!

Every day, Monday through Friday, Bill produces a new Excel screencast. The screencasts average in length around 2 minutes. His first episode went out on October 15, 2005 and the 1,000th episode went out on September 15, 2009. At five episodes per week, it took just under 4 years. Bill does take about 5 days off per year for various holidays.

I asked Bill how we got started screencasting. He mentioned to me that back in 2005, he was traveling to Toronto every month to tape two episodes each month on Call for Help with Leo Laporte. Both of the hosts were early podcasters; Leo Laporte had started his audio This Week in Tech podcast in April 2005 and Amber MacArthur had started her CommandN video podcast in June of 2005. Bill became aware of podcasting around the time he was taping the July episodes. In August, Leo suggested a MrExcel podcast. By September, Bill had taped a 25 minute pilot, and it was Leo who suggested a short daily podcast instead of a longer weekly podcast. The podcast went live October 15, 2005. And, the rest is history as they say.

That idea...five podcasts a week...allowed Bill to be one of the first to reach the 1000 episode mark early.

Bill also shared with me how he creates the screencasts. He records the camrec and then sends it off to Lora White who edits and produces. In the beginning, Lora spent 18-20 minutes on each episode to edit and produce them. Bill would send her detailed notes on every edit, like..."I screwed up this word at 1:07". Now, we use the term "Pickup" to indicate that I screwed up the last part and I am restarting. Now, Lora spends 10 minutes start to finish to edit and produce each 2-3 minute episode.

You can see all of Bill's screencasts here

Simply amazing! Congrats Bill! Can't wait to see the next 1,000 screencasts you create!

Have you ever been to an event only to see a presentation break down and fail due to technical problems? It's not fun to watch and it's not fun to be the presenter.

The other day, this tweet caught my eye on Twitter.

I had to hear this story! I contacted Nick Beaugeard and he shared with me how he used Camtasia Studio to save the day at Microsoft TechEd. I asked him to do a guest blog post. And, here's what Nick shared with me in his own words:

For about four years now (I've been presenting at Teched's worldwide since 2001), I decided to record all of my product demonstrations using Camtasia. I reached the conclusion that Teched is primarily a learning event and the attendees want to understand the products on show and how they work, not how good a nervous presenter is at performing live demonstrations.

It used to be simple; a couple of virtual machines and most demos would be cool, but now to demonstrate most enterprise products, you need quite a significant infrastructure to perform a demonstration of any quality and value. Most of us know how absolutely awful the "internet" connection is at conference venues, so having a "belt and braces approach" seemed to be the way to go.

The first time I recorded my demos, I pretended to perform the demonstration, and as if by magic they all worked perfectly. By the end of that session, I plucked up the courage to walk away from my laptop and let the "live demo" continue while I described to the audience exactly what was going on.

Despite the initial surprise, I asked members of the Audience what they thought, and they loved it. My hypothesis about the value of a truly live demo was borne out. From that day, every demo I do, whether to customers or on stage is pre-recorded with Camtasta. No-one can tell the difference (what a fantastic codec you have!)

Anyway at Teched 08 South Africa, I was once again scheduled to deliver a level 400 (the most technical) session at 10am on the last day of the conference (you know, the one after the huge closing party). My session was all about developing management packs for System Center Operations Manager 2007 to manage disparate environments. Because it was such a technical session, I was planning to ask the audience for examples of things they needed to manage and using an instance of SCOM, demonstrate live how to implement the solution.

Three hours before the presentation, and a little hung over, I grabbed my demo machine and headed to the speaker's lounge to prepare. To my absolute consternation, the display on my laptop had failed (horribly) so there was no way I could work on my demo environment.

So, and here's the trick... There were no spare machines for the time of my presentation save a lowly Windows Vista workstation basically to show slides and some videos. It certainly could not have hosted my huge virtual machines. To save the day, I "borrowed" a collegues laptop, used terminal services via VPN to my machine back at the office in Sydney.

I then ran up Camtasia Studio (remotely), and recorded six or seven demonstrations of various management pack scenarios. After producing them in the right size for Powerpoint (I find 1024×768 WMV works best), I put the videos embedded in my presentation and placed the entire deck on my FTP server.

I got access to the room one hour prior to my session, and kicked off ftp. First the PowerPoint, then the demo videos in order of presentation. Funnily Internet from South Africa to Sydney is appalling, so by the time I started my session, only 75% of the videos had downloaded.

Taking my heart in my hands I started delivering the presentation. Luckily the videos downloaded and completed in the background!

The audience never new that

a) I didn't really have a real demo
b) I had no demo 3 hours before
c) My demo laptop was terminal

Funnily that session rated the highest session at Teched South Africa last year, and Camtasia saved the day!

Now whenever I see a demo failing for someone, I take them aside quietly and describe my story. Maybe one day all demos will be pre-recorded and attendees can actually get value from the information, rather than distracting, failing demos!

Nick Beaugeard is an ex-microsoftee serial entrepreneur, and has worked for companys way to numerous to mention. He's currently CEO of HubOne a startup delivering enterprise windows software.

No one likes to watch a choppy screencast, a flashing mouse cursor, or jerky video. If you're having problems getting smooth recordings, fear not fellow screencaster! There are a couple different ways you can avoid these problems and get the better performance with Camtasia Studio.

One way is starting out with the ideal computer for Camtasia Studio. But, before you go out and buy a new computer, there are many other steps you can take to improve your performance.

There's a new tutorial in our Learning Center all about how to improve your recording performance.

In the tutorial you will learn:

* Basic Tips to Improve Recording Performance
* Understand Challenges when Recording High-Motion Content
* Using DivX to Record High-Motion Content

Check out the tutorial here.

Any suggestions for new tutorials? What would you like to learn more about?

Last weekend I jumped in the car and headed to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Why? They were having a "GiveCamp". Haven't heard of a GiveCamp? Well, they truly a wonderful thing. Here's the lowdown:

"A GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they've donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend." See here for more info

The event kicked off on Friday and the developers and charities worked round the clock all weekend long. Some people camped out, while others pulled all nighters working on their code. At the end of Give Camp, the teams of developers, designers, database admins and charities present their project to the group. There's usually not a dry eye in the building.

While I was visiting, I got to talking with one of the sponsors, Matt Lagrotte from Verio (TechSmith was a sponsor too). Turns out that Matt is putting Camtasia Studio to good use at his company. I shot a quick 2 minute video with Matt so you could hear how he's using it and get his advice. The audio is not perfect since we were in the middle of GiveCamp central, but hopefully it is tolerable. :-)

Tools used to create the video:
Flip HD Mino
HP Compaq 8510
Camtasia Studio
Screencast.com

And, curious to see what a GiveCamp 'looks' like. Check out the quick video below from Patrick Steele. It's very entertaining! Jennifer Marsman has a great recap of the event here. I also snapped some pics which you can see here.

Inspired? Why not set up a GiveCamp in your area? You can see here how to coordinate your own event. Not a techie? Fear not, there's still lots you can help with at GiveCamp... bake cupcakes, teach a charity how to use Twitter, stuff envelopes, help set up work spaces... and so on.

Think you can't make an engaging story about labor scheduling software? Think again! Ian Ozsvald and the team at ProCasts did just that! ProCasts wins the highly coveted Screencast of the Week award this week with the screencast they created for Orchestrate - Employee Scheduling Software.

I liked this screencast for several reasons. The audio is high quailty - as you know audio is king! I also thought the opening animation was interesting and added a nice touch - it made the screencast seem professional and polished. And, ProCasts made great use of zooms, transitions and callouts. And, I also liked the storytelling aspect of the script for the screencast - they use an example employee, Brian, and show how he would use the software from his perspective. And, they do this all under 4 minutes.

Ian shares more about the project in a blog post here. You'll find some of the story, the goals and critique of the project there. And, you can read more about the screencast from Orchestrate's view here.

Ian mentioned this screencast took a few weeks to plan. First they researched Orchestrate's userbase, their needs and expectations. Once they knew that, they crafted the script with a script-writer so it pressed the users buttons and showed about 90% of the software app in 4 minutes of video. The aim of the screencast was to convince website visitors to stick around and learn more. They're also using the screencast to both lower bounce-rate and increase conversions to signed-up users.

Ian used Camtasia Studio 6, the sE2200a mic and several Adobe tools for the opening animation.

And, as a bonus, check out Ian's blog series on screencasting. You can see all the tutorials here and Ian noted that his entries Editing (Tutorial 3) and Pro-Audio (Tutorial 8) are particularly useful.

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

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what's a screencast video worth? How about $2.4 million?! I was really excited to see this 'tweet' this morning on Twitter from Paolo Tosolini at Microsoft.

Paolo has been doing amazing stuff at Microsoft - he has created a "Podcast-in-a-Box". These are audio/video creation kits that allow Microsoft employees to capture and share their knowledge with each other in a rich multimedia format. In the Podcast-in-a-Box kit, there is a copy of Camtasia Studio plus a Flip video camera and professional audio recorder among other things.

Paolo captured a great video with Bob Lincavicks. Bob is an Information Worker Solution Specialist at Microsoft. He shares his story about how he leveraged Academy Mobile (Microsoft's internal enterprise podcasting platform) and applications like Camtasia as sales tools to close a $2.4M deal. How's that for ROI?! The video runs 4:30. Check out Bob's story below.

Paolo is willing to share his knowledge about enterprise podcasting with you - if you have any questions, email Paolo or you can find him on Twitter here

Got a story you'd like to share about how you're using Camtasia Studio, Snagit, Jing, Morae or Screencast.com? Grab a video camera and tell it to me! I'd love to share it!

This week's Screencast of the Week has it all... Great music, Picture-in-Picture, SmartFocus, Tilt and more. Kris Rzepkowski used a Camtasia video to communicate the launch of a new intranet at link Hudson. This is one high quality screencast!

What a great way to launch a new website! Entertaining and informative.

Check out Kris Rzepkowski's blog for a great post about the launch of Hudson's SharePoint Intranet (Challenge, User Research, Design, Development/Beta Launch)

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

When Beth Kanter talks, I listen! Beth is wonderful for so many reasons. Beth is very innovative and is a rock star in the Nonprofit world. She teaches Nonprofits to effectively use technology and social media. She also happens to be a Camtasia Studio user. :-)

Beth caught my eye the other day when she posted this on Twitter:
 
  
What a cool use of Camtasia Studio! The UN World Food Programme (WFP) recently launched a video blog called 'On the Road'. Bloggers are using a Flip Video Cam and Camtasia Studio for editing to show what is going on in the field - often by candle light and racing the computer battery before it dies.

The first series was shot in Tanzania with Marcus Prior. Some of the videos shows what life is like in a Masai village, their new irrigation system, and you can even see Marcus sample some goat. Another video follows school kids on their 6km walk to get water for cooking their lunch. Check out several videos made with Camtasia Studio here - 'On the road: Tanzania'. They're quick videos - none of them run longer than 3:30 minutes.

I love these videos - they're gritty and eye opening. I like how fast they can be created and shared. What better way to show the world what life is like in the field? And, these videos tell a story - storytelling is one of the most important parts of interesting and engaging screencasts.

And, if you are bringing your Flip video (MP4) into Camtasia Studio, I've heard a few people are getting a no codec error message. If you run into this, check out this workaround.

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

I got an email last week from a user in the market for a new computer and he wanted to know what the best new computer would be for recording and producing Camtasia Studio. Great question!

I did some research with the Camtasia Studio developers and tech support. I figured other people would be interested in what I found out. While we can't make recommendations of a specific computer model (these change quickly and each model comes with many variations of specs), this is what we came up with:

The faster, the better. Simple as that. Focus on getting the fastest CPU possible, dual-core or quad-core Intel chip, and at least 2 GB RAM or more
 
Desktop computers are often better than laptops for performance.

Get the best video card option and also a dedicated sound card is preferred. Nvidia or ATI dedicated graphic cards work well. Creative SoundBlaster audio cards are great. We've had good luck with the SoundBlaster Audigy SE soundcard - it has the ability to record speaker and system audio. We have not had good luck with Realtek audio cards.

We have not found that 64 bit computers produce Camtasia Studio videos any faster, but if you want more than 3 GB of RAM you need to go to 64-bit. Currently, there are not any known issues with using 64-bit computers with Camtasia Studio.

If the computer you look for has these things, you should have a great time with Camtasia Studio! Anyone else have any advice to add?
 

It's good to share, right? And, I have got something fun to share with you!

As you know, I love our products and I love stickers. We just got in some great new buttons and stickers and I thought many of you would like them too!

If you'd like some Snagit, Camtasia Studio and Jing stickers and buttons, please feel free to order them from here.

And, please, please, please email me some pics of you with your buttons and stickers. I'd love to see how you put them to good use!

I was poking around on Twitter the other day and this tweet caught my eye.

Recently Microsoft launched some new technology called Bing. So, Len Charnoff's tweet about Bing caught my eye. I was curious about Bing - It's a new search engine. And, as you know, screencast is a perfect way to show new technology off in action. In addition to reading about new tech, I really like to see the new tech in action.

Len Charnoff has made not one, but three screencasts reviewing some of Bing's new features. Len's screencasts were perfect timing for me so I could see Bing in action before trying it. I also like Len's use of title slides, transitions and callouts.

In his first screencast, Len reviews Bing's free 411 information service (a voice activated information service from Microsoft - 800-246-4411). He shows off how to find a restaurant. Very useful for someone like me who travels a lot and is frequently lost (it gives directions!). :-) You can view the video here.

