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!

We're excited to introduce a fun new project we're working on this month--the Camtasia Small Business Test Drive! Starting last week, we challenged four small businesses in the Lansing, Michigan area to "test drive" Camtasia Studio and/or Camtasia for Mac in their business setting for four weeks. Each week, they will share the experience with us through written responses, screencasts, photos and video.

We're hoping to learn a lot about how our software fits in to the small business setting and in turn, share with you valuable lessons learned and tips for successful ways to visually communicate within your organization.

For our first week, we asked each business to give us some insight into who they are, what they do, and how screencasting might fit in with some of their goals for the year. Visual Loungers, meet Ciesa Design, Gravity Works, Loudpixel, and Netvantage!

CiesaDesign

www.ciesadesign.com
@CiesaDesign

CiesaDesign consists of 16 staff members with a wide range of skills in print and digital communications. Meet Chris VanWyck, Vice President of Creative Strategy at CiesaDesign, who shared with us the inside scoop on Ciesa:

Tell us a litte bit about CiesaDesign.
We are a full-service agency with a core focus on brand and corporate identity development. We provide every step of the branding process from marketing strategy through tactical design execution for both the print and digital realms.

What's Ciesa's mission?
To provide national quality expertise, process and creative output to solve our clients' marketing communication needs.

What are your big goals for the upcoming year?
Continued growth as a firm both in quality of work we produce and the range of service we provide to our clients.

What's an average day like at your office?
We work within a process that is largely deadline-driven. An average day covers a range of things like client communications, creative brainstorming, team collaboration, design and production. We operate as a team on our client engagements. A typical client team would include an account manager, strategic lead, design lead, and production staff.

Describe Ciesa's company culture in three words or less.
Creative problem solving.

What problems do you solve for your clients?
We strategically and tactically connect our clients with their intended audiences with award-winning visual communications. Communication with clients is open and collaborative. We believe that we should be partners in our client's success, not just another vendor. We go to great lengths to foster transparency and trust with our clients.

What challenges do you face as a business?
Probably the biggest challenge is that of education. The digital revolution has created a perception that anyone with a camera/computer can do what we do. It is our challenge to showcase the true value that a strategic marketing team provides.

Where is Ciesa at with screencasting?
I think we can certainly improve on how we use currently use screencasting. The goal will be to use it for not only training, but for many other forms of communication. I could see using this technology for things like web content development and community outreach. We've used Jing many times to produce CMS training tutorials for our clients. They have proven very useful both as reference for clients to use after one-on-one training and for remote virtual training.

What are some potential barriers/concerns you feel about screencasting at Ciesa?
We provide multi-lingual marketing communications to our clients. This type of communication can amplify cultural and language barriers at times.

Watch a sample screencast from CiesaDesign on how to use FTP:


Watch on Screencast.com

Gravity Works

www.gravityworksdesign.com
@gravityworksdd

Lauren Colton, Information Architect and Editor at Gravity Works Design & Development, gave us an inside look at what Gravity Works is all about.

Tell us a little about Gravity Works.
Gravity Works Design & Development serves clients from the heart of historic Old Town, Lansing: we turn "I have an idea" into "you should see this app" for local businesses, state government agencies, national franchises, and international non-profit organizations. For us, technology is more than ones, zeroes, and screen resolutions; our team strengthens brands and bottom lines by improving the lives of people using technology. Gravity Works creates custom solutions--graphic design, websites, and mobile applications--with detail-focused designs and leading-edge development practices.

Where are you at with screencasting?
Our first use of Camtasia for Mac was by developers, recording mobile application features as they appeared in development emulators. With a simple-to-share video, clients quickly see their application in action, and focus on improving mobile user experiences.

The pixels captured on a screen are important because we can track receipts, pass on funny cat pictures, explain ideas, and understand the people we work with every day. Gravity Works is excited to participate in the Camtasia Test Drive because we are focused on the user: from local hockey mom to German-speaking concert attendee, we are harnessing the power of technology to connect people.

Can you share with us some examples of what you do for your clients?
Mobile applications can build powerful communities, connecting people with the resources they want using the functionality they need. Gravity Works developed a custom iPad solution for the ONE Campaign to collect supporter information with engaging features, while providing a strong aesthetic connection to ONE branding.We developed localized keyboards, predictively-populating fields, and a reporting function within the secured administrative system. The application has been used on an international concert tour.

More first impressions are made on mobile devices, and frustrating menus and hard-to-reach content can lose leads. Gravity Works launched a mobile website for Molly Maid. Mobile users are now automatically detected and redirected to an action-driven, informative mobile website designed for on-the-go people with touch-screen devices. But even when clients decide on a mobile website instead of a mobile application, screen capture software can help our design team work more closely with stakeholders.

Watch a sample screencast from Gravity Works on Signing Savvy:


Watch on Screencast.com

Signing Savvy is a video dictionary for American Sign Language (ASL) for real-time ASL learning on iPhone and Android devices created anddesigned by Gravity Works.

Loudpixel

www.loudpixel.com
@loudpixel

Allie Siarto, Co-Founder and Director of Analytics, told us a little more about Loudpixel:

What's your elevator pitch?
Loudpixel is a small company that helps companies make sense out of what's being said about them online. Our core business is based around monitoring social conversations for issues or opportunities and drawing actionable insights based around conversation trends. Watch an overview video.

What are your big goals for the upcoming year?
This is a really exciting year for us. Companies are really starting to catch on to the importance of social media listening and analysis, so we see a huge opportunity to grow our team this year.

How big is your team? How do you operate?
Our company has three founding partners (two in East Lansing, Michigan and one in Palo Alto, California). We also have analysts who are now literally around the world. One lives in Chicago, one just moved from East Lansing to Senegal, Africa, and others work from our office or freelance from home. When we find good people, we don't want to let them go. We can make it work from anywhere, as long as there's a solid Internet connection. Since we're so spread out, we have to get creative about how we communicate with each other.

What's an average day like at your office?
Our clients are all over the country--from East to West. We spend a lot of time on the phone, Skype or email since we can't always meet in person. Our days are typically some combination of coordinating the monitoring and reporting that we do, catching up as a team (almost always virtually) and meeting with current or potential clients (usually virtually).

Describe your company culture in three words.
Decentralized, lean, creative

What challenges do you face as a business?
When we decided to move the business from Chicago to Michigan, we knew we would have to work a little harder on client communications, since we no longer have the option of going a mile down the street to meet with clients and talk them through concepts in person. We deal with complex concepts that require a fair amount of explanation and visual communication.

Where are you at with screencasting?
We've already used Camtasia on a few fronts. We work with some fairly complicated software, and often it's much easier to walk our clients through specific questions visually rather than try to explain with words alone. Since we all run busy schedules and work in different time zones, we've been able to create quick videos in a matter of minutes to walk them through step-by-step directions rather than having to set up a conference call or webinar. It's definitely starting to save us some time.

We're also in the testing stage for a huge upgrade to our software. Since our lead developer is in Palo Alto, we've used Camtasia to walk him through areas in the software where we find bugs or have trouble. That way, he has the reference later when he goes to make the fixes.

Watch a sample screencast from Loudpixel on how they solve problems for clients:

Watch on Screencast.com

Netvantage

www.netvantagemarketing.com
@netvantage

Adam Henige, Co-Founder of Netvantage Marketing, gave us insight into who they are and what they do:

What is your mission?
At Netvantage Marketing our goals are simple, to provide our clients with search engine marketing and social media solutions that provide them a positive ROI.

What problems do you solve for your clients?
Problem statements clients come to us with are typically, "We need more traffic to our website" or "Our rankings have really fallen on Google." I'd say those issues are what bring 80 percent of clients to us.

What's an average day like at your office?
While there's no such thing as a "typical" day at Netvantage, there are some noticeable similarities between everyone's tasks. Our office operates largely independently. People get trained for their position and then are largely given the room to manage their clients. We're less collaborative than most tech companies seem to be, largely because of the task based nature of most of our work. Actually, our office is pretty quiet as most of our internal communication comes via instant messages and the majority of our client communication is through email. So the internet is vital to our day to day activities.

What are some of the ideas you have for ways you might use screencasting in your business?
Camtasia is an exciting product in my eyes as I think there are an enormous number of ways we can use this both internally and externally. Off the top of my head, three uses spring to mind:

• The first and most obvious one is as a supplement to our blog. We do a lot of tutorial type stuff on the blog and being able to quickly make a screencast to add into it makes a lot of sense.
• We're launching a new Google Chrome extension and we've put together a walkthrough of it to help explain how it works. That can be found at www.domainhunterplus.com.
• We're looking to partner with another online service and we may be able to create subscription based SEO tutorials leveraging screencasts.

In the past we've done some video for our website as I have my own video equipment, a degree in film and video production and 4 years of experience in that industry. However, it was limited to standard talking head and graphic-type content because we didn't have any real screencasting software, so that limited our ability to make internal tutorials for staff or leverage it properly for educational pieces on our blog. That is all about to change, however. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to having this available as we continue to grow and find more creative ways to leverage Camtasia both internally and externally.

Watch a sample screencast from Netvantage on their new Google Chrome extension:


Watch on YouTube

Andrea Poole is a customer content specialist at TechSmith. She enjoys singing and playing the ukulele, a cappella music, running, and a good game of Euchre. Tweet her up @andiepoole or put her in a Google+ Circle.

Bacon, soccer balls, and mustaches. What do they have in common? They're all graphics we've used for stamps in Snagit!

I need your help. We want to know what new stamps and callouts you'd like to see for Snagit and Camtasia? Do you need travel stamps? Stamps for architecture or mapping? Arrow callouts? Or, maybe you need something like unicorns and glitter? Who doesn't need those? :-)

To get an idea of current stamps and callouts we're offering, see the Snagit stamps here (see 'Stamps' section) and the Camtasia ones here.

Please chime in and share your requests! We'd really appreciate any ideas and feedback you have.

Hi everyone, my name is Kelly and I'll be your guest blogger for today!

Recently, I read a feature request in our online discussion community asking TechSmith to develop a Camtasia-like product for capturing tablet video. This got me to thinking of a few things:

1. Most tablets have a way to push video out from the device (either directly through HDMI on many Android tablets, or through the use of an adapter with the iPad).
2. I do video capture through HDMI all the time (we use it for every episode of our monthly web show "The Forge".

With those two facts in mind, I started wondering if it might be possible to use an HDMI capture card in conjunction with the HDMI-output from a tablet to just capture the video from the screen of the tablet. Well, I'm happy to say that after some trial and error, I met with success! I then repeated the process, and recorded a video of the steps involved. Check out the video below to see how I did it, but first, a few of the required materials:

• A tablet (tested and verified with an Asus Transformer and Apple iPad 2; iPad 1 DOES NOT work)
• An HDMI cable (preferably 6-10 feet so you can pull it a ways from the computer tower)
• An adapter for your device (HDMI to iPad adapter, HDMI to mini HDMI, etc. Varies depending on your tablet)
• PCI-Express Avertv HD DVR High Definition Capture Card by AverMedia
• Camtasia Studio or Jing
• A computer with an open PCI-Express slot

Kelly Rush is the video production specialist at TechSmith, and has been with TechSmith for seven years. When he isn't making videos he is usually out taking pictures, playing with whatever new gadget he's just gotten his hands on, trying to find yet another classic gaming console for his collection, or having fun with his wonderful family.

Photo credit: AdamKR

As you may know, the world of online video is going through some upheaval right now with at least two competing views of how embedded video should be delivered. And mobile video is at the center of the fracas.

Apple doesn't allow Flash--the technology commonly used by websites to deliver online video--to run on Apple devices such as the iPad or iPhone. Which is helping to drive the adoption of HTML5 as an alternate method of delivering video to mobile and desktop browsers.

Where does that leave content creators like us who just want to make sure everyone can view their stuff?

Not without options, fortunately. Here are some recommendations for making your video content more accessible on mobile devices for now. And remember, this landscape is constantly shifting...so pack your pioneer spirit. :-)

Best way to share video via a link

Easiest: Host video at YouTube

Use the YouTube presets in Camtasia to generate a YouTube-friendly video and upload it automatically. The H.264/MP4 video will play on the latest smartphones and tablets. On Safari for iPad, for example, when the viewer clicks through to view a video on YouTube, the video actually plays in the preinstalled YouTube app for an optimal viewer experience.

What about older-model Blackberries and other smartphones? YouTube also re-encodes your video into a legacy format (.3gp) suitable for playback on many older devices. The resulting clarity/legibility is something you'll want to test.

To direct someone to the mobile view of any video or channel on YouTube, simply replace the www part of the URL with the letter m. As in: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=43OlYb7NARY. That link points to a video that should play on just about any mobile device.

Pretty easy: Put mobile-friendly videos on Screencast.com

Since Screencast.com was built by the same people who created Camtasia Studio, it offers some spiffy benefits for screencasters (for details, see this infographic).

Screencast.com will automatically use HTML5 to deliver your video to Flash-less devices like the iPad. BUT...Screencast.com does not re-encode your content, so you need to create it in mobile-friendly formats in the first place.

The video below shows how to download and use new Camtasia Studio outputs that produce smartphone-optimized content. To produce videos for playback on older-model Blackberry devices, you'll need to transcode your video to .3gp format before uploading (online filer converter www.zamzar.com will do a file up to 100MB for free). Then give viewers a link to both formats.