He also tests out the Weather and Traffic sections of Bing 411 in this screencast here. He has an update to the Traffic portion of the screencast here

You can learn more about Len here.

Congrats Len for being our Screencast of the Week! You have bragging rights! :-)

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? You can even nominate yourself if you like.

Well, there may be 'no such thing as a free lunch' but you can get some free Camtasia Studio training! Our Training department is putting on a free webinar. The webinar will go over the basics of recording your screen, editing, and production. It's perfect for first time users.

Sign-up here. There are 15 spots available so sign up quickly.

Can't attend the webinar? We have lots of great resources online like our Learning Center which is full of tutorials and videos. Or, walk through your first project with the 'Fundamentals of Camtasia Studio' PDF.

And, about that free lunch... Catch up with me on the road - email or tweet me. I'd love to take you out to lunch, get your feedback and chat about screencaptures, screencasting, usability, etc. See? There is such a thing as free lunch!

Next stop for me is Chicago in July for the Blogher Conference, July 24 - 25. Hope to see you there!

Brooks Andrus and I are having a great time at 360|Flex today! We had a chance to catch up with Renaun Erickson, a RIA developer at Adobe and who is also the driving force behind Structured Log Testing, an open source project for RIA Flash platform developers.

Renaun shared with us the benefits of visual communication for him and how he needed a little more than Jing for his screencasting (he hit the 5 minute limit). He shared how he uses Camtasia Studio.

And, in keeping with the bacon theme, we got Renaun to try one of the maple bacon lollipops we brought to the conference! He may be the biggest bacon fan I have ever met! The video is just under 4 minutes long...

We recorded the video with a Flip HD Mino camera and Brooks edited and produced the video using Adobe Premiere and After Effects

The pic above is by Eric Stoike - See more of his great pics from 360|Flex here

Part of my job is to connect with people. And, as you may know, I might be what some people call a little quirky. :-) So, I thought we should have something fun in the booth. Somehow I stumbled up Maple Bacon Lollipops - I had to try them! I mean, what could be better than sugar plus organic bacon on a stick?! I figured, it'd be fun for Brooks Andrus, our Senior Flash Developer, and I to take them down to Indianapolis for 360|Flex this week. The lollipops would be a great hook to get people to talk to us and a way to have fun at our demo table. So far, so good!

Interested in the response to the lollipops? Brooks and I interviewed a few Flex developers not only about the candy but also how they use Snagit, Camtasia Studio, and Jing. Check out the first interview with Nick Kwiatkowski. It's a quick one that runs 2:00 minutes.

We made the video with a Flip Mino HD camera and used Adobe Premiere to edit plus a pic from iStockphoto.

Also, be sure to check out Brooks' first video about the bacon lollipops here.

Maple + Sugar + Bacon + Stick = Good?

Daniel Park of dappertext has been at it again! Daniel is a professional screencaster (and he use to work at TechSmith making our videos). And, when he's not busy making screencasts and training people all over the world about how to use Camtasia Studio, he works on his book - Camtasia Studio 6: The Definitive Guide. He just updated it for Camtasia Studio v6 and it is hot off the presses!

The book offers over 500 pages of step-by-step instruction and tips and tricks. It's perfect for Camtasia Studio newbies and veterans as well.

To give you an idea of the types of info you can learn in the book, the publisher of the book, Wordware was kind enough to give a free sample chapter from the book. You can read it here. It's all about audio, PIP and title clips. Very useful information.

I have a copy of the book to give-away. Just leave a comment on this blog post by May 10, 2009 11:59 pm EST with either some feedback about Camtasia Studio (ex. a feature you'd like added, something you'd liked changed or updated) or a link to a Camtasia Studio video you like. Make sure you include your email in the blog comment form so I can contact the winner (your email will not be shown publicly on the blog). I'll use a random number generator to pick the winner.

If you don't happen to win the book, you can pick it up in the TechSmith store here or on Amazon.

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?

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?!

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?

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?

Lots of good news at TechSmith today. In addition to putting FLV back in Camtasia Studio v6.0.2, I'm happy to announce that Camtasia Studio v6.0.2 is now available in German! Details are here.

And, we've launched a German version of the Visual Lounge Blog! The content will be similar to this blog, but in German :-) and with some additional contributing editors. So, for all the news, some tips and tricks and to see the great things people are doing with our German versions of software, please visit here.

And, you can view other blogs at TechSmith here.

Bis bald!

You've spoken and we've listened! As promised, we brought back the FLV format in Camtasia Studio v6.0.2 today.

Download the update here. It is a free upgrade if you purchased Camtasia Studio v6.

If you'd like to see everything updated in Camtasia Studio v6.0.2, visit here.

Thanks for your patience and feedback. We appreciate it! What would like to see added to Camtasia Studio next?

Remember those math story problems you had to do in school growing up? I know, I'm trying to forget them too. :-) They'd walk you through a scenario (A freight train leaves the station traveling 30 mph... ) and you'd work your way through the math problem. These exercises would help you learn some new fundamentals in math.

Matt Pierce, our Training Manager, has created something similar - a Camtasia Studio Walkthrough that will take you through a project to learn the fundamentals of Camtasia Studio. You can find the PDF here. Feel free to print it, pass it out at work or in your presentation, email it... share it any way possible!

Like this type of resource? What else could you use? We're always looking for new ways to help you!

After taking some time off, I think it's time to get back into the Screencast of the Week here on the Visual Lounge...

I was lucky enough to attend Microsoft Mix last week in Las Vegas. While there, I met up with the colaab guys (that's Bob and Jonathan on the left sporting some nice kilts!) who had crossed the pond from Scotland to attend the event.

I found out that colaab had used Camtasia Studio to make some of their demo videos. I picked them as this week's Screencast of the Week for a couple reasons. Not only did I enjoy their videos (Scottish accent makes for great voice overs. :-) ) but also colaab seems like it would be a great tool for people that use TechSmith products.

colaab offers real-time collaboration over a wide range of resources, all through the web browser. That means you could import something like video made with Morae or Camtasia Studio (WMV file) or an image or document made with Snagit (PDF, PNG, JPG, GIF) for easy collaboration with your team.

I uploaded a Camtasia Studio WMV in colaab and was easily able to add comments and annotations at any point on the video timeline. It kind of reminds me of the old VH-1 show, Pop-up Video. I made a quick Jingcast to show how to add comments and annotations on a Camtasia Studio WMV in colaab. You can see it here (note - there is no audio).

With more people needing to work with teams around the world, colaab seems like a great way to collaborate online and cut down travel expense. There is even a free trial.

You can see many of the colaab screencasts here.

There was also a 'Show Off' contest at Mix09. And, Bob made this great screencast with Camtasia Studio to show off a prototype application - DeepZoom Visual Site Search. You can check out the screencast here. And, read more about the project on their blog here.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? No kilt required, but it is encouraged. :-)

One of the steps in software development is to beta test the software. And, we could use 50 - 100 beta testers for Camtasia for the Mac. Interested? Just fill out this shortly survey here.

Troy Stein and the Camtasia team will review the submissions shortly. And, if you're accepted to beta test, you'll hear from them shortly.

Thanks for your help in the development of Camtasia for the Mac! We could not do it without you.

Our screencasting marathon has started! I'll be posting the final Camtasia Studio screencasts here today as they become available. Rather than create 24 separate blog posts with each video throughout the day, I thought it would be easier just to post them in one post as they become available.

Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, is the host in all the videos. We had a variety of guests throughout the day and night.

Note: we found a few of these screencasts will take a little extra production time. Stay tuned...

8:00am - Best Practices for Quality Audio Recordings, Matt Pierce (Training) - 14:39 minutes

9:00am - Recording Best Practices, Anton Bollen (Training) - 8:34 minutes
Apps mentioned:
Sizer
foobar2000

10:00am - Making SmartFocus Smarter, Ryan Eash (Training) - 8:24 minutes

11:00am - Camtasia and YouTube, Matt Pierce (Training) - 9:51 minutes
See this blog post for example videos and project settings

Noon - Screencast.com Integration with Camtasia Studio, Katie Lewis (Product Marketing Manager) - 8:24 minutes

1:00pm - Customizing ExpressShow, Dan Davis (Flash Developer) - 13:16 minutes

2:00pm - Jing and Editing in Camtasia Studio, Tony Dunckel (Snagit and Jing Product Manager) - 11:10 minutes

3:00pm - Keyboard Accessibility, Dan Davis (Flash Developer) - 8:30 minutes

4:00pm - HD Video and how to get 1080 recordings and production, Casey Phear (Tech Support)

5:00pm - Replacing Audio, Kate Sumbler (Tech Support) - 4:03 minutes

6:00pm - Hidden Gems in Recorder, Mike Kujansuu (Product Marketing Manager) - 5:55 minutes

7:00pm - Replacing Video, Daniel Foster (Writer and Newsletter Editor Extraordinaire) - 6:36 minutes

8:00pm - Special Guest - Eric Marcos and his students in the Classroom and Math Videos plus Dave McCollom (Education Evangelist)

9:00pm - How to Customize HTML output, Brooks Andrus (Senior Flash Developer) - 12:43 minutes

10:00pm - Focus on Flash. "Why MPEG4? How does it help you?", Brooks Andrus (Senior Flash Developer) - 8:48 minutes

11:00pm - FLV and customer suggestions, Betsy Weber (Chief Evangelist) - 9:33 minutes
Links mentioned: Customer feedback form
TechSmith on Twitter
Betsy Weber on Twitter
Dave McCollom on Twitter (Education Evangelist)
IdeaScale

Midnight - Extreme Makeover! Chris McQueen (Training)

1:00am - Camtasia Relay Integration and demo, Walter Pelowski (Customer Solutions Engineer) - 11:30 minutes

2:00am - Editing faster in Camtasia Studio 6, Jonathan Eaton (Development) - 32:34 minutes

3:00am - Best practicing for sizing projects - 7:21 minutes

4:00am - Microphone round-up, Casey Phear (Tech Support) - 4:49 minutes

5:00am - Not so obvious tips, Mike Curtis (Information Development) - 9:21 minutes
You can find Mike's tips from his screencast here

6:00am - Best Production Options (including Production Presets), Brian Lesperance (Sales Manager) - 7:09 minutes

7:00am - Working with Camera Video, Betsy Weber (Chief Evangelist) - 4:54 minutes

And, you can always watch us live here (keep in mind we're doing setup and production, so the live stream isn't always interesting, but there is a chatroom where you can interact with us. :-) ).

Thanks for joining us! I hope you'll pick up a few new Camtasia Studio tips and tricks!

It's been a long time since I've pulled an all-nighter. Probably the last time I did it was for 24 Snagit videos in 24 hours! :-) Well, tomorrow is the big day. We're pulling another all-nighter for 24 Camtasia Studio videos in 24 hours.

I hope you'll join us - Videos will be posted here on the blog as they are available (should be hourly). And, if you'd like to tune in live, we'll be streaming from Ustream.TV here. There will be a chat room on Ustream.TV. I will also post updates on Twitter (TechSmith and BetsyWeber). Help keep us awake!

Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager will be running the show. I'll be behind the scenes. We'll have many special guests throughout the day... and night! Would you believe someone volunteered for the 2am time slot?!

Here is the schedule (Subject to change and time is in EST, GMT -5):

8:00am - Best Practices for Quality Audio Recordings, Matt Pierce (Training)

9:00am - Recording Best Practices, Anton Bollen (Training)

10:00am - Making SmartFocus Smarter, Ryan Eash (Training)

11:00am - Camtasia and YouTube, Matt Pierce (Training)

Noon - Screencast.com Integration with Camtasia Studio, Katie Lewis (Product Marketing Manager)

1:00pm - Customizing ExpressShow, Dan Davis (Flash Developer)

2:00pm - Jing and Editing in Camtasia Studio, Tony Dunckel (Snagit and Jing Product Manager)

3:00pm - Keyboard Accessibility, Dan Davis (Flash Developer)

4:00pm - HD Video and how to get 1080 recordings and production, Casey Phear (Tech Support)

5:00pm - Replacing Audio, Kate Sumbler (Tech Support)

6:00pm - Hidden Gems in Recorder, Mike Kujansuu (Product Marketing Manager)

7:00pm - Replacing Video, Daniel Foster (Writer and Newsletter Editor Extraordinaire)

8:00pm - Special Guest - Eric Marcos in the Classroom and Math Videos plus Dave McCollom (Education Evangelist)

9:00pm - How to Customize HTML output, Brooks Andrus (Senior Flash Developer)

10:00pm - Focus on Flash. "Why MPEG4?  How does it help you?", Brooks Andrus (Senior Flash Developer)

11:00pm - FLV and customer suggestions

Midnight - Extreme Makeover!

1:00am - Camtasia Relay Integration and demo, Walter Pelowski (Customer Solutions Engineer)

2:00am - Editing faster in Camtasia Studio 6, Jonathan Eaton (Development)

3:00am - Soup to Nuts - Taking a project from Start to Finish

4:00am - Best practicing for sizing projects

5:00am - Not so obvious tips, Mike Curtis (Information Development)

6:00am - Best Production Options (including Production Presets), Brian Lesperance (Sales Manager)

7:00am - Working with Camera Video

Yes, that's a film reel with chicken feet you see! :-) And, now that I have your attention, I wanted get your help. Cathy Nagle-Ervin suggested that we do an extreme project makeover on our upcoming 24 Camtasia Studio videos in 24 hours marathon. And, we thought that was a great idea!

We're going to re-work someone's project! Want to be considered? Here's what to do:

1. Post your Camtasia Studio video project to Screencast.com (we have a free trial account - sign-up here)

2. Email us your contact info and a link to your project by 3:00pm EST, Monday, February 16, 2009

Sorry we won't be able to makeover every submission, but we will be able to makeover a few. And, yes, if we pick your submission, we will be talking about and showing your project online in our 24 Camtasia Studio videos in 24 hours. So, please do not include any private or sensitive data.

One of my favorite sayings is, "A picture is worth a 1,000 words." We are visual beings. Evidence supports that people learn more from words plus visuals than from just words alone (see this post from the brilliant Kathy Sierra for more info). With that in mind, I'm headed to San Jose, on February 21, for the VizThink Conference which is all about Visual Thinking. If you're attending the show or are in the area, I'd love to meet-up!

One of the facilitators at the VizThink Conference is Dave Gray from XPLANE. He made a great Camtasia Studio video about to express yourself visually. Part of expressing yourself visually is to draw simple objects. His screencast shows how to draw a car using simple shapes. Follow along and draw some cars with Dave!

You can read Dave's blog post here about the video.

We're also having a Twitter 'tweet-up' before VizThink starts. If you're interested in meeting up on Saturday night, February 21, here are the details! See you there...

At Microsoft TechEd last year, I met Peter Bruzzese, the Director of Screencast Production (I LOVE that title!), from ClipTraining. That's him pictured to my right. ClipTraining had a booth next to the TechSmith booth and they make a lot of Camtasia Studio screencasts. Talk about a great neighbor to have at TechEd!

We're all trying to tighten our belts and spend our money more wisely. An article Peter wrote at Infoworld caught my eye. He talks about how screencasts can fit into being a smart training option in a tough economy. Could screencasts be your secret weapon? Check out his article here. Have you saved money or travel costs using screencasts?

YouTube is hot - there's no doubt about it. Last year it was reported that YouTube is the Number 2 search engine, right behind Google. In August 2008, YouTube had over 2.6 billion search queries!

And, I know a lot of Camtasia Studio users would like to share their screencasts on YouTube. I've heard from a lot of people asking questions about getting the optimal settings and the best way to get your Camtasia Studio recordings with the HD option in YouTube. Our training manager, Matt Pierce, recently made some short videos sharing his tips and tricks that I thought everyone would like to see.

The first screencast is about recording for the HD YouTube option. This ~2:00 minute video will show you how to set-up your Camtasia Studio recordings to ensure you get the HD option on YouTube. 

These Custom Camtasia Studio production settings should give you a high quality HD source video for upload to YouTube:

• Use the Flash MP4 output
• Choose the No Controller Template
• Change the Dimensions to 1280 (width) x 720 (height)

Under Flash Options adjust the Frame rate to 30 frames per second, and the quality level to at least 55%

• Change the audio options to at least 96 kbps. 

The other tip I've heard is that YouTube displays low-quality video by default. If you'd like your viewers to see high-quality video (720p - 1280×720 resolution), add &fmt=22 to the end of the YouTube URL when you send it to them. Note: I've read that not all videos on YouTube are capable of this.

YouTube also states here on their FAQ that they are experimenting with HD.

There is also a thread going on in our TechSmith User forums about this. If you'd like to see more info, please visit here.

If YouTube isn't your thing, TechSmith created Screencast.com to host your videos. Screencast.com doesn't scale your content or re-encode it so the quality of your screencast matches your original and it is easy to use. We'll even give you some free storage and bandwidth.

What have you found when using Camtasia Studio with YouTube? Any tips and tricks you can share about getting HD quality?

We've been listening to your feedback on our Forums, through our product feedback form, Twitter, Facebook, and via email. And, one of the things we heard after releasing Camtasia Studio v6 was that you wanted us to put back in support for the FLV video file format.

Well, I'm happy to report that we plan to release an update to Camtasia Studio as soon as possible and we will put back the FLV option. Our goal is to have Camtasia Studio v6.0.2 available to you by March. There will still be support for MPEG-4 in Camtasia Studio as well.

Curious about why we removed FLV and added MPEG-4?

With the launch of Camtasia Studio 6.0, we decided to replace FLV with the MPEG-4 video format. MPEG-4 is awesome for high definition video - it offers high quality video and smaller file sizes which is great for video on the Web.

What we did not realize was how many of you were using your Camtasia Studio video in delivery systems that do not support MPEG-4 video yet.

Bottom line is that we messed up by removing FLV as soon as we did, but we're working on fixing it.

And, we want to avoid these kinds of mistakes in the future. So, we need to hear from you! Keep the feedback coming - we're listening and learning! And, thanks for sticking with us...

January 19 was American writer and poet Edgar Allan Poe's 200th birthday. He was born January 19th 1809. Growing up, my father would read his stories to my sister and I right before bed. I think that might explain a lot about why I am the way I am now! No wonder I had trouble falling asleep back them. :-) Edgar Allan Poe was quoted as saying "Sleep - those little slices of death, how I loathe them." And still today, I have trouble falling asleep - I am a night owl!

Being a night owl will be useful soon. I'll be pulling an all nighter with Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, various developers, trainers, and other TechSmithies. Starting on February 17, 2009 at 8:00am EST, we're going to do another 24 videos in 24 hours all about Camtasia Studio!

There will be a couple of different ways you can 'tune in'.

• Visual Lounge Blog:
  We'll be recording 5 - 10 minute videos all about Camtasia Studio every hour for 24 hours. I'll be posting them on the blog after we complete them.

• Twitter: I'll also be live 'tweeting' it on Twitter here.

• Ustream Live Video Stream: And, for fun, we thought we'd experiment with a live video stream on Ustream - you can tune in and watch us for the 24 hours here. I can't say the the live stream will always be riveting or interesting - especially at 4am, but you can tune in and there will be a chat room where you can talk with us.

If you'd like a reminder about the event, download an appointment for your calendar here.

These will not be formal training videos - you can find those in our Learning Center. We wanted to have fun, have you 'meet' people at TechSmith, give you some insider tips and tricks and show you how we use Camtasia Studio.

A small group of us were were brainstorming our list of topics to cover last week and we wanted to make sure we were covering topics you wanted to learn about. We saved several spots for 'Viewers Choice' videos. What are some topics you'd like us to cover? Post them in the comments below.

I hope you'll tune in and learn something new that you can do with Camtasia Studio!

I love getting simple tips that are easy to incoporate and improve the quality of your screencasts. I heard a great tip at lunch the other day I just had to share with you! For Jing and Camtasia Studio screencasts, try using a heavier weight cardstock for your scripts and notes. By using cardstock, it eliminates the shuffling noise of the paper when you flip through the pages of your script. It cuts down the noise your microphone picks up! Quick and easy!

Do you have any quick tips to share?

When I was at CES earlier this month, I was talking with someone about Camtasia Studio's SmartFocus feature. They loved the feature, but hated the green frame. You know, that green frame that pops up before your screencast zooms? It gives your viewers an idea of where you will zoom in on the screen for more detail. There's a screenshot of the green zoom frame to the left.

So, I thought I'd make a quick screencast to show you how to apply SmartFocus, but turn off the green frame. It runs less than 2 minutes. I was feeling goofy tonight (must be the cold medicine!) so you'll have to pardon my drawing skills. :-)

Hardware Used: Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet
Lapel Microphone

Software Used: Camtasia Studio
Microsoft Paint

And, in the interest of transparency, I wanted to let you know that Lenovo loaned me a Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet to test with Camtasia Studio. I used the TabletPC in this screencast. I have to say it has been working great so far! I think the inking capabilities of a TabletPC look great in screencasts and make them visually interesting. I'll be running more vigorous tests and making several more screencasts with it. I'll share the results with you. Big thanks to Lenovo for letting me test it out.

If you'd like to see more about SmartFocus, check out this article in our Learning Center.

As you know, our products at TechSmith are built on the feedback from you, our users! Our products are better because of your input. And, as usual, I need your help to guide us with some of our future development of Camtasia Studio. We have a survey of 5 quick questions asking about which file formats you use now and what you expect to use in the future.

To participate in the survey, visit here. And, feel free to pass the survey on to others you know who use Camtasia Studio!

As always, I appreciate the help and your input!

Calling all Jing and Camtasia Studio screencasters! Put your skills to work and earn some prizes and cash - NETTUTS is running a screencast contest!

The tutorials on NETTUTS are geared for web developers and designers. They cover HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS's, PHP and Ruby on Rails. So, if you are an expert on any of those topics, you could win a variety of prizes including $200! You can find details here.

If you enter, please post the link to your screencast in the comments here!

You have until Jan 31, 2009 to enter. Good luck!

I'm so excited to share this holiday video 'card' created with Camtasia Studio that Greg Waite from FuseTalk recently sent in. Videos like these warm my heart! Greg used Camtasia Studio to synch the video and audio in the video you see below. It was -25 outside when they were recording the video! Be sure to watch through the end to see the snow flying!

You can't buy this 'gift' at the store which makes it even more valuable! What a great way to capture and celebrate the season!

Growing up, I could never keep a secret. If I went gift shopping, inevitably I'd end up sharing with a family member about their gift well before the holiday we were celebrating. I was just so excited to give the gift that I could not contain myself! As an adult, well, I still have a hard time keeping a secret. Thankfully I don't have to keep your gift a secret!

For your gift this holiday season, I asked some expert screencasters to share with us their screencast wishes for the future, advice and gift list. I hope you enjoy their contributions! And, I'd love your feedback and additions. What wishes do you have for the future of screencasting, advice or gift ideas would you share? Comment away!

• Tim Fahlberg - Mathcaster extraordinaire and Math 247
  Looking for something to give to your favorite mathcasting student or teacher? How about a new Genius MousePen 8" × 6" graphics tablet (about $50 from Amazon or use Google Product Search). Or how about giving them a new voice with a new Logitech USB headset ($20-$40)? Or totally blow them away with a new LiveScribe Pulse SmartPen which can be used to create pencasts (including mathcasts like these) as well as capturing notes with voice and much more ($150 at Target or Amazon)? Or give them the free beta version of SMART Notebook 10 SE (Student Edition) which will be a fantastic tool for students to create mathcasts and much more.
  Want to share your mathcasts or learn more about creating or sharing mathcasts? Visit our mathcasts wiki at www.math247.pbwiki.com or email Tim Fahlberg at tim.fahlberg@mathcasts.org.

• Bill Myers - Bill Myers Online
  Bill has a fantastic list and review of great products ranging from light kits to wireless microphones here. Since I travel a lot, this folding USB stereo headset on his list caught my eye.

• Axel Becker - Camtasia Training Blog
  My favourite screencast hardware is my new headset microphone from Shure. You can find German information at: http://camtasia-training.de/technik-tipps/ In addition to that I bought an external sound card: Alesis io|2 which makes it easier to record my screencasts.

• Rob Bushway - InkCaster and GottaBeMobile
  Looking for a way to make your screencasts more personal and engaging? Add handwritten notes and annotations by using a Tablet PC We'd recommend looking at Lenovo's X200 Tablet - plenty of speed and power, along with a beautiful screen to ink your next screencast on.

• Daniel Park - dappertext, author of The Screencaster Newsletter and Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide book
  A lot of folks have particular trouble with adding background music to their screencasts. First, you have a heck of a time finding a buy-out (read: royalty-free) source that's reasonably priced and high quality. Then there's the matter of implementing it. I always found the abrupt fading in & out of music to be the epitome of lazy, low-class editing, but custom-cutting the music to the exact length of your screencast is incredibly time-consuming, to say the least. But all these problems went away when I picked up SonicFire Pro 5 from SmartSound. This amazing product offers incredible quality tracks that automatically adjust themselves to any length. They support mood mapping, meaning that you can kick up the intensity of the music at critical points during your video as well as take it down a notch when you want the focus on your narration. Its easy search tools let you find the perfect track with record speed and ease. The Scoring edition prices in at just under $90, and comes with their Core Foundations music disc free.

• Jon Udell - The father of screencasting!
  I'd like to give screencasters (including myself) an easier way to record audio. I wish I could recommend a silver-bullet solution. But there are lots of moving parts -- operating systems, recording software, audio peripherals -- and I don't think the industry as a whole has done yet for digital audio what it has done for, say, digital photography.

• Beth Kanter - Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media
  This year, except for the kids, my gifts are in the form of charitable donations. For some people, I'm making a gift to The Sharing Foundation in their name or for others donating to their charity or using a gift card from global giving or Network For Good. Here's some more ideas on how to be a geek who gives.

• Kathy Jacobs - OneNote MVP and Vitamin CH
  OneNote: Getting ready to create a screencast, but not sure what to say? I recommend putting together your outline of steps and things to say in OneNote. Build a two column table. First column gets the step, second column gets what you are going to say. Practice doing the steps and reading the content. When you have it down pat, start Camtasia and make your recording... When you have your recording done, use your notes to build the text that goes with the video.

What's on your Screencast wish list, advice or gift giving list? Don't keep it a secret - give us a gift!

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!

In the 70's and 80's in the United States, they use to play these great short educational films during Saturday morning children's television called Schoolhouse Rock! The cartoon videos would teach you about grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and politics with a catchy tune.

I've been riding the trains around Paris this week and Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, has been riding trains around Berlin too. We were talking about the old Schoolhouse Rocks! video called 'Conjunction Junction'. If you haven't seen it, check it out below. It runs just over 3 minutes long.