Here are links to download the production presets and other resources referenced in the video.

• Camtasia Studio Production Presets Download (.zip)
• Zencoder.com Blog - Encode video for mobile use
• Screencast.com - tutorial on mobile formats
• Camtasia Studio 30-day Free trial
• Camtasia Studio Learning Center - Free tutorials

Best way to embed video

You might want to upload videos to a hosting site and use embed code to display them in your blog post or webpage. But you want to make sure the embed code you're using won't block viewers who use Flash-less Apple devices.

The good news is that the default embed code generated by both Screencast.com and YouTube will serve up video to iPads and iPods using HTML5. Just copy and paste the embed code into your page or post...and viewers on Flash-less devices will see the HTML5 player.

For more on embed code basics, check out our video with tips and solutions to common embed problems.

Final thoughts

For all of these methods, you'll want to test them out to see if you need to reformulate the content to be legible at the smaller resolution. In other words, you may need to open up the project files and use Camtasia's SmartFocus feature to zoom in, use larger fonts in your callouts, that kind of thing.

Please let us know how these tips and new presets work for you...and share your own tricks for delivering video to viewers on mobile devices! Leave a comment on this post or find us on Twitter, Facebook, or our new Q&A forum.

Daniel Foster is the "social media guy" for TechSmith. He enjoys iceboating, ice cream socials, and isosceles triangles. Tweet him up @fosteronomo

We received some great entries for our Les Paul Guitar Google Doodle screencast contest. And, I'm happy to announce the winner!

I love, love, love Ellen Hinton's (Ellen Once Again) entry, "I'm Feeling Lucky"! She is our winner! Not only did Ellen create a fantastic screencast of the Google Doodle Les Paul guitar, but she also wrote her own lyrics and added more tracks in GarageBand. She made great use of the webcam by showing herself singing and playing the keyboard. You can read more about Ellen's screencast video here.

Check out Ellen's screencast below. I hope you're feeling lucky too! Thanks to everyone who entered!

We caught up with Ellen and she shared with us more about herself and her music!

What do you do for a living?

I currently live in Grand Prairie, Texas (near Dallas). I am more of a singer- songwriter and make "indie-pop music". I love working on ideas, music whenever I get a chance. I sometimes get my husband involved in the process as well. When asked to describe my music, I say I'm one part vintage and two parts bubbly with a shot of Pop Soul. Hopefully, that narrows it down, maybe? Hopefully, one day my Pandora station would be the likes of Ingrid Michaelson, Adele, Colbie Caillat and Sara Bareilles.

Tell us a little about your music!

I teach elementary music and was inspired to use the Google doodle after I opened the search engine and saw that it actually played. I love making music with tech-related instruments. My hubby loves computers and has a lot to with getting me hooked.

What inspired you to join the contest?

I initially made a tweet about the video earlier so i decided to do a search on #googledoodle and saw that TechSmith was having a contest. I figured I might as well tag the link and take the risk and put it out to the public. I definitely wasn't expecting this, but I am so glad I did this.

Are you a long-time TechSmith customer?

I currently only have a trial copy of Camtasia for Mac. First time users! My husband is familiar with Snagit but it was the perfect solution for getting the best screen cast quality for what we wanted for the video. Especially for capturing audio coming from the browser/CPU.

Take your air guitar to the next level! Have you seen the Les Paul guitar on Google's homepage today? Bring out your inner rockstar and hammer out some tunes! This has to be one of my favorite Google Doodles!

Want to add a video of you singing along on your webcam or preserve your video for all time? Live outside the US? I've heard the Google Doodle doesn't record your song if you live outside the US. That's where Camtasia can help! Use Camtasia to record your GoogleDoodle song!

I have a challenge for you! Record a song with the Les Paul guitar on GoogleDoodle today with Camtasia and share it. Make sure you record system audio. Then tweet a link to your screencast and tag your tweet with the hashtag #doodlecast so we can find it. We'll award our favorite rock star a copy of Camtasia (Mac or PC). The deadline is June 10, 12:00pm EST.

Show us what you got!

Need some inspiration? Check out the video Daniel Foster made.

Read more about the GoogleDoodle and Les Paul story below on Storify.

It's Thursday and that means it's time for Dev Corner! This week, Randall Brown and Jared Wein chat with A.J. Orians about Camtasia Studio. Any suggestions for next week's Dev Corner topic? What do you want to know from our Developers?

Andrew "A.J." Orians is a developer on the Windows version of Camtasia Studio. Though he enjoys programming he also likes puzzles, running, games, and a whole slew of other activities. He has been at TechSmith for something like five years and looks forward to being here for many more!

There are some really cool features in Camtasia Studio 7; my personal favorite is Cursor Effects. The spotlight effect and the ability to change the highlight effect post-recording is very cool! For these features to work you need your recording to be a Camrec (Camtasia Studio Recording document) from Camtasia Studio 7 or later:

For all the AVI files recorded over the years and all the Camrec files from earlier versions of Camtasia Studio they do not have cursor information attached and so Cursor Effects cannot be used with these files. So I worked on a program which goes through each frame of a video and tries to locate the cursor and so this program will create cursor information such that you could use the spotlight effect or add a highlight effect! The program takes as input either a Camrec or an AVI and produces a Camrec with cursor data.

The program basically starts at the beginning of the video and goes through each frame to the end and tries to locate one of the cursor images somewhere in the frame. To speed up the process I break up the frame into a grid and so I locate the cursor in one frame then in the next frame I first search for a cursor in a subsection of the whole frame, the same grid location. If I do not find it within that grid location I try the search in the surrounding grid areas before finally searching across the whole frame.

In source code, this process looks like the following:

            public IEnumerable NextRectangleOfInterest(Point ptPosition)
            {
                //First look at the rectangle which has the point
                int nRow = -1;
                int nCol = -1;
                if (ptPosition != Point.Empty)
                {
                    GetSectionWithPoint(ptPosition, ref nRow, ref nCol);
                    yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow, nCol);
 
                    //Next look at surrounding rows/columns
                    if (nRow > 0)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow - 1, nCol);
 
                    if (nCol > 0)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow, nCol-1);
 
                    if (nRow < m_Sections.Count - 1)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow + 1, nCol);
 
                    if (nCol < m_Sections[0].Count-1)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow, nCol+1);
 
                    //Upper left
                    if (nRow > 0 && nCol > 0)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow-1, nCol - 1);
 
                    //Upper right
                    if (nRow > 0 && nCol < m_Sections[0].Count - 1)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow - 1, nCol + 1);
 
                    //lower left
                    if (nRow < m_Sections.Count - 1 && nCol > 0)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow + 1, nCol - 1);
 
                    //lower right
                    if (nRow < m_Sections.Count - 1 && nCol < m_Sections[0].Count - 1)
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(nRow + 1, nCol + 1);
                }
 
                for (int Row = 0; Row < m_Sections.Count; Row++)
                {
                    for (int Col = 0; Col < m_Sections[Row].Count; Col++)
                    {
                        if (ptPosition != Point.Empty)
                        {
                            if (Math.Abs(nRow - Row) <= 1 || Math.Abs(nCol - Col) <= 1)
                                continue;
                        }
 
                        yield return GetRectangleAt(Row, Col);
                    }
                }
 
                yield break;
            }

Since the cursor is visible in the video; having the Cursor Effects option "Mouse cursor visible" checked will have two cursors displayed (hopefully directly on top of each other). Also this program doesn't work with animated cursors or the I-beam cursor. Nonetheless if you use the Recorder in Camtasia Studio 7 you will not hit any of these issues! The preferred route is to use Recorder in Camtasia Studio 7; this program was meant both for learning as well as creating something that might be useful.

I was absolutely blown away at the number of screencast examples many of you shared on this recent blog post. The screencast that was listed the most in your feedback was one done our Instructional Designer, Ryan Eash. I wanted to make sure everyone saw this screencast.

Ryan has created a lot of our tutorials for Camtasia Studio. He recently made a video showing behind the scenes from start to finish about how he creates our Camtasia training videos. I know you'll find it useful.

The video runs a little longer than most of our videos. It runs 30 minutes long. Ryan made a table of contents so you can easily navigate to the topic you're interested in.

Topics include:

• Writing a script
• Finished script
• Download scripts
• Why I write scripts
• Record my audio
• Audacity setup
• Start recording audio
• Effects Amplify
• Export to WAV file
• Record my screen
• Editing
• Extend frame
• Final edited project
• Producing my video
• Feedback

What else would you like to know about behind the scenes at TechSmith?

It's Thursday and that means it's time for another Dev Corner post. This week one of our Camtasia Studio software engineers, Kevin Mojek, shares a couple ideas he experimented with for Camtasia Studio 7's sketch motion callouts. Enjoy!

With Camtasia Studio 7, we introduced sketch motion callouts and updated most of the others to use path-based shapes. For the sketch motion callouts, the path is the callout... it's gradually drawn in by default to mimic the way a person might draw the shape. For the other callouts, the use of paths is not as obvious. As a result of the switch, we were able to make the default shading look nicer and allow some limited adjustment of the shapes; but other than that, it's not immediately obvious that the image-based callouts have been replaced by shapes. I spent a little time looking into how else we could use the path data for non-sketch motion callouts. I came up with a couple of ideas.

The first thing I tried out was animating the border-drawing and then fading in the fill. This was simple to implement and doesn't seem to slow things down too much. But unlike the sketch motion callouts, there's not really an obvious way a person might 'draw' a non-sketch motion callout, so it's debatable whether this adds visual interest or is just annoying:

Another possibility might be blending from one shape to another. When one callout is immediately followed by another, it might be nice to transition between the two, or it might be nice to have a callout that slowly cycles between two shapes. This is easy to do if we temporarily switch from the 'real' shapes to a less accurate piecewise-linear representation. With this code, things started to slow down. Calculating the intermediate shapes on-the-fly was too slow, so I pre-calculated and cached them... 100 intermediate shapes is likely excessive for a short animation though. To do this, I used Qt's QPointF class with linear interpolation between the points.

 for ( int i = 0; i < 100; ++i )
{
  qreal t   = 0.01 * i;
  qreal t_1 = 1 - t;
  for ( int ii = 0; ii <= 400; ++ii )
  {
    qreal step = 0.0025 * ii;
    QPointF p1( m_p1.pointAtPercent( step ) );
    QPointF p2( m_p2.pointAtPercent( step ) );
    QPointF p( t * p1 + t_1 * p2 );
    if ( ii )
      m_paths[i].lineTo( p );
    else
      m_paths[i].moveTo( p );
  }
}
 

Finally, since path data for fonts is readily available, I tried doing the same thing for a few of those shapes.

Kevin Mojek has worked for TechSmith since 2008 as a software engineer on Camtasia Studio. Prior to joining TechSmith, he graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in electrical engineering and worked in the auto industry developing customizations and extensions to computer-aided-design software.

***UPDATE - 2/20 Congratulations to our three winners, selected at random, who shared three very cool screencasts: Cal Tingey (Behind the Scenes with TechSmith Trainer Ryan Eash), D Hill (Rails for Zombies), and Barb Levisay (Dave Saves the Day)! We were blown away by all the great responses and links in the comments! Take a few minutes to check them out if you haven't already.***

Recently I posted about veteran screencaster Daniel Park's new digital book, Camtasia Studio 7: The Definitive Guide.

It's your lucky day! Daniel has given us not one, but three copies to giveaway. How can you win a copy? Easy! Just leave a comment here on this blog post or on this Facebook note (one or the other, not both please) with a link to the most impressive screencast you've seen lately. You must include your email address when you comment on this blog post (it will not be visible to others).

Enter by 4pm EST on February 18 and we'll choose the winners by random shortly thereafter.

And, in the meantime, make sure you download the first six chapters of the book. Daniel is giving them away for free... That's 200 pages of instruction about Camtasia Studio 7!

Remember Daniel Park of dappertext? He is a professional screencaster with over a decade of experience. He also has written the book on Camtasia... He sent me some exciting news recently. He has a new edition of his book out for Camtasia Studio 7 (PC). Welcome Camtasia Studio 7: The Definitive Guide.

And, as an added bonus, Daniel is giving away the first six chapters for free... That's 200 pages of instruction about Camtasia Studio 7!

Unlike earlier print editions of the book, this book is all digital. What's nice about an all digital format is that you get additional functionality like searchability, plus over 300 full-size color screenshots and forty screencasts!

For more information and to download the first six chapters free, visit Daniel's website here.

I was recently at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Besides meeting one of Bob Marley's sons, Rohan Marley, the highlights for me were the miles of gadgets and equipment.

A few products I saw on the show floor stood out that looked useful for screencasters... Here's my top 5 list of products for screencasters from CES!