As Troy and I were chatting about getting around town and switching through multiple trains to get to our destinations, the subject morphed into software. We were wondering... as you work through your Camtasia Studio projects, what other programs or junctions, if you will, do you switch through to complete your screencasts? For example, do you use a separate audio editor or do you use another program to convert your videos to additional file formats? And why? Any insight would be useful as we try to understand what you need to complete your videos projects.

And, I'll apologize in advance - if you're like me, you won't be able to get the song, 'Conjunction Junction' out of your head for several days. :-)

Thanks for any insight you can provide us!

I love it when users share their screencasts with me! This week's Screencast of the Week was submitted by Kanika Jackson, the Business Development and Training Specialist from a software company c360 Solutions.

Kanika recently had to scramble to create several product videos that needed to be updated. She was handed the "Camtasia Studio 4: The Definitive Guide" by Daniel Park (By the way, Daniel is updating this book for Camtasia Studio v6) and had to jump in to creating the screencasts! Kanika made good use of both SmartFocus and call-outs to show better detail. Both are a great way to focus your viewer's attention. Check out her screencast below.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email me or leave a comment. You could be next!

Camtasia Studio 6 has been out for a few weeks. Hopefully you've had a chance to try it. Now it is time to start thinking about future releases. This is where you come in - we need your help!

See the gentleman to the left in the pic? That's Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager. Take his job for a day! If you were him, what would you do for the next release of Camtasia Studio? What would you change? What features and functionality would you add?

One of the things I love about my job is working with people in a variety of industries. I'm always amazed at who is using our software. And, this week was no different. I have to admit, I was surprised when I heard from Robin Heppell from Funeral Futurist about who he was creating screencasts for - funeral professionals! Robin is a funeral director and consultant! But, he's not your ordinary funeral consultant - he's utilizing technology like no one else in his industry!

I picked Robin's videos for the Screencast of the Week because he's bringing screencasts to a non-traditional industry and bridging the technical divide. Even if you're not in the funeral industry, you can learn from Rob about how he is utilizing technology. Check out some of Robin's screencasts here:

• Relationship Marketing for Funeral Homes
• 5 Fatal Flaws Funeral Directors Make On The Phone
• Funeral Industry Tutorials

Also, check out the quick Q&A that I (BW) did with Robin (RH). Enjoy!

BW: How have videos, images and screenshots changed your own communication for the better?

RH: The funeral industry, like many industries, is a relationship-based industry. Relationships are how funeral directors have created their own businesses, so I can build and strengthen my relationships with my clients (the funeral directors) with videos as they get more familiar with my expertise and personality.

BW: Are your videos, images and screenshots used internally or externally? What is the viewer response to them?

RH: I create a lot of free training or tips for external use as my main form of marketing. If I am recording a demonstration with a client, it usually contains sensitive information so that video is used internally for them. But since I have taken some notes and have an outline for demonstration, I will immediately record a similar, generic video and upload it to be another externally marketing / training piece.

BW: What do you use Camtasia Studio for primarily?

RH: Recording training courses for funeral directors with PowerPoint & Camtasia.

BW: What do you use SnagIt for primarily?

RH: Screen captures of Google results displaying how to dominate those results with online video (many of those videos are produced by Camtasia - kinda full circle eh?)

BW: What are the last three captures in your Open Captures Tray?

RH: Google Results for "Funeral Consulting" , Home page of a funeral home website I created with WordPress, Order form from my online shopping cart.

BW: What was the last video project you worked on about?

RH: "Price Shopper Secrets" training course that teaches funeral directors how to be more effective when talking with price shoppers on the phone.

BW: Is there one feature of Camtasia Studio v6 that has flat-out delighted you? Tell me about it...

RH: YouTube preset. It was the only change that I needed to see to want to upgrade to Version 6!

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

Sometimes when I narrate a screencast, I stumble over my words. OK, most of the time I do audio in a screencast, I mess up. :-) I was playing around with Camtasia Studio tonight and once again, I made a mistake on my audio. I was reminded of a quick audio trick I thought I'd share with you.

Whenever I make a mistake narrating my audio, I will often either tap the microphone or pause for a minute. That way when editing, I can quickly locate either spikes in the audio or dead time which signals to me where I need to edit my audio. It makes it a lot faster for me to locate the problem areas to edit.

Hope this helps you! See the screenshot below showing where I tapped the microphone to indicate to myself where I needed to start editing. The spikes in volume stand out on the audio track.

Do you have any quick tips to share about audio?

As a kid, I was constantly drawing. As a student, often my notes from class were supplemented with sketches and doodles. And, now as an adult, I often sketch out ideas and concepts for work projects. I like drawing out diagrams, mindmaps and flow charts. I find it can be easier and more effective to plan, share information and concepts with visuals. A picture is worth a thousand words as they say...

I'm out in Banff this week at CanUX. I know, I know. I will try to suffer through it. :-) One of the speakers is Dave Gray from XPLANE (That's him on my right at Lake Louise, Alberta on Sunday). I've had the honor of seeing him speak at the VizThink conferences and he is always interesting and inspiring.

And, it just so happens that Dave uses Camtasia Studio. Check out his video about the basic principles of visual language - Forms, fields and flows.

You can see additional videos and content from Dave here.

And, if you're interested in what's going on at CanUX, Kaleem Khan will be live tweeting the event. Follow his Twitter stream here to see what's going on.

And, in interest of transparency, TechSmith is a sponsor of CanUX.

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

After attending the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) recently, I have to say that I'm excited to see some of the technology they demoed at the conference. Attendees walked away with "the goods" so that they could install and start playing with Windows 7 which is the next version of Windows. I was happy to run into blogger Long Zheng (that's him pictured on the right) at the conference.

After PDC, Long made a quick screencast showing off a new feature in Windows 7. It runs 15 seconds (no audio). You can see the video here. I like this video because its a perfect use of a screencast - it is a quick way to show a new feature in action. It is nice to have full blown longer demos, but small and sweet is nice sometimes too! And, even though Windows 7 won't be available for retail for another few years, we can still see Windows 7 in use with screencasts. Expect more screencasts of Windows 7!

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

Put on your party hats and dancing shoes! Camtasia Studio 6 was released today! We've been working hard to make it much easier for you to deliver what you want, to the audience you want to reach, in the format you want to based upon their play back choice. It is a much better user experience too.

Here are some of big new features:

• Camtasia Studio users can now easily deliver their screen recordings (screencasts) in HD-quality video (MPEG-4 AVC, H.264+AAC) and Flash to their audience online, on DVDs, and on Apple portable media devices.
  
• Camtasia Studio's support for HD Flash ultimately means a better viewing experience for your audience, great clarity and small file size for fast loading and bandwidth efficiency.

• Based on early benchmark studies we've conducted with Camtasia Studio 6 you will realize a 20-40% time-savings when editing large projects.
  
• With Camtasia Studio 6 you can edit your audio and video independently, move your audio from one track to another, giving you quicker and more efficient means to create crisp looking and sounding video presentations.
  
• Camtasia Studio 6 editing features allow you to perform chain moves and have complete control over transition and call out fade durations to create more informative, polished videos.
  
• Camtasia Studio's new editing hotkeys deliver time saving short cuts and an overall better editing user experience.
  
• With Camtasia Studio 6 users can edit MOV files to combine digital camera video with screen recorded content to create more personal and engaging videos.
  
• Camtasia Studio 6 comes with 2GB of storage and 2GB of monthly bandwidth on Screencast.com, and gives you more control over which folders you save your content to on Screencast.com.

You can download a trial of Camtasia Studio 6 here.

For a complete list of what is new, visit here. And, check out the Getting Started video.

You can find upgrade information here.

Give it a try! What do you think of the new release?

Earlier this summer, a longtime friend, Shaan Hurley from Autodesk, stopped by TechSmith for a visit! That's a pic of us on the left in our Shipping Department along with Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt Product Manager. Shaan's been a long time user of SnagIt and Camtasia Studio.

Shaan travels the world showing users how to use Autodesk products. I was reading his blog the other day and noticed this recent post. He had a great screencast in the post which you can see below which is this week's Screencast of the Week.

I picked this as the Screencast of the Week for a couple reasons. First, I liked that it was short and succinct. I love quick tips and tricks. I also liked it because Shaan was sharing his answers to users questions from around the world. What better way to answer a user question than with a video showing exactly where to find the feature in question? And, location no longer matters - Shaan can be anywhere in the world (and usually is) and answer questions with a quick screencast. Perfect use of technology!

TechSmith will be at Autodesk University in December. If you're attending the show or are in Las Vegas, stop by and see us.

And, that reminds me. If you'd like to come visit TechSmith like Shaan did this summer, our doors are open! We love having visitors! Email or call me (+1.517.410.0030) and I'll give you a tour, you can meet the product teams to give them your feedback directly, and I'll even treat you to lunch. Come on in!

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!

I'm still in Berlin this week for Berlin Web Week. Yesterday I attended PowerPoint Anwendertage (that's PowerPoint User Days for those of you who do not speak German). I attended a session about video and PowerPoint conducted by Axel Becker. That's Axel and I to the left at a Berlin Eisbären hockey game tonight (Eisbären won, if you're interested!).

This reminded me to share with you some resources to using SnagIt and Camtasia Studio with PowerPoint. One way to set yourself apart from boring PowerPoints is to spice them up with some great visuals and video.

I've seen many presentations completely derailed because the presenter ended up not having an internet connection that they were promised. I always liked to 'safety proof' my PowerPoint presentations with some Camtasia Studio videos. I'd simply use Camtasia Studio to record the website I wanted to show off, save the video, and add it to my PowerPoint slide deck. That way, it did not matter if I had an internet connection for my presentation.

Also, ever done a presentation and have someone ask for your slides? I don't about you, but my slides don't usually have a lot of text and I'm too lazy to write in-depth speakers notes. And, I often leave PowerPoint to show off software and websites. So, my slides are only one part of the story. Next time you present, hook yourself up on a microphone and use Camtasia Studio to record all elements of your presentation. That way you can share your entire presentation with anyone who'd like to review it.

I compiled a few links about using SnagIt and Camtasia Studio with PowerPoint, but there are many more out there. Check out:

• A tutorial about how to record a PowerPoint Presentation with Camtasia Studio here.

• A SnagIt Output accessory for PowerPoint. Use this Output accessory to send your SnagIt screencaptures directly to PowerPoint... and its free.

• An example about how to add interactive images to your PowerPoint presentation with PowerPoint.

So, let's hear from you! How are you using SnagIt and Camtasia Studio with PowerPoint? Any tips and tricks you can share with the group?

As many of you know, I love, love, love Flickr! I have over 7,000 pictures posted there. I use Flickr to show friends and family pics from my travels. I also use it as a photo archive and back-up. And, Flickr has a great community - if I need some inspiration for knitting projects - I just look on Flickr to see what others are doing. Or, if I want a new desktop wallpaper, I look in Flickr Groups. Plus, I also love to send Jing and SnagIt screencaps there as well.

I had lunch with Raymond Kristiansen in Budapest this weekend and he mentioned that he had recently seen a screencast from Flickr made with Camtasia Studio. I had to find out what that was all about!

When I'm on the road, I don't check Flickr every day. So, after lunch, I logged into Flickr and saw that my homepage looked different. Flickr recently went through a big homepage redesign. So, I checked the Flickr blog to see what was going on. And, there it was... a Camtasia Studio screencast showing off all the new design changes for Flickr. You can see the blog post here that details the change and has a link to the screencast.

I picked this as the Screencast of the Week because I liked how they used the power of video to help ease some major changes with their website. The tour helped me be well versed in the new options and now I'm ready to use them. The screencast did a great job showing off the key new features on the homepage in just over 2 minutes! And, the screencast told me where to find more info if I needed it. Perfect - I'm ready to run and explore on my own.

And, if you're curious, I've been putting some snapshots from my recent travels to Berlin, Prague and Budapest here. Enjoy!

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

Audio is king in screencasts as you know. People will not tolerate bad audio. Think if you are wearing headphones... you don't want to hear any buzzing or popping in your ears. I'm always looking for audio tips. Especially for recordings done in uncontrolled environments like tradeshows and outside a sound booth.

So, on that note, this week's Screencast of the Week is about how to replace audio in your Camtasia Studio videos. If you're making a polished screencast, you might even want to hire a voice talent for professional audio narration. I heard from Paul Bridge, the Director of Marketing at NarrateIT. NarrateIt is a team of studio producers and voiceover artists who provide professional recordings. NarrateIt has created a tutorial on how to enhance Camtasia tutorials with improved sound. They also make good use of SmartFocus in the screencast.

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

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Craig Lamb and David Caso of Empire State College. They gave a presentation entitled, 'Infusing Academic Warning into the Online Environment: A Pilot Program'. Click on the screencast below to watch the screencast. It is a longer one that runs a little over 29 minutes.

I liked this screencast for several reasons. Even though I was unable to attend the event in person, I can still watch the screencast and participate. The presenters also make great use of Camtasia Studio's side by side video option. That way I can not only view the slides, but I can also see and hear the presenters. This is a great way to archive an event!

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

Teleprompters are not just for news anchors. They're nice for screencasters too! When making polished screencasts, teleprompters can make your projects go faster, sound better, run smoother and you don't run the risk of having rustling paper scripts mess up your audio.

Traditional teleprompters can cost thousands of dollars, but I found a free teleprompter that's available online called CuePrompter.com. It's simple to use - you just cut and paste your script and off you go! And, there's no software to install.