1. Cinemin Slice from WowWee - This handy little pico projector turns your iPad into a 60 inch projection screen. So, load up your Camtasia screencasts and show them off to the crowd. Added bonus - it has stereo sound. Your screencasts should look and sound great.
2. Mikey for Flip by Blue Microphones (shown in pic above) - Adding camera video to your screencasts can make them dynamic and give them that personal touch. It can be difficult to get great audio on video cameras using the built in microphone. The clever people at Blue Microphones have solved this problem with Mikey for Flip. This microphone will give you professional sounding audio with your Flip video camera. Your screencasts will sound better and your viewers will thank you.
3. KODAK PLAYTOUCH video camera - What can I say? This is my camera of choice for any screencasts I do. It can capture full 1080p HD video and it has an external microphone jack so I can get great sounding professional audio. And, it uses SD cards so I can quickly reload memory cards if I run out of space.
4. Wacom Intuos 4 Wireless Pen Tablet - Using something like a Wacom tablet in your screencast can make your screencast more interesting and dynamic. Wacom's Intuos 4 tablet is now wireless. So, if you're in a classroom or presenting, you're not tied to your computer. You're free to move around the room with it.
5. iPad Stand from Griffin - An iPad or Tablet can be a very useful tool for screencasters. It's great to have the extra screen for notes or to use as a teleprompter. Griffin has several nice stands for iPads and Tablets. The Arrowhead looks useful for all tablets plus small enough to travel with. I've also been enjoying the Loop stand.

You can see more pics from my trip to CES here.

What gadgets and products have you seen lately that would be useful for a screencaster?

Today you're in for a big treat! One of my favorite screencasters, Paolo Tosolini has shared his tips to make your screencasts stand out from the crowd! You remember Paolo, don't you? He helped make a screencast that had a ROI of $2.4 million dollars! Paolo also shared how he gets his fellow employees to make videos.

In this guest blog post, Paolo will share how to make your screencasts pop like they're in 3D!

Like this tip from Paolo? Please let him know in the comments! Enjoy!

How can you make your screencasts pop up like if they were in 3D?

Sometimes you might need to integrate short screencast segments in promo videos that are highly produced. To mitigate the flat effect of a 2D recording, you can import your video in other applications like Adobe After Effects which can add some sophistication to your recording. While that's the ideal solution giving you unlimited 3D rendering opportunities, it requires additional (and expensive) software and some advanced graphic design skills.

A more affordable way to give some 3D perspective to your screencasts is offered by the new Microsoft PowerPoint 2010, which now treats video files as first class citizen.

Here is how:

• First create your screencast in Camtasia like you normally would do
• Produce your video into a high resolution playable file format (e.g. AVI, WMV, MP4)
• Open PowerPoint 2010 and create a blank new slide
• Choose Insert > Video and load your file, which will look still flat at this point
• Doubleclick on it. The Ribbon menu will change and show you various video styles options, including several in perspective
• Pick any of the 3D styles and refine the look of the rotation by right clicking on the video and choosing 3D Rotation

If you go now in PowerPoint presentation mode (F5), you'll be able to play the video preserving the perspective effect. Use Camtasia Recoder to capture the video playing inside the PowerPoint slide and you'll get a nice 3D effect! Isn't that cool?

Paolo Tosolini is an Enterprise Social Video consultant helping organizations embracing social media, online video and mobility as integral parts of their internal communications and knowledge sharing strategy. In his former role of New Media Business Manager at Microsoft, Paolo launched and managed the company "internal YouTube" platform called Academy Mobile, which is now hosting more than 19000 employee generated videos after just 3 years from its inception. Prior to that, Paolo worked in MSN and Office, where he managed the Office 2007 partner early adoption program that resulted in more than 500 partner solutions developed at launch. Paolo also blogs and podcasts about Italy and travel.

We're in the home stretch for our "12 days of Screencasting" series. I hope you're finding the tips useful. If so, please let the authors know in the comments.

"On the eleventh day of Screencasting, Tom Johnson gave to me... a tip on recording dimensions!"

When figuring out the recording dimensions, if you're planning to upload the video to youtube, record at 1280 × 720 pixels (so the videos will render in HD). Sizer is an app you can use to resize your browser to a specific dimension. If you aren't uploading to youtube (nor rendering the videos into HD), use a second monitor for the recording and change the resolution to 1024 × 768. Always record full-screen on that monitor at that resolution. That way if you need to re-record a section, you won't have to guess where to line up the recording rectangle.

Tom Johnson is a senior technical writer for a non-profit organization in Salt Lake City, Utah. He writes a blog at Idratherbewriting.com, where he explores the latest trends, issues, and concepts in the field of technical communication. He also records podcasts, interviewing technical writing luminaries around the world. And he is a WordPress blog consultant, offering development, design, and training of WordPress blogs.

You can also follow Tom on twitter at tomjohnson

Today's tip for "The 12 days of Screencasting" is from Daniel Park. Daniel literally wrote the book on Camtasia. Several actually. And, he's made hundreds of screencasts. Daniel knows what he's talking about.

La la laaaaa! Ready to sing? "On the tenth day of screencasting, Daniel Park gave to me..."

One of the biggest threats to effective screencasting is bulk. Amateur screencast productions tend to be overly long. Do what you can to trim out those excessive pauses that try the user's patience. Strive to keep the narration light, friendly, clear, and quick. After all, this is video. If the user by chance misses a concept on the first play-through, replaying that content is a simple matter of scrubbing backward. On a related note, don't show yourself filling out every form or twiddling your thumbs through every progress bar. If necessary, make use of Camtasia Studio 7.1's vastly improved Clip Speed feature to help trim down the ol' running time.

Daniel Park is a former TechSmithie who departed back in 2003 to start dappertext LLC, his own consultancy that specializes in content creation. And for screen video, Camtasia Studio is his tool of choice. He flies all over the world to do Camtasia Studio training for companies, government agencies, and academic institutions, but he spends most of his professional time actually creating tutorials and marketing spots for organizations that lack the time or talent to do it themselves. He's the author of Camtasia Studio: The Definitive Guide. He lives in Huelva, Spain.

I need your help! It's that time of year! What would you get your favorite screencaster as a gift? What are essential tools that you need to make great screencasts? Maybe it's a camera? Or, storyboard paper? Or, a particular microphone?

I need your input to compile a list of gifts to get your favorite screencaster. Here are the past lists from 2009, 2008, and 2006 (looks like I skipped 2007!). Anton Bollen, our German Evangelist, has started his list which you can see here (in German, but you can see which products he picks).

Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments or email me! I'll post the list later this month. Thanks for your help! Can't wait to hear what's on your list!

'Tis the season for giving! As you may have heard on The Forge earlier today, Digital Juice has an exclusive digital gift for Camtasia users to celebrate the holidays!

Digital Juice is giving you 70 High Impact SoundFX and 3 Full-length MusicBOX songs.

What do you have to do? Just sign up here and they will email you download instructions.

The promotion will expire on 12/9/10. So, signup for this offer quickly!

I have a favor to ask of you. If you like the music, please let Digital Juice know and leave a comment here as a thank you for this nice digital gift.

Today is the day! You're in the right spot to tune in live for our December episode of The Forge. To watch the show live, just visit this blog post on the Visual Lounge at 2pm EST to join us! Note: you may need to refresh your browser at 2pm.

What will we be talking about on The Forge today? Mostly music! You'll learn where you can find music that you can use for free and legally in your screencast. Snagit Product Manager, Tiffany Wood, will show you how to build a digital card. We'll look at gifts you can get for screencasters. And, Kevin McAuliffe from Digital Juice will share some music tips with us. We'll also have a few surprises too!

Update: Digital Juice has an exclusive offer for Camtasia users. They're offering 70 High Impact SoundFX and 3 Full-length MusicBOX songs for free! See more details here.

Missed the live show? The recording is below. It runs about 40 minutes.

Our hashtag for the show is: #tscforge

Can't join us live? Don't worry. We'll post the recording here on the blog and on our YouTube channel later.

It's that time again. Tune in to the next Forge live on December 2 at 2pm EST here on the Visual Lounge Blog. The theme will be all about music and fun! We'll explore places to find music you can use for free and legally, how to built a digital card, how to use music well in your videos and look at gifts for screencasters.

In the interim, enjoy this video with expert screencaster Ian Oszwald that Matt Pierce recently made. Ian Oszwald is the co-founder of ShowMeDo. ShowMeDo has 50-70k monthly visits from people who learn through screencasts! Ian is an professional screencaster who has also authored the Screencasting Handbook..

Highlights from the interview include:

• How did Ian get started in screencasting
• Suggestions for getting started in creating professional screencasting
• Why using stories in screencasting is important and helpful
• What are key things to include in screencasts
• Ian's process from start to finish for creating screencasts
• Information about The Screencasting Handbook, written by Ian.

You can see past episodes and information about The Forge here. What would you like to see us cover on The Forge?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of Camtasia Relay's new features include:

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

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

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

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

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from CisionPoint. This screencast uses a few of Camtasia Studio's features like SmartFocus, transitions, and callouts. But... what I really like about this screencast is the ending. They use a little known feature of Camtasia Studio as their call to action...

In Camtasia Studio, you can turn your callouts into a Flash Hotspot. These are nice because you can add interactivity to your screencast such as:

• Direct customers to a link to download your software.
• Show viewers Web sites in a new browser window.
• Demonstrate examples through hyperlinks in the callout.
• Take viewers to specific markers within the video.
• Allow viewers to replay a section in the video.

Click the screenshot below to see the CisionPoint screencast.

Here's how you can add a Hotspot to a Callout (note: you must produce to the Flash output (MPEG-4 or SWF):

To add a hotspot to an existing callout, double-click the callout on the timeline. The Callouts tab opens.

1. In the Callouts tab, enable the Make Flash Hotspot option.
2. Click the Flash Hotspot Properties button.
3. The Flash Hotspot Properties dialog box appears.



4. Select the Hotspot actions.
5. Click OK.

Flash Hotspot Actions

Will you make your screencasts more interactive?

Calling all Camtasia Studio users! Ryan Eash, from TechSmith's User Assistance team, is hitting the road for the EDUCAUSE conference. Before the conference starts, he will give a few training sessions in California.

Ryan will conduct two 3 hour sessions - one for beginner Camtasia Studio users and another for intermediate Camtasia Studio users at the University of California in Irvine on October 15.

Interested? Sign-up here (Let them know you're interested in the training on the October 15th...) You can also sign up by calling our sales department toll free at 888.750.0685.

Once you've signed-up, the training team will get you all the details.

Here are details about each session:

Beginner Camtasia Studio training session

9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

University California Irvine

Anteater Instruction and Research Building

In this hands-on Camtasia Studio training, we are going to take you through the basics of creating great looking screencasts. Participants in the course will learn the basics of setting up and recording your screen. In addition to recording your screen, you will learn how to effectively edit and produce your video. The cost of the course is $99.

Topics include:

• Setting up Screen recording
• Setting up audio and recording system audio
• Recording your screen
• Choosing appropriate dimensions and project settings
• SmartFocus and Zoom-n-pan
• Cutting, splitting and copy & paste
• Callouts and transitions
• Using the Library
• Production options
• Choosing the right format & optimizing the quality
• Camrec and Camproj

For the intermediate session:

Intermediate Camtasia Studio training session

1:00 PM to 4:00 PM

University California Irvine

Anteater Instruction and Research Building

In this hands-on Camtasia Studio training, we are going to take you beyond the basics of creating great looking screencasts. Participants in the course will learning more about using Camtasia Studio, including tips and tricks. Specifically recording a specific dimensions, using captions, customizing your production settings. The cost of the course is $99.

Topics include:

• Recording specific regions of your screen
• Editing tips and tricks
• Callouts and transitions
• Captioning best practices
• More Production options
• MP4, SWF, FLV, WMV - which one?
• Customizing your Flash player settings
• Sending your videos to YouTube, Screencast.com, and more

Hope to see you at the training or at EDUCAUSE!

After Tuesday's blog post, I've heard a few requests for a PDF of the list of Camtasia Studio's hotkeys.

You can download your own copy of all the hotkeys here. Enjoy!

Any other requests for printouts?

And, a special thanks to Fred Grover and Donald Smith for making PDFs as well. I appreciate it!

"If I save time, when do I get it back?" Too bad it doesn't work that way in life! :-)

It's time for another Time Saver Tuesday! We had a request during our recent Camtasia 24 Screencasts in 24 Hours about publishing all the hotkeys in one place (they're listed in a various sections of our Online Documentation here). I thought this was a great idea! I'll start with Camtasia Studio's shortcut keys this week. I love to save a few keystrokes on repetitive or common operations that I need to perform by using hotkey shortcuts.

Here are all the places you can find and customize hotkeys in Camtasia Studio. I hope they help you save time when creating your screencasts!

Camtasia Recorder

Navigate to: Camtasia Recorder > Tools > Options > Hotkeys tab

To assign keyboard hotkeys:

1. Select a recording function.
2. Choose the shortcut keystrokes.
3. Click OK.

What is ScreenDraw? ScreenDraw allows you to add drawing effects like arrows, circles, highlights, pen and more over the screen while you are recording.

Note: When you use ScreenDraw while recording your screencast, the drawing is permanently burned into the recording and cannot be changed or removed. OR after recording, you can add arrows or callouts in Camtasia Studio and it creates a similar effect. However, arrows and callouts in Camtasia Studio can be edited.

Use these hotkeys to add effects at the position of the playhead on the timeline.

Navigate to: Camtasia Studio > Tools > Options > Hotkeys tab

The effects hotkeys allow you to add elements or effects (callouts, zoom keyframes, etc.) to the timeline with a keyboard shortcut. To edit the element or effect once it is on the timeline, double-click it. The appropriate tab opens.

Now it's your turn! Please share! What are some of your time saving tips?