Here's a quick little Jingcast of the teleprompter in action. As many of you know, I am a hockey fan. And, since I'm not working on a script right now, I used some of my favorite quotes from "The Great One", hockey player Wayne Gretzky, as my script. :-)

And, don't forget about Max Rottersman - he made a teleprompter using SnagIt and some CD cases! You can read about him here. Have you found any tools that make video making easier with Camtasia Studio or Jing?

As a student, I always had to work harder at math and science to get a good grade. It just didn't come naturally to me at a certain point in my schooling. I would often get so wrapped in taking notes that I would not process what we were being taught. What I would have given to have access to the teacher walking through the math or science problems again when I was at home for review. That brings me to this week's Screencasts of the Week - they allow you to just that. Bring home the teacher in the form of a screencast!

Now you've heard of me talk about mathcasting before with the pioneer, Tim Fahlberg. Tim introduced me to Graeme MacNeil who contributes to Tim's mathcast wiki. In addition to mathcasts, Graeme also creates 'phicasts'. What's a phicast? Well, it is a physics lesson that incorporates screencaptures and screencasts. Graeme uses classroom response system (clickers), a tablet, ExamView software, plus Jing or Camtasia Studio to record his phicasts. Click on the pic to the left to watch an example of a phicast - it is about Newton's Second Law of Motion. Remember that law? If not, watch the phicast to re-learn it! You'll see in the screencast the use of the classroom response system when the students have to participate and give their answers to the problems. You can see additional phicasts here.

And, since we're talking math and science, I thought I'd give you an update on Tim's mathcast project. His wiki continues to grow which you can see here. He's working on creating a library of 500 screencasts for K-7 math using many student and educator voices! Another expert mathcaster, Colleen King of Math Playground is also participating in the K-7 Mathcasts 500 Project. Graeme also contributes many mathcasts to the wiki.

And, math must run in the family. Tim's sister, Linda Fahlberg-Stojanovska (pictured on the left) is a Professor of Mathematics and Computer Sciences at the University "St. Clement of Ohrid". She not only contributes to Tim's Math247 wiki, but also has a mathcast wiki here complete with mathcasts in Macedonian and Albanian! Linda has created 100s of calculus mathcasts. And, be sure to check out some the videos she created wtih Graeme here. What makes these screencasts cool is that they relate both physics and math!

Graeme and Tim also have an interesting twist on mathcasts - they have the students create them as well. Here is Graeme's write-up on why this is a good idea (hint: it engages students, they like to show off what they can do, it is different...).

What's also interesting is that Tim is in the USA, Graeme is in Australia and Linda is in Macedonia. They don't let the physical distance separate them - they colloborate online using Skype to work together and make mathcasts and phicasts.

Hats off to you Tim, Graeme, Linda and Colleen for making math and science easier for students to learn. I am in awe. This is a service that benefits all of us. And, they're making these screencasts available for free to everyone! Do you like what you see? Please be sure to thank Tim, Graeme, Linda and all the other screencasters who are helping students learn.

What can you do with a screencast? Who can you help or inspire? Share your knowledge and pass it on.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Blue Reference. They've been using Camtasia Studio to show off their software, Inference.

I like their screencasts for several reasons. They use Camtasia Studio to do 2 minute overviews showing off their software. You can watch one of their screencasts by clicking the screenshot to the left. Or, visit their homepage here or here to see other examples. These are great - a 2 mintue video fits in my schedule and I can get an idea about their software solutions in quickly.

I also like how Blue Reference uses Camtasia Studio to create compelling case studies that not only tell, but also show their software solutions. You can see see examples of these screencasts by visiting the homepage of their products here.

And, to top it all off, they have lots of training screencasts that are even built right into the software! Screencasts where you need them and when you need them!

Have you seen any great screencasts? Have you created your own screencasts? Nominate them for next week's Screencast of the Week! E-mail me!

Growing up I was always taking foreign language classes - from Spanish to French and even Latin! I remember just enough in each language to barely find my way around when traveling. And, last year, I got to put some of my French skills to the test. I was lucky enough to travel to France for the first time. I found Paris to be an amazing city full of art, culture, wonderful food and drink, and very friendly.

And, while we're talking about France, I have great news! We now have Camtasia Studio 5.1 available in French. I can't wait to see (and hear) the screencasts that are created!

One of my favorite people to study in French class was Voltaire. I remember one of his quotes being something like, "The secret of being boring is to say everything." So, on that note, I'll quit saying everything and let you learn more about Camtasia Studio in French! You can find out more the release here. You can also find many resources for Camtasia Studio here.

Unfortunately, I have not retained enough of my classes to write this post in French, but thankfully Alexis Noal, from our French PR Agency, 3d Communication, has translated this post to French for me. Enjoy! Or, as they say in Paris, 'A votre santé!'

"Durant toute mon enfance, j'ai collectionné les cours de langues étrangères - de l'espagnol au français en passant même par le latin Quelle ville magnifique que Paris avec ses arts, sa culture, sa cuisine merveilleuse et son hospitalité.

A propos de la France, j'ai une très bonne nouvelle pour vous : <a href="Camtasia Studio 5.1 est désormais disponible en français

Un des mes auteurs favoris en classe de français était Voltaire. Je me remémore l'une de ces citations qui disait quelque chose comme "le secret d'ennuyer est celui de tout dire". Donc, sur cette maxime, je n'en dis pas plus et vous laisse en découvrir plus sur Camtasia Studio en français dans le communiqué ci-joint.

Vous trouverez également plein d'informations et de ressources complémentaires sur Camtasia Studio ici.

Malheureusement, je n'ai pas retenu assez de mes leçons de français pour écrire ce billet dans la langue de Voltaire mais, heureusement, 3d Communication, notre agence de relations presse en France, nous a aidé pour la traduction. Enjoy! Ou, comme ils disent à Paris "A votre santé !"

I got an email recently with the subject, 'Screencasting like whoa'. That got my attention! It was from Laurence Favrot at SmartDraw. Laurence mentioned how they recently started using screencasts on their blog to improve the quality of their articles. Plus, the screencasts help them connect better with their audience. Laurence said that once they started making these screencasts, they started getting lots of great feedback too!

They even have a 'Camtasia Room' that is set up to record their screencasts!

Since I'm a big fan of storyboarding, I picked this screencast here about creating more effective presentations with storyboards as the 'Screencast of the Week'. They also make great use of SmartFocus.

Any nominations for next week?

It's been awhile since we've had an update about Camtasia Studio on the Mac. The planets aligned last week and Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, and I were actually both in the office on the same day. I was able to get a quick video with him about the project!

It's a quick video and runs just over 5 minutes long. I hope it answers some of your questions and offers you some insight into what we're working on.

I will be giving you regular updates here on the blog and via Twitter. And, we have a Mac newsletter - sign up for a subscription or get the RSS feed here.

What questions do you have about Camtasia Studio for the Mac? Troy and I will be making another video soon.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Paul Nielsen - he is a SQL Server rockstar!

I like Paul's screencasts for several reasons. First of all, he includes his all of his tutorials in one handy place - in a MediaRoll. You can see his MediaRoll to the left or on his homepage here. It's nice to have all of his screencasts in one place and I can subscribe to an RSS feed so I am alerted whenever Paul adds a new one. I also like that one of Paul's screencasts is a recorded presentation. Even though I was unable to attend his presentation live, I can still watch it because he recorded it with Camtasia Studio.

Want to learn more about the MediaRoll? You can find a nice write-up about it complete with a tutorial video here on the Screencast.com blog.

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

Everyone wants a job that they love. Do you have one? If not, I may have found some options you might be interested in.

I was poking around online looking for information about Camtasia Studio and in my search came across several job openings for Camtasia Studio experts. You can find the jobs listed here. Thought I'd share this with everyone since I'm sure there are a few people who'd like to get paid to screencast full time! And, no, I'm not looking for a new job. I feel very fortunate to have a job that I love with great co-workers at a fantastic company that makes cool products! :-) Which brings up another point - TechSmith is hiring too! You can check out a list of job openings here.

I thought we'd have a little fun this week with the 'Screencast of the Week'. I am continually fascinated with the speed painting videos. What better way to showcase your talent than to make a screencast showing it off? A digital portfolio of sorts. As always, I am inspired!

I've shown off speed painting videos before. Remember this great one of Jennifer Love Hewitt here?

If you'd like to make your own speed recording, here's how you speed up your Camtasia Studio screencast. When editing your screencast in Camtasia Studio, right click your video on the timeline. You should see the menu below.

Click on 'Clip Speed' and you can speed up or slow down your clip.

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

After a few weeks on hiatus, I thought it was time to bring back the Screencast of the Week. I was digging through the TechSmith website and came across a cool story. What do you think your company would for you do if you saved them $20 million dollars? I think you'd be called a hero for starters. Roxio (you know, they make popular software like Easy Media Creator) is using Camtasia Studio to make online support videos and has saved millions of dollars in the process! I think that's worthly of hero status!

You can read more here about the cool things Roxio is doing with Camtasia Studio. And, you can click on the screenshot to the left to launch one of their support videos. I like it because the video is short and concise. And, they use Callouts and Zoom and Pan nicely.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Who else should have hero status?

Recently I asked for your help in filling out this survey about Camtasia Studio. I appreicate so many people taking the time to fill it out. In the end, you'll end up with a better product.

We had the Camtasia Studio annual survey translated to German. Hopefully this will make it easier for our German speaking customers to participate. You can find German survey here.

Thanks again! We appreciate it! Our products are better because of your input.

I need your help. Got 15 minutes to spare? Would you to help us make Camtasia Studio better? We're trying to make sure we put all the great feature requests we get in perspective. So, in order to better understand what you need, like and think about Camtasia Studio, the Product Manager, Troy Stein, created a 23 question survery.

The results are going straight to the Camtasia Studio team and Troy. You can find the survey here. Thanks for making Camtasia Studio better!

Mark your calendars - I just got word from Daniel Park at dappertext that he's being interviewed tomorrow on all things Camtasia Studio and dappertext by 'Views from the Coop'.

You can hear Daniel's interview live on Blog Talk Radio here tomorrow at 3pm EST, If you can't listen live, they usually post the podcast to their site here within about a week (usually). I can't wait to hear Daniel's tips and tricks. I always learn something new from him.

Daniel also has a new newsletter that is dedicated to screencasting. You can sign up for it here.

Every two years my extended family gets together for a family reunion in Northern Wisconsin or the Upper Pennisula of Michigan. Last weekend happened to be family reunion time. So, my parents, sister, my 2 year old nephew and I, all piled in a car and drove 12 hours to the reunion. And, yes, you read that right. 12 hours in a car with a 2 year old!

When catching up with family members, it inevitably came up that I worked at a software company. Now raise your hand if you're the one in your family that everyone comes to for tech support or computer questions? I'm that person too! Well, this weekend was no different. Everyone wanted some computer help. In the past, I would try to help out family members via phone or email which isn't always easy and everyone ended up frustrated. But, this year, I'm going to go the Jing route!

So, you can guess what I'll be doing over the next week. I've been given a laundry list of questions and I'll be making screencast answers with Jing. Here's part of my list of screencasts: how do I move my iTunes library, how do I organize my photos, how do I update my antivirus software, how do I... ? And the list goes on. Anyone else using Jing for tech support for their family? What's been their reaction?

And, I'm also compiling the family photos from the weekend into a video slideshow using Camtasia Studio. You can see how to create this here.

We're celebrating today at TechSmith because we've just released Camtasia Studio v5.1 in German! You can learn all about it here.

Dieter Schiecke also has a nice blog post here about the release and will be giving away a copy of the new software. Visit his blog and maybe you'll win a copy!

I'm also happy to announce that we have a new German Learning Center. It has 20+ written tutorials, plus tutorial videos! You can check it out here.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from one of the coolest people I know. I met Beth Goza way back when she was trekking around the country showing off PocketPCs for Microsoft. Now she's at Zumobi!

Here is one of the screencasts Beth made.

Beth made 11 screencasts for the top 11 things to know about Zumobi which you can view here. Why 11? As Beth puts it, "... you know, because 11 is better than 10"!

I love these screencasts because rather than point a camera at a phone and film, Beth used a phone emulator on her computer to show off Zumobi's mobile widget app and recorded it using Camtasia Studio. By doing this, the quailty of the video is better - you can easily see what's on the cell phone screen.

How did I learn about Beth's new screencasts? Via Twitter!

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

In my spare time, I like to destress by doing some hard core knitting, photography and other crafts. I'm always looking for something new to learn and try. Recently I've been looking at paper crafts. I found a blog about scrapbooking and stamps, Scrappin and Stampin. And, the best part? The author, Savitri Wilder, had some Camtasia Studio screencasts! I love it when I find Camtasia Studio screencasts in unexpected places!

This tutorial is about using Photoshop's, 'Color Selection, Action, B&W, and Sepia'. You can read Savitri's blog post about the screencast here.

This tutorial is about, 'How to Add Keywords to a Gallery Upload'. You can read Savitri's blog post about the video here.

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

Put your screencasting skills to use and win some prizes! I noticed that Firefox is holding a screencasting contest and thought some of you might want to enter! FireFox needs your help to create screencasts for their support articles. Grand prize gets a Flip Video Ultra Series camera!

By the way, does anyone have a Flip Video Ultra Series? I was thinking about getting one. What do you think of it?

This week's Screencast(s) of the Week are out of this world...and from Second Life! TechSmith Newsletter writer, Daniel Foster recently interviewed Torley Linden, who is a Second Life rock star. Torley is a prolific screencaster with over 100 videos!