I always want to learn and be inspired. Plus, I like to be entertained. And that applies to screencasts as well. :-)

Whenever I have a few minutes to take a break, I'll poke around YouTube to see what people are creating with Camtasia. And that leads me to this week's Screencast of the Week. I love these 'Speed Painting' screencasts - I'm always amazed at what people can create just using something as simple as Microsoft Paint. I hope if I watch them enough, I can learn some of their techniques. Enjoy!

"How to draw a woman with MS Paint #4" by shukei01

"AA speed painting ICE AGE 3 - Jlorka Speed Painting - La Era del Hielo 3" by Jlorka

Oh, and if you'd like to make speed up the playback speed on one of your screencasts, you can do that with Camtasia Studio. It's easy... you just need to adjust the clip speed.

1. Select a clip on the timeline.
2. Right-click on the clip and select Clip Speed.
3. The Clip Speed dialog box appears. Enter a percentage of the original clip speed (other than 100) to speed up or slow down playback. Note: 100% is the original clip speed, 200% is 2 times the original clip speed, and 50% is half the original clip speed.
4. Click OK.

Note: if the clip includes audio. Changing the clip speed can cause the audio to become out-of-sync with the video.

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email me or leave a comment below!

This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Richard Treves on his Google Earth Design blog.

There are several reasons I picked this screencast. I like the use of sketch motion callouts to draw viewer attention to certain details in the video. Looks like Richard also used a watermark on the video for his university. I have to say one of my favorite parts about this screencast is not actually part of the video - at the end of Richard's blog post, he shares what he has learned and posted his Camtasia workflow. We can all learn from each other.

You can see a blog post all about the screencast here. It's a quick screencast running 6:34.

Hat tip to Richard Lane for emailing me the screencast! Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email or post a comment.

I'm a DIY kinda person. In my spare time, I'm knitting, crafting, cooking... making something... anything!

That's why I'm so excited that this weekend, Maker Faire is coming to Detroit, Michigan! Maker Faire is described as the ultimate DIY festival - "It's county fair meets science fair meets farmers market meets burning man for families! ..."

And, that got me thinking about how screencaptures and screencasts bring Maker projects to life by not just telling people about a project, but also showing.

I compiled a list of ways you can use Snagit, Jing, Camtasia and Screencast.com to make your DIY projects more visual. I'd love for some additional ideas. Please chime in on the comments with ways you're using screencaptures and screencasts with your DIY projects.

• Aim your Web camera at your hands for a true hands-on demonstration that is easily posted to your blog or website.
• Watermark and copyright your demonstrations and images with just a few clicks.
• Send your instructional screencast video directly to your YouTube channel.
• Archive an in-depth project step-by-step with screen captures and screen recordings.
• Narrate a video for online customers to navigate your online store.
• Annotate patterns and schematics with Snagit, the world's leading screen capture software.
• Use Snagit to convert your annotated pattern into a PDF to sell on Etsy.
• Use Snagit or Jing to collect and archive projects, tutorials and ideas on Screencast.com, TechSmith's free hosting solution.

Here are some great examples of Makers making projects visual:

• Sandal Woods moves to a 21st Century Toolbench with Camtasia Studio.
• Jon Bergmann and Aaron Sams from Woodland Park High School in Woodland Park, CO use Camtasia's Picture-in-Picture feature to highlight lab experiments for their class in their screencasts.
• Nico DiMattia uses Camtasia to screencast his speed painting.
• Use Snagit or Jing to annotate a step-by-step recipe.
• Capture Online Templates for Pumpkin Carving Project.

And, if you're going to Maker Faire this weekend, please contact me (email or call/text 517.410.0030)! There will be lots of TechSmithies there. I'd love to meet-up. And, I'll have plenty TechSmith sporks to share. :-) You know you want one! Come find me!

I may have a new addiction. I'm pretty smitten with my iPad. I even bought a new purse that the iPad would fit in so I can carry it around with me all the time. :-) Yes, I have a weakness for gadgets.

One of the reasons I got the iPad was so I could watch and show Camtasia videos on it - the larger 9.7 inch screen is perfect for viewing screencasts. I've heard from several people wonderfing if you can view Camtasia videos on the iPad and how to do it. Well, the good news is that is it possible to play Camtasia Studio, Camtasia for Mac and Jing screencasts on the iPad! There are some tricks. Mike Curtis, an Information Developer at TechSmith has created a screencast that will show you how to successfully create a screencast for your iPad.

Check out the 4 minute screencast below. Mike will walk you through recording dimensions, file formats, codecs, settings and more.

There is also a help topic here that deals with a range of mobile issues. It also explaines how to get from Camtasia for Mac to the iPad.

And, in case you're wondering, Jing Pro MP4 videos will play on the iPad. We recommend you use 1024×768 (hold control key for Jing to snap to the dimension). Jing videos will not play if they exceed the number of pixels in 1280 × 720. Basically, if the video does not work, you will need to make it smaller.

Once you create your videos, you'll need to load your videos onto the iPad. First, you need iTunes. Then you need to sync your iPad with iTunes. Once the iPad is connected to your computer, use the Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, and iTunes U panes to select which videos to sync. There is a more detailed tutorial here (look for the sections on Syncing and Syncing Videos). This can be a lot of work. If you don't want to do that, Screencast.com is a good option. You can enable the download link if you want people to have the native viewing experience.

And, if you decide you want to make lots of videos for your iPad. Save your production settings up as a Preset - that way you set it up just once and re-use the settings over and over. Here's how you set one up.

Anyone making screencasts for the iPad? I'd love to see them! Have any tips to share?

Here we go! It's time to kick off our marathon of 24 Screencasts about Camtasia in 24 hours!

Tune in live here. We will also have a chat room going in there as well. And, you can follow us on Twitter as well @techsmith and @betsyweber. We'll be giving some fun prizes throughout the day too! The hash tag we're using today is #camtasia24

I will post the videos on this blog post as soon as we finish producing them (I figured you didn't want 24 different blog posts). :-) We plan on recording close to the top of the hour if you'd like to tune in.

Matt Pierce, our Customer Engagement Manager, is the host of the videos so you'll see him in most of the screencasts we make. Plus, we'll have several guests throughout the day.