Torley also recently published his "13 rules to making good video tutorials". One of the reasons I like Torley's videos is because of his third rule: "Bugs must be left in". It is like you're looking over Torley's shoulder which is a good way to learn. Torley also makes good use of text and callouts.

And, I also like that he has lots of videos of his quick tips. For example, the quick tip tutorial below is under 2 minutes. I don't always have 20 minutes to spare to watch a screencast, but I almost always have time for a 2 minute one.

You can find lots of Torley's videos here. And, you can find the full interview in the Camtasia Studio newsletter interview here.

I love the quote on Torley's website too - "I amplify your awesome." This is a great motto!

Have you seen any great screencasts lately?

I've talked in the past about the importance of storyboards. I thought I'd also share another tool we use when planning our screencasts. We have a 'Video Project Form' that we use for planning before we record so we don't run into any 'gotchas' during recording or production. If you think about the goals of your video the audience before you make your screencast, it can change a variety of things like file format and video dimensions, if you use audio or captioning and other options.

You can download blank storyboards and a video project form here.

How do you prepare before you record your screencast?

I was honored enough to meet the wonderful Beth Kanter in person at SXSW this year. You remember Beth from these blog posts, right? Beth is a screencaster extraordinaire! Troy Stein was able to meet up with Beth on his travels in Boston recently. Here's what Troy has to say about his meeting with Beth:

Met with Beth Kanter in her home in Massachussets. Beth was running between her workout and the airport and was gracious enough to spend some time with me.

Beth makes tutorials and training for non-profits. In the past, she's made some really fancy training videos with Camtasia. One project was 12 minutes long, but took 20+ hours to complete, including storyboarding, recording, and especially edit.

Lately, Beth has been using Jing to do more improvised recordings. She says that she'll do a quick dry-run before she starts the recording, then she'll record it with Jing.

She said that it was liberating to create something so quickly and easily. But, she often wants to edit her Jing recordings.

Beth also said, "I don't mind re-recording a Jing if its a minute or two long. But, when I screw up in the third or fourth minute, it can be really frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I get frustrated when I mess up using the Camtasia Recorder, too. But the pain is lessened by knowing I can edit my Camtasia recordings. But I can't edit my Jings."

Is that an issue for anyone else?

Would it be helpful to edit Jing recordings inside Camtasia?

Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, is out loose on the road! He'll be making his way around North America over the next few weeks stopping to chat with Camtasia Studio users. He's starting on the East Coast of the United States. If you'd like to give Troy your feedback directly, drop us a line either in the comments or via e-mail and he may be coming to your town soon.

Here are Troy's notes from one of his meetings...

I met with Anthony Rocha in New Hampshire. Anthony runs Blade Multimedia, a full-scale multimedia development shop. He kept mentioning in his "pipeline" -- the various applications he uses to create his rich websites, CDs, etc. Anthony uses a lot of software applications in his multimedia projects, in conjunction with Camtasia. Here's how he decribes his pipeline of applications and some of the workflow (3min video):

Below is his list of apps in his pipeline. What's in yours? What do you use in conjunction with CS?

Me? Tonight, I used a Sony HDV camera, digitzed it with iMovie (for some reason Final Cut didn't like me today). I exported from iMovie to QuickTime MOV and imported it into a prototype of CS for editing, marking and production. Why not just edit in iMovie or FCP? I'm making a longer video of the interview and want the ability to create a TOC for easier navigation. If there's a good way of creating an html TOC w/ embedded MOV file in iMovie or FCP, let me know.

Anthony's Pipeline of Applications:

Animation 3D & 2D:

Graphics Design

Video editing and encoding (& screen capturing):

Web Design:

Rich Application Development:

I don't know about you, but whenever I travel somewhere and I'm not a native speaker, I always end up thinking about usability. When you're not able to read or understand what people are saying to you, you better hope they've put some thought into usability with whatever you're interacting with.

Take for instance the task of purchasing train tickets or even using an elevator. Even these routine tasks can be difficult tasks unless someone takes into consideration that a user may not be able to read or hear the instructions. Hopefully they have observed someone interacting with the machine. It can be pretty frustrating sometimes, but I'm always amazed at the kindness of strangers (and grateful too)!

And, on that note, I am in Paris this week for a conference and to meet-up with anyone who uses Camtasia Studio, SnagIt, Jing, Morae, and UserVue. And, yes, I had to buy a ticket to the Paris Metro off a machine like the one pictured to the above. And, no, I did not see an English option, but I managed to get my ticket nonetheless. :-)

So, with that in mind, this week's Screencast of the Week is about usability. It's done by Todd Follansbee of Web Marketing Resources. He made the video with Camtasia Studio but the testing was shot using Morae. Click the pic to the left to see Todd's video about website usablity. It's a quick one that runs less than 3 minutes.

If you're in Paris and would like to meet-up, please feel free to e-mail, call or text me (+1.517.410.0030). I'd love to meet-up!

I just learned that it's Videoblogging Week- April 20 - 28! It's not too late to celebrate. And, even though the organizers are talking about videos made with a camera, I think a screencast counts too. Afterall, you can easily record your screencast in Camtasia Studio complete with camera video combined with screen video together. There is a tutorial about how to do that here.

Judging on how my week is going so far, I probably won't have time to make a screencast a day to celebrate Videoblogging Week, but on my list for screencasts this week is one about creating iPod or iPhone videos with Camtasia Studio. But, I'm open to requests. What would you like to see?

There is a wiki full of info about Videoblogging Week which you can find here. Are you going to celebrate Videoblogging Week?

A little background music goes a long way and can set the tone and personality of your screencast. It can also make your screencast feel polished and professional. I get several questions about where we get the music for some of our screencasts. So, I thought I'd do a music round-up to share some sources we've found.

One option is to create your own music. I've used Cinescore and ACID Pro from Sony Creative Software. If you don't feel like composing from scratch, you can get some samples, loops and themes from Sony to help you create your masterpiece.

Creative Commons is also a great source music which you can search here. You can also try ccMixter for music that is free to download, remix and sample.

We use royalty free music that we purchase from Digital Juice often. The nice thing about Digital Juice is that most of their tracks are stackable which means you can pull out individual audio elements. So, if you find a track you really like but dislike part of it, you can just remove it.

DigitalJuice has a 10 second, 15 second, 30 second, 1 minute and a 3 minute version of each song. Here's a quick screencast about how to get to the galleries to listen to their samples. It runs less than a minute long.

The Camtaisa Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein, has compiled a list of his favorite music clips from Digital Juice's Stack Traxx. Here are Troy's favorites (the number represents the Volume Number):

• 04 RiverFlow (upbeat, fun)
• 06 ComeAndPlay (upbeat, little techno)
• 15 Mystique (lighter, subtle)
• 15 KickItBack (moderately upbeat guitar)
• 06 LookInside (un pocito espanol)
• 12 Letter of Intent (blue suit feel)
• 32 EstaBien (fun latin groove)
• 03 Magic (playful orchestra music)
• 37 Westcoast Vamp -- (bit of Jazz)
• 13 RadioActive -- (more of a driving, rockish sound)

Chris McQueen in Training used royalty free music for the Jing videos from Kevin Macleod at Incompetech.

What music sources have you found?

I'm happy to share some news with you - there is a new release of Camtasia Studio v5.1! This is a free upgrade if you have Camtasia Studio v5.0.

Here's a quick update of what's new:

Callouts, callout, callouts! We have lots of new updates for callouts. There is a new Spotlight callout that dims everything on the screen except for the part you want to emphasize. The new Highlighter callout is a bright, bold highlighter pen for the screen. Plus, add and edit callouts faster and easily.

Third audio track now available - we've added a third audio track on the timeline. This makes is easy to add background or other audio to your screencasts.

Create screencasts for the iPhone and iTouch easily - We've added a preset for the dimensions of the iPhone and iTouch so you can produce videos quickly that look great on these devices.

ExpressShow is now available for the Flash FLV format - FLV videos are typically longer and contain more motion or camera video. Now you can wrap FLV videos in the ExpressShow template. They'll look great with full-screen playback, a floating table of contents and custom "about" box.

Organize, share and present Flash videos with the updated Camtasia Theater - Want to share several Flash videos online together? Use Camtasia Theater to create a customizable Web menu for any of your Camtasia Studio-produced Flash videos. ExpressShow, SWF, and FLV. Use Camtasia Theater to create a table of contents which makes it easily jump between videos.

You can find out all the details here about the new version. For information about how to upgrade, please visit here.

What do you think? Do you like the new features?

Chipmunks are cute, but that does not mean you necessarily want them in your videos.

Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up about an audio issue you may encounter. You might hear Camtasia Studio Flash content playing on the latest release of the Flash Player (v9.0.115.0 or later) where the audio sounds garbled and may contain a high pitched chirp that kind of sounds like, you guessed it, a chipmunk.

A future update from Adobe to the Flash Player may resolve this conflict, but in the meantime we have written a fix that will avoid this problem. You can find the fix included in the latest version of Camtasia Studio, which you can download here. Note: This is a free update if you have a license for Camtasia Studio 5.0.

The Camtasia Studio team and Tech Support have investigated this issue and found that it occurs when:

• The project was produced to SWF.

• The SWF file was produced with MP3 audio.

• The SWF file is played in the latest Flash Player.
  
  

  You can find out all the details on this issue, as well as obtain a tool to fix any video already produced with Camtasia that sounds garbled, here.

As a frequent traveler, I often have problems remembering and organizing travel details. Hotels look the same, airports start to blur together, and cab rides are crazy in any city. What dates am I traveling? How am I getting there? Where am I?!

I also need to share my travel itinerary with my fellow team members, friends and family. Sometimes when I travel, other people are booking my information. I have little bits and pieces of my travel plans all over - email, airline and hotel websites, and even scraps of paper.

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from one of my favorite sites, TripIt. I quickly fell in love with TripIt for organizing my travel in one place and giving me a single, master itinerary. I can invite fellow travelers to my trip so we can meet-up on the road. I can colloborate with our Tradeshow Manager and she can add travel information which she books for me in my itinerary. And, I can easily share my info with others. TripIt makes my life easier. And, then when I saw they were using Camtasia Studio, I was really hooked!

You can see several TripIt screencasts here. I like these screencasts from TripIt because they are short, concise and the audio sounds great! They even make great use of a large arrow so you can easily follow their cursor and they do a fab job zooming and panning.

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

Growing up in Michigan, I have always been a hockey fan. I often went to watch games at Michigan State University and even played on a roller hockey team in college. And, if I couldn't attend a game, I would sometimes watch hockey on TV. I remember back in the early 90's Fox Television developed a special puck (FoxTrax) with internal electronics that would highlight the puck on the TV broadcast. That way viewers could easily see and track the puck on-screen. Sometimes it was hard to follow the action of small, fast moving puck on TV.

Just as the puck could be hard to track, the same is true for your cursor when screencasting. It can be hard on your viewers to follow your mouse movements. And, on some backgrounds, it may be nearly impossible to see your cursor. That's why I love this tutorial from video expert, Bill Myers! He'll show you how he makes his cursor big and red so his viewers can easily follow his activity. The video runs just 3 minutes long.

And, don't forget you can also highlight Camtasia Studio's cursor for added visibility. There is a tutorial here.

Thanks for sharing your tip with us, Bill!

One of the nice things about working at a tech company is that there is never a shortage of computers. I often like to try out new and different machines. I've recently started using a MacBook Pro in addition to my PC. On a typical day, I bounce between the two computers depending on what I'm working on. Then, I end up shuffling documents and files back and forth between the machines and the network. This wastes a lot of time plus every week I lose a file and end up shouting in anger at both computers. Shouting doesn't fix anything, by the way!

I was so happy to see this article in the New York Times from one of my favorite tech columnists, David Pogue. David tests out a product called SugarSync that will sync your PC, Mac and phone together! And, even better was when I went to take the product tour, it was made with...you guessed it...Camtasia Studio! So, it's the Screencast of the Week!

I love this screencast because they show split screens with the PC and Mac in the screencast which is a great way to illustrate the product. The audio sounds great. And, they make good use of SmartFocus.

Click the screenshot below to launch the screencast. It runs just over 3 minutes long.

Thanks David Pogue and SugarSync for keeping me sane and synched!

It's Sunday so you know what that means...It's time for the Screencast of the Week!

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from StyleFeeder. You can watch this week's Screencast of the Week by clicking the pic on the left. I picked this as the Screencast of the Week because I love the use of SmartFocus, Callouts, and the short length. Plus, they have several screencasts available on their site - you can see several here!

It think it is often harder to make shorter videos - I always have a goal target length when I make a screencast, but usually end up doubling it! It is easy to start talking and rambling. I don't know about you, but I definitely prefer shorter videos right now. My attention span is short and lately I rarely have time to sit uninterrupted to watch longer videos. Is it just me?

This week's Screencast of the Week was sent to me by Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration blog! You can see the blog post and screencast here.

I liked this screencast for several reasons. In the blog post the author, David Tucker, mentioned that talking about Aviary wasn't enough. You really need to see it in action. This screencast does a nice job showing off the features and functionality in Aviary without being too long and David makes good use of panning the screen too. You get too see all of the app, without having a large video. And, in addition to giving you a tour of the app, David shows you how to use some of the functionality too.

Also, you may notice that when the screencast is loading, David changed the preloader in Camtasia Studio to show his own logo (see image on left). It's a great way to show off your own brand in your screencast while your viewers wait for the video to load. If you'd like to learn how to do that too, check out this tutorial here.

Thanks for sending this screencast, Amit! Anyone have a nomination for next week's Screencast of the Week?

Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeep! Ever had one of those nights were you swear your head just hit the pillow and then your alarm goes off? I just had a whole week of that! I was running day until night...and often back into day at the Microsoft Mix and SXSWi conferences. The only thing that kept me running was a lot of Diet Coke! Consequently, the blog did not get updated for a few days. My apologies.

You can see some pictures here from SXSW and here for Microsoft Mix. The TechSmith crew had a great time meeting up with people doing amazing things with SnagIt, Camtasia and Morae. More stories on that later...

I also got great news that Daniel Park has started a new newsletter about all things screencasting called, 'The Screencaster'! You can sign up for it here. It's a free monthly newsletter all about the art of Screencasting.

Daniel told me the newsletter will be filled with tips, tricks, news, and reviews. And, he'll be focusing not just on the technology, but also be giving lots of attention to higher-level marketing and training topics as they relate to screencasting, so Sales Directors or IT Coordinators who are left wondering how to implement screencasting in their own organizations will all find something to like.

And, I'm told the first issue goes out early next week, so sign up now so you don't miss it.

To celebrate, I thought I would give away a few copies of Daniel's latest book, Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide! The first 4 people to comment on this blog post answering the following statement will get a free copy of the book - 'Camtasia Studio is {insert your answer here}...'

Josh Holmes, a RIA Architect Evangelist from Microsoft, stopped in our offices recently and told me about how he did some remote screencasting with Camtasia Studio! Since Josh is doing something different and new, he's the Screencast of the Week!

How'd he do it? Well, Josh's interviewee records what they're doing with Camtasia Studio on their end and also shares their screen with Josh via Live Meeting. Josh uses this nifty little phone recorder which he plugs into the microphone input jack on his computer. Then Josh uses Audacity to record the audio. Note that the phone recorder does not have a level indicator so you need to watch the levels when recording. Then, Josh gets the screencast from his interviewee and in Camtasia Studio, he merges the video with audio.

Want to see the screencast he created? Check out the episode of Code To Live on Channel9 here.

I'm looking forward to seeing Josh at Microsoft Mix this week where he'll be helping out in the Open Spaces area. Did you have any questions for him? I'm happy to ask him when I see him.

And, I've ordered one of the phone recorders too. Any volunteers to try remote screencasting with me to share your story?

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?

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

It's nice to share! And, we've got a special treat to share with you, blog readers! Training has created a set of 7 additional callouts that you can download and use with Camtasia Studio! Anton Bollen has made a video that explains exactly how to install the callouts, how to use them and what they allow you to do. He'll also show you how to remove any of the callouts that are no longer wanted, all in just under 5 minutes!

First, watch the screencast below. Then, download the .zip file with the callouts here. Be sure to share this with others and pass it on...it is the nice thing to do!

Something exciting is in the air...Tony Dunckel, the SnagIt and Jing Product Manager, and I are out in San Francisco at the VizThink conference. And, we're surrounded by the rock stars in the visual world. I can't wait to hear talks led by Cliff Atkinson (he's a SnagIt user!), Nancy Duarte, Kevin Cheng and Christine Martell (remember, she made the 'Bethcast'?). I'm sure Tony and I will be learning a lot this week.

And, our booth at VizThink is next to MindJet, the makers of MindManager software! As you know, I'm a big fan of mindmapping, and often use MindManager to plan a variety of things from blog posts, to project planning, and everything in between. I have to admit, something I never thought to use it for was vacation planning. And, that leads me to this week's Screencast of the Week. GottaBeMobile has a great 'inkcast' that shows how to do just that - plan your vacation using MindManager from start to finish! You can see the blog post and screencast here. And, there's even some singing in this screencast!

And, in the interest of being transparent, I should mention that MindJet sent me a copy of latest version of MindManager (I have purchased several copies in the past) and we do sponsor GottaBeMobile (I've been a long time fan too).

Have you seen any creative screencasts lately?

You're going to love this video! It shows a secret way to add background music to your videos even when you have both Audio 1 and Audio 2 tracks being used! How? Well, it's a multi-step process, but in the end it frees up the Audio 2 track and makes it possible to add some quiet background music to the overall video. Check out this screencast that Ryan Eash made to see how he does the trick. The video runs just over 4 minutes.

As a little disclaimer - don't feel like you have to add background music. That's not what we're advocating with this screencast. It's not always needed for some videos. Use it at your own discretion. And, if the music takes away for your viewers learning by being distraction, don't use it.

Up next in our video series from the Training Department is a screencast from Anton Bollen. In this video, he'll give you a look behind the scenes of the Training Department to show how they use SnagIt create some of the arrow callouts that they use in their Camtasia Studio videos. It runs just under 4 minutes. Enjoy!

How many times have you quit watching a video because the audio was bad or unpolished? Audio is just as important as the video.

Today's screencast is from Matt Pierce and all about basic audio editing in Camtasia Studio and runs just under 3 minutes. Take your screencasts to the next level and learn a few audio tips from Matt. Enjoy!

Screencast guru, Beth Kanter recently celebrated her birthday with a challenge for her blog readers to raise money for the Sharing Foundation. You can read the challenge and blog post here.

And, Christine Martell responded with a "Bethcast" for Beth's birthday! What better way to celebrate to celebrate a birthday than with charitable donations and a screencast?! You can see Christine's Bethcast here.

What I love about this Bethcast is that it is creative and different. I love the content too - Christine talks about the power of using images which is something that we care about at TechSmith.

Happy Birthday Beth! I hope you get your birthday wish and your challenge is met. And, I hope we see many more screencasts from Christine.

Have you given a screencast for a gift? What did the recipient think?

PS - Here's my shameless plea...My birthday is June 30th - you know what I want, right?! ;-)

Do you sudoku? I have to admit that I'm a bit addicted to it. It is the perfect way to pass time on those long flights and when I'm standing in line anywhere. And, I feel like I'm exercising my brain by doing the math in the game.

Daniel Foster, TechSmith's new Newsletter writer, sent me a link for a sudoku screencast. I like it because the screencast is about a fun subject! Not all screencasts have to be about how to use software or a website. Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs just under 4 minutes.

And, Patty makes more screencasts! Check out Patty's other mathcasts here.

And, on a side note, if you'd like another option to share your screencasts, try Screencast.com. It does not scale your screencasts so your videos retain their original quality. There is a free trial for anyone who'd like to try it out here.

Any nominations for the next Screencast of the Week? I'm looking for some screencasts about the holidays. Have you seen any?

Kelly is doing amazing things in his classroom with technology and his students love it! Check out an article written about Kelly in THE Journal here.

Do you think you would have gotten a better grade if your biology teacher had recorded their lectures? What cool uses of technology have you seen in the classroom lately?

Congrats, Kelly!

We're celebrating the release of Camtasia Studio v5 in German today at TechSmith! You can find all the details here. You can also watch a video and even take it for a test drive. Features are the same great ones that are in the English version.

And, check out Dieter Schiecke and Axel Becker's German Camtasia Studio blog here. They'll have some posts on the new German version as well. That's Dieter and Axel pictured on the left from my last visit to Germany earlier this month.

Any feedback about the German version of Camtasia Studio? And I'm looking for someone to practice my German with. Any volunteers?

We have been celebrating the release of Camtaisa Studio v5 at TechSmith lately. See? That's Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, in the picture to the left enjoying some cake at our launch party.

Now that the dust has settled and you've had a chance to use Camtasia Studio v5, it's time to start talking about what's next. That's where you come in. If we gave you Troy's job and you were the Product Manager of Camtasia...what would you do? What would you change? What features would you add?

We appreciate all the feedback you give. Our products are better because of the feedback from our users.

So, Product Managers, what's next? Comment away!

Now that Camtasia Studio v5 is out, would you like some training?

Did you notice on the new splash screen in Camtasia Studio that you can access training directly?

We also have many videos and resources on our website for free in our Learning Center here. Our training department won't be hitting the road for the rest of 2007. But, if you prefer to learn in a classroom setting, Chris Austin is conducting classroom training in Washington DC, Atlanta, Chicago, and Phoenix. You remember Chris, right? You can find out details on his site here.

Chris is conducting a two-day course where you'll master Camtasia Studio with hands-on exercises and expert instruction. You'll learn:

• How to record razor sharp screen captures, PowerPoint presentations, and even full-motion video.
• Step-by-step editing techniques to make even your first video look professional.
• Uploading and sharing videos on your website, blog, Screencast.com, and more.
• Tips, tricks, and resources to help you get it all done better, faster, and easier.

And, if you'd like to find a local trainer, we have a list of third party service providers. Check it out here.

Well, we've made it! Day 10 on our top 10 countdown...Thanks for all the comments and feedback. We appreciate it! Keep it coming...

Today we've got a screencast with Troy Stein and Dave O'Rourke. They'll go over all the ins and outs of Camtasia Studio v5. Enjoy!

Update: I heard a few reports of issues viewing the video with the embedded player - not knowing if it's loading, slowness and so on. It's a large video (57.5 MB). So, I've removed the embedded player from this post - watch the video here. It may take a few minutes to load, but you'll see it downloading and it's well worth a short wait.

And, if you'd like to try Camtasia Studio yourself, download the eval here.

What would you like us to do for Camtasia Studio for v6?

We're one day away from launching Camtasia Studio v5! I can't wait to hear your feedback after you've tried it tomorrow. If you're in the Okemos, Michigan area, you're more than welcome to stop in to help us celebrate the release! :-)

Up today on our sneak peek is an improvement we've made on the production side called ExpressShow. What is ExpressShow? The ExpressShow Flash template creates a single SWF file which contains the exported video, the configuration variables and the playback controls. In the past, Camtasia Studio created multiple files when you produced a Flash screencast and it was not easy to share. There's a screenshot below of what you'll see in Camtasia Studio's Production wizard when you're producing a SWF.

In Camtasia Studio v5, when you produce your screencast, our default selection will be ExpressShow. It's a sleek staging and playback format for displaying your Camtasia Studio screencasts that puts maximum emphasis on the content while taking up minimal screen real estate. ExpressShow is the perfect choice when creating content for sites where screen real estate is at a premium like on a blog or website.

ExpressShow is ideal for producing videos that are approximately 15 minutes or less in length and do not contain a great deal of motion, such as transitions, Zoom-n-Pan keyframes, and animation. And, what's also nice is that you can use the ExpressShow template to include customizable information such as logos, table of contents, custom about box, and more! There's a screenshot below of what the Table of Contents option would like in a screencast.

We will have a screencast coming about ExpressShow later this week so you can see it in action. Of course, you can try it out starting tomorrow as well.

I'm really excited about this feature. I hope you like it too!

The next feature on our sneak peek tour has do to with sharing your Camtasia Studio screencasts. You can easily share your content quickly by either uploading your Camtasia created content directly to Screencast.com or your FTP server.

You don't have to go through all the steps to produce your videos to take advantage of this feature. In Camtasia Studio v5, you can upload your screencasts to Screencast.com or your FTP server anytime you want. There's an option to do this right under the File menu in Camtasia Studio. See the pic below.

If you'd like to upload your content to Screencast.com from Camtsaia Studio, just select File>Upload to>Screencast.com. Then fill out your login info for Screencast.com. Quick and easy!

If you'd like to FTP your Camtaisa Studio materials to your own server, simply select File>Upload to>FTP. Fill out the FTP Settings dialog box that appears (see below). You can save the profile for future use to save you time. Just click the 'Add As New Profile' button and enter a name for the profile.

Now that it is easier to share your Camtasia Studio screencasts, I hope you'll share them with the world!

I'm excited to share with you some great new resources for our German speaking customers!

Dieter Schiecke and Axel Becker have a great vidcast, PowerPoint-TV. Remember when I blogged about them back here? Well, they recently did a screencast about SnagIt! Check it out here. I love that Dieter and Axel are wearing SnagIt t-shirts!

Also, I got word from Dieter last week that they're launching a Camtasia Studio blog! Check it out here. Expect great things! Dieter is an expert and conducts Camtasia Studio training in Germany.

I've added both of these items to our Del.icio.us bookmarks. Feel free to visit our favorite links here.

I'm looking forward to seeing Dieter and Axel next month in Berlin. I'll be attending BarCamp and PodCamp Berlin and O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo November 3 - 8. Would anyone like to meet-up?

Have you seen good resources in other languages? I'd love to share them with everyone...

Our sneak peek today is about Camtasia Studio and Microsoft's Silverlight. For more info about Silverlight, visit here.

Dave O'Rourke made a quick screencast that will show you how to use Camtasia Studio 4 and 5 to create content compatible with Silverlight. We have made it a lot easier in Camtasia Studio 5 to create WMVs that are compatible with Silverlight. We changed the default settings so it takes three simple steps to produce a Silverlight compatible WMV file in Camtasia Studio 5. See below.

Also, ff you're using Camtasia Studio 4 and would like to produce WMVs that are compatible with Silverlight, you can download and use this Windows Media Profile (*.prx) here. Dave's screencast will walk through the steps to use the Windows Media Profile in Camtasia Studio 4. Camtasia Studio 5 users will not need to do this.

With Camtaisa Studio v5, we've moved to a more standard, stable editing approach of 30 frames per second editing. Previously, we gave people the illusion of editing at 100ths of a second. But this was confusing because we didn't have 100 frames per second. In previous versions of Camtasia, it would look like you were cutting out a small piece of your video, but in reality you would end up cutting out more than anticipated. If you've ever experienced this, it was very frustrating and confusing. The updates make editing in Camtasia Studio more consistent and more stable.