Here's the schedule for the day:

• 8:00 am: Welcome, Meet Shane Lovellette, Camtasia Product Manager (13:53)
• 9:00 am: 11 years of Camtasia and counting... The history of Camtasia (15:55) - Dean Craven, Chief Technology Officer
• 10:00 am: Sketch Motion Callouts and How to Use them (12:13) - Jess Knott, Instructional Designer
• 11:00 am: Creating a Good Story, (14:33) Bil Moore
• Noon: Using Screencasts Effectively in the Classroom (14:35) - Dan Spencer
• 1:00 pm: Getting Great Sound (21:46) - Chris McQueen, Instructional Designer
• 2:00 pm: The Power of Hotkeys (17:15) - Chris McQueen, Instructional Designer
• 3:00 pm: All About the Library (22:51) - Kelly Mullins, Information Developer
• 4:00 pm: YouTube - What's the best format? (16:14) - Dave O'Rourke, Lead Camtasia Studio Developer.
• 5:00 pm: Recording and Codecs (24:17) - Dave O'Rourke, Lead Camtasia Studio Developer.
• 6:00 pm: System audio - it's finally here (11:23) - Mike Curtis, Information Developer and Justin Carpenter, Senior Support Specialist
• 7:00 pm: Ignite your screencast - recording live events (20:09) - Nick Kwiatkowski
• 8:00 pm: The Playhead Improvements (11:52) - Chris Larson, User Experience Designer
• 9:00 pm: The new UI - why the change? (15:40) - Chris Larson, User Experience Designer
• 10:00 pm: Direct upload to Screencast.com (15:40) - Justin Carpenter, Senior Support Specialist
• 11:00 pm: Secrets of Camtasia for Mac for power users or nerds... (11:06) Doug Troxell, Camtasia for Mac developer
• Midnight: Microphone Tips (19:05) - Troy Stein, Solutions Architect
• 1:00 am: Webcam Tips (7:14) - Troy Stein, Solutions Architect
• 2:00 am: Making small biz look big with Camtasia (30:57) - Troy Stein, Solutions Architect
• 3:00 am: Making your Screencasts International (20:40) - Anton Bollen, European Evangelist
• 4:00 am: Things you never thought to do with screen recording (16:50) - Mike Kujansuu, Product Marketing Manager, Betsy Weber, Chief Evangelist
• 5:00 am: Understanding editing tracks on the Camtasia for Mac timeline (23:07) - Conan Heiselt, Instructional Designer
• 6:00 am: Aspect Ratios and alternate Dimensions (18:30) - Conan Heiselt, Instructional Designer
• 7:00 am: Use Cursor data to change the cursor AFTER you record (21:01) - Anton Bollen, European Evangelist and Mike Curtis, Information Developer

You can view our live stream below or visit this link.

Watch live streaming video from techsmith at livestream.com

Intro music created by "MoxoM".

You can see some pics from behind the scenes here.

I hope you'll pick up some new tips and tricks throughout the day. And, please come ask us questions in our chat room. We're happy to post some bonus videos in addition to the ones listed above. Plus, we'll need you to help keep us awake throughout the night!

The countdown is on and it's almost time... I'm ready for one last night of good sleep before we pull our all-nighter starting tomorrow morning for 24 hours of Camtasia! I'm really excited because we'll have a few guests stopping by to share their knowledge with you. And, I have a treat for you - Bil Moore is one of those people.

Stories are how we learn. They're how we pass information from one generation to the next. Want to capture someone's attention? Tell a good story. Any topic can be enhanced through the use of a story. Your screencast included. As part of our 24 hour Camtasia marathon, Bil Moore will share the basics of creating a story and why it will help you to communicate an idea.

Tune in to the TechSmith LiveStream Channel at 11:00am ET to hear Bil talk about storytelling. We'll also record Bil's segment if you can't join us live.

Bil is one of my favorite storytellers. He has presented at two Ignite Lansing events. His presentations are engaging, entertaining, informative and tell a great story. To get a taste of Bil's style and storytelling, check out 2 examples below from his Ignite Lansing presentations. They run 5 minutes each.

Clunkers for Cash

Need a job? Cluck like a Chicken!

Who is Bil Moore? He is an award-winning speaker, salesperson and communicator. His expertise includes customer loyalty, personal development and branding. He helps companies create a memorable customer service experience and increase their sales. You can find out more about Bil here.

Our 24 hour marathon for Camtasia is just around the corner. I'm wrapping up all the last minute details and rounding up all items we'll need. Microphones? Check! Webcams and cameras? Check! Midnight snacks? Check! Prizes?! Check!

Yes, we'll have lots of prizes that we will give away during our 24 hour Camtasia Marathon starting on Tuesday, July 13 at 8:00am ET.

What do you have to do for a chance to win? Simply tune in to the TechSmith LiveStream Channel and follow the @TechSmith twitter feed throughout our 24 hour marathon - day or night. You'll have a chance to win copies of Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac as well as some fun things like microphones, books, TechSmith t-shirts, mugs, the coveted TechSmith spork and more!

We'll have a wide selection of books that are perfect for any screencaster that you could win, including:

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath
• Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds
• Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations by Garr Reynolds
• slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte
• Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire by Cliff Atkinson
• Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark
• The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures by Dan Roam
• Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
• Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell
• Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics That People Understand by Connie Malamed

You can see all the books on my 'Suggested Reading list for Screencasters'.

Brush up on your TechSmith and Camtasia trivia and you could win some prizes!

Hi, my name is Betsy and I don't need any sleep. Well, really, I do, but we had so much fun pulling an all-nighter for Snagit that we're going to do it again for Camtasia!

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, July 13. We will make 24 screencasts in 24 hours about Camtasia! You can tune in here on our LiveStream Channel starting at 8:00am ET (GMT - 4:00). You'll get to meet many people on the Camtasia team including Shane Lovellette, the Product Manager, Camtasia developers, members of our training and tech support teams and a few special guests.

You'll get loads of insider tips and tricks for Camtasia Studio, Camtasia for Mac and screencasting. And, don't fear - if you cannot tune-in live, we'll be recording each segment and posting the produced videos throughout the day here on the blog.

I'll also have a variety of prizes to give away on our LiveStream Channel and on Twitter - @techsmith. So, brush up on your Camtasia and TechSmith trivia!

We'll hit on a variety of topics including:

• The History of Camtasia
• Use Cursor data to change the cursor AFTER you record
• Playhead improvements
• Direct upload to Screencast.com
• The new User Interface - why the change?
• System audio - it's finally here!
• Understanding editing tracks on the Camtasia for Mac timeline
• Aspect ratios and alternate dimensions
• Recording and codecs
• YouTube - What's the best format?
• The art of storytelling
• Getting great sound
• The power of Hotkeys
• All about the Library
• Microphone and Webcam Roundup
• Things you never thought to do with screen recording
• Ignite your screencast - recording live events.
• Using Camtasia in Education
• Sketch Motion Callouts and how to use them

More details to come! Oh, and I have slots open for 'Viewer's Choice'. That's where I need your help! What would you like to see us cover? Chime in on the comments...

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

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

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

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

New to Snagit or Camtasia Studio? Troy Stein, TechSmith's Solutions Architect, will be conducting some webinars that you might find useful.

Snagit 10: New Productivity