Check out this quick video from Lead Developer Dave O'Rourke to see how this update will make your life a lot better. The video runs less than 5 minutes.

We're at the half way mark on our sneak peek tour. Thanks for following along and for sending all the feedback. I appreciate it!

Today's screencast is all about Flash Video (FLV). The team has worked hard to improve our FLV output in several ways - it's faster and more stable. FLV is perfect for longer, full motion videos.

Check out this screencast from Troy Stein - he'll tell you all about the updates for the FLV output and why you should care. It's a quick screencast running just over 2 minutes.

Also, check out a video about getting the best quaility and smallest file size here.

Today's sneak peek is all about making your screencasts look great...which in turn make you look great! We've added some new transitions like cube rotate, glow, fade to black and more...And, we've updated the Callouts so you can make them look glossy.

Check out the quick screencast Troy Stein made about the new updates. You'll see the new transitions and Callouts in action plus get some tips about applying these features across your screencast. The video is less than 3 minutes.

Do you like what you see so far?

Up next on our sneak peek of Camtasia Studio v5 is about editing. We have new Project Settings. Now you can easily produce videos for the web, iPod, CD, or your blog with the click of a button.

Have you ever recorded a full screen recording only to later decide that you needed to scale the video down for delivery on an iPod or a blog? The new Project Settings are useful as they give you a real time preview of what your video will look like after scaling it. For example, if you record a screencast at 1024x768, then set your project settings to Web, the new Project Settings will scale your video to 640x480.

The Camtasia Studio Lead Developer, Dave O'Rourke, made this quick 6 minute screencast showing off this new feature.

On a side note, I heard people were unable to post comments. We're working on getting that fixed. I hope to have that back up and running by tomorrow. My apologies.

Up next in our sneak peek of Camtasia Studio v5 is about recording.

You'll notice from the screenshot below that Camtasia Studio's Recorder looks a little different. We've simplified the Recorder so it's easier to use and we've made it smarter so you'll spend less time editing.

There are several new features that we've added for the recording process. One feature is our Snap-to-App feature. Have you ever been making a screencast only to launch another application, webpage or dialogue box and that new window pops up outside of the recording area? If you're like me, you fumble, drag the new window into your recording area, mutter a few words and try to carry on. What the Snap-to-App feature does is regardless of what application is opened during recording, it will immediately be snapped to the predefined recording size so it is always viewable and in frame. The result is less editing time and a more professional looking screencast.

Another nice benefit with Snap-to-App is that this also applies to the mouse cursor. Often I need to pause my recording for whatever reason and I end up moving my mouse. I can never place my mouse back in the right spot when I resume recording and the result is a jumping mouse in the recording. Now if you pause a recording and check email or surf the Web - the second you resume recording your mouse cursor snaps back to its last position!

There are more new features to use when you're recording. Watch this quick 4 minute screencast from Troy Stein to see Snap-to-App in action and other new features. Like what you see?

Pssssst…I've got a secret to share. As a thank you for reading the blog, I wanted to give you a sneak peek at some of the new features in our upcoming release of Camtasia Studio v5. And, you, my fellow blog readers, get to see the inside scoop first!

The Camtasia Studio team has been hard at work and we're gearing up to release Camtasia Studio v5 on October 9. Since I'm a fan of top ten lists, I thought I'd take the next ten days before the release to off what's new in this release.

One of the major goals of Camtasia Studio v5 was to make it so any user – novice or expert – could create a high quality screencasts faster and with less effort.

You'll see over the next ten days how we’ve added major new features during each of the three stages of production - recording, editing and production – that have benefits for both the screencast creator and the viewers.

With that in mind, let's get started. Up first in our top ten countdown is a feature we've added on the editing side - SmartFocus!

SmartFocus intelligently tracks activity on the screen and zooms in to keep your viewers focused. This feature enables users to create smooth automatic zoom-n-pan action with the click of a mouse button, It focuses the viewer’s attention on important points of interest. This feature is nice because you record large areas of your screen and scale your screencast for smaller playback windows (think blogs and Apple iPods) and still provide visual clarity. There's a screenshot below of Camtasia Studio's timeline with the SmartFocus button below.

It is best to see SmartFocus in action. Troy Stein, the Camtasia Studio Product Manager, made this short screencast that runs a little over 4 minutes. You'll get more information about SmartFocus as well as see a comparison of a video with SmartFocus vs one without.

You'll be able to get your hands on Camtasia Studio v5 in two weeks and use SmartFocus yourself. But, fear not…until then, you can purchase and use Camtasia Studio v4 today. If you purchase Camtasia Studio 4 now, you will be sent a key that works for Camtasia Studio v5 (it will work with Camtasia Studio v4 too). That means you'll get a free upgrade on October 9 when Camtasia Studio v5 comes out.

Are we off to a good start? What do you think?

Did you know that Camtasia Studio will allow you to add your own graphics (BMP, GIF, PNG and JPG) as Custom Callouts?

Sometimes when making screencasts you want to graphically show the key being pressed especially when audio isn't an option. Showing the key can really help illustrate or reinforce your instructions.

And, you're in luck. AlanWho has created 104 standard PC Keyboard key icons that you can use in your Camtasia Studio screencasts. You can download and read more about them on AlanWho's blog here. No need to create your own Keyboard Callouts thanks to AlanWho.

Click here for a quick tutorial on how to create your own custom Callouts to Camtasia Studio.

Same thing goes for SnagIt. You can make any PNG, JPG, GIF, TIF or BMP your own custom SnagIt stamp. For more information about how to do that, click here. Don't feel like making your own SnagIt stamps? We have lots of SnagIt Stamps which you can download for free here.

Thanks AlanWho for not only creating the Keyboard Keys, but also sharing them with everyone! Now we just need AlanWho to create the 'Any' key icon for us to use. ;-)

I was digging around looking at screencasts last week and stumbled upon this mashup contest by the Sunlight Foundation. To enter the contest, you had to submit a screencast showing off your mashup!

There were several great Camtasia Studio screencasts entered in the contest which you can view here. Click the image below to watch the winning entry. It's a short screencast running less than 2 minutes. And, the winners won $2,000 for their mashup and screencast!

What great screencasts have you seen lately?

This week's Screencast of the Week is from Fog Creek Software!

Fog Creek made a screencast showing off their new release of FogBugz. What I like about this screencast is that it is not your typical serious, dry product demo. I really like the dynamic of having two narrators. Fog Creek's CEO and founder, Joel Spolsky and Babak Ghahremanpour, from their technical staff, narrated the screencast. Having two narrators is nice as it makes the demo interesting and conversational. The audio, which was recorded in a studio, is really high quaility too.

Click the screenshot below to watch the screencast. It runs close to 13 minutes.

Congrats to Fog Creek on the new release of FogBugz Version 6!

As a kid, I always liked breaking the rules. I still do sometimes! I was watching my 2 year old nephew, Moose, the other evening and was quickly reminded that there is a reason behind many rules and they can be good (ask me about the 'Don't throw objects at Aunt Betsy' rule sometime)! After I finally got Moose to bed, I was thinking about what it takes to make great screencasts and videos. And, so I decided to compile a list of rules for screencasting!

1. You shall not bore your viewer.
2. You will include audio.
3. You will publish in Flash (99.9 of the time to keep it web friendly).
4. You shall check the recording dimensions.
5. You will keep the screencast short and to the point.
6. You will share the screencast with others who can benefit.
7. You shall not make me seasick with panning.
8. You will not film the screen with ones webcam.
9. You will use special effects sparingly.
10. You will watch the entire screencast before posting and sharing with others.
11. You will plan or storyboard your screencast...at least a little.
12. You will do a test recording to make sure everything is working properly.
13. You must have fun while you screencast. You are a rockstar!

What did I miss? Am I way off the mark? Which ones are made to be broken? Add your thoughts and rules in the comments!

Ever notice that small button in the Callouts section of Camtasia Studio? You know, the button that says, 'Custom Callouts'...Yes, you can create custom callouts in Camtasia Studio! I saw a screencast from Tim Heuer recently about custom callouts and was reminded that not everyone knows we have this option.

Custom call-outs are perfect if you want to add something beyond the standard arrows and other callouts we provide. Many people like to add their corporate or website logo to their screencast to brand them. Tim uses them to add a 'lower third' to his screencast

Watch Tim's video below and read his blog post about custom callouts in Camtasia Studio here.

And, there's a great tutorial on our website here all about custom callouts if you'd like step by step instructions.

My sister has a fancy digital camera. Its a Nikon D50 that takes great photos.

While house boating at Lake Powell last week, she surprised me with basic questions about Photoshop. I thought, "How could she know everything about her camera and not know her software?"

Really dumb assumption, I know.

Coming back to work, I decided I don't want to make dumb assumptions anymore.

I want to know what you know. I put together our Camtasia Studio survey to learn about you and how you use Camtasia.

It's about 15 questions. Your answers will be me be less ignorant.

Click here to take the survey.

When you're done, feel free to check out my vacation pix with my sister's camera. The high-flying, good-looking guys are my brothers. The beautiful children are mine. :-)

Troy Stein is the Camtasia Studio Product Manager. You can read more about him here.

Another week, another late Screencast of the Week. My apologies. I was unfortunately delayed and stuck at the airport so I was unable to blog last night, but it gave me time to think.

So, along the flight theme, this week's Screencast of the Week is a Camtasia Studio recording of a Flight Simulator game.

Now what I really like about this is the idea of recording a live event in order to learn from it. You could play the game, crash the plane and not realize what you did to make the mistake. Or, you could play the game, record it, crash the plane, and watch the Camtasia recording and learn from your mistakes to improve your skills.

And, isn't that better? Practice, watch the screencast and learn from your mistakes...on the flight simulator...not on my flight. ;-)

Rich Boys has been with TechSmith for just over a year. He came here from the University of Michigan where he worked in various IT roles for the previous 12 years. There is always a fun rivalry between the UM and MSU grads at TechSmith. Go Blue!

So you want to capture lectures and presentations with Camtasia Studio. Are you worried that your faculty and presenters will find the recorder interface too complex or confusing?

We are exploring ideas to make the process easier on the recorder and very interested in your feedback on the subject.

1. How much feedback should we give the presenter that the recording has started?
2. Should we notify them if the audio is not capturing anything?
3. If we expand beyond just Windows what other computer operating systems should we get a recorder working for this sort of solution?
4. Finally, what are your preferred media formats for the output and where do you prefer to have these files stored, do you have your own web servers or Learning Management System?

So if you have an idea on what you would like to see in a lecture or presentation capture drop me a line. Help us make the product that would fit your needs.

I have an apology to make to you. I've subjected you to bad webcam video in some of our screencasts. Remember back when Brooks Andrus and I made a screencast at PF Changs? Check out a screenshot of the webcam video below. It's bad, bad, bad! And, I'm sorry.

When I can, I try to use the better DV Camera I have versus my webcam, but if I'm traveling, I don't always want to carry the bigger DV camera, tripod and other gear. And, I always have the webcam hooked up in the office so often out of convenience, I like to use the webcam.

Well, I was excited to see this blog post over at Strobist blog. This is a blog post worthy of a bookmark!

And, you'll see how you can improve the picture from your webcam with a few simple tweaks. 5 tweaks to be exact:

1. For Pete's Sake, Don't Use Your Monitor as a Light Source
2. Soften the Light
3. Kill the Computer's Reflection in Your Eyes
4. Give Your Webcam What it Wants
5. Clean Up Your Background

Any tips you have to add to get better quality video from your webcam? Oh, and after getting tips from the Strobist, I promise I won't make you watch red webcam images anymore.

As you probably know by now, I love technology and...I'm always running a little behind. With that in mind, there's a blog that encompasses both subjects - Lifehacker! Lifehacker is all about software and websites that will save you time! Perfect! Was this blog written just for me? It's one of my favorite blogs.

I was excited to see that Lifehacker is running a screencast contest. You can get all the details about the screencast contest here. And, you could win a signed copy of the Lifehacker book!

Use your Camtasia Studio skills and win that book! All you have to do is simply screencast your favorite shortcut or timesaver in action on your computer!

I noticed in the comments that one of my favorite bloggers, Amit Argawal from the Digital Inspiration blog has submitted a Camtasia Studio video for the contest. It's about FireFox keyboard shortcuts. You can see it here.

And, Chris McQueen, from our Training Department, submitted a screencast about a SnagIt shortcut which you can view here.

Good luck! Let me know if you enter the contest - I'd love to show off your screencasts!

Jack Cook, of Experience Mobility and the Mobility Site, e-mailed me about one of his latest Camtasia Studio screencasts. It's all about ZoomIt - a free utility than you can get here at Microsoft TechNet.

ZoomIt is perfect to use when you're presenting or when you're recording your Camtasia Studio videos. ZoomIt allows you to zoom in on an area of your screen using hotkeys. This is perfect to use when you want to focus your screencast viewer's attention on a particular area of your screen. ZoomIt also lets you annotate your screen - there's a nice 'Draw' and 'Type' feature. Keep in mind, you can use ScreenDraw in Camtasia Recorder or, you can zoom in and out in your video after you record it with Camtasia's own Zoom-n-Pan. Depending on how you like to make your screencasts, you may prefer ZoomIt. Plus you can use it when you're giving presentations.

Click the 'play' button on the video below to watch Jack's screencast. It's 3 minutes long.

You can read Jack's post about ZoomIt here.

Have you found any useful utilities to use with SnagIt, Camtasia Studio or Morae? Pass them on! I'd love to share them with everyone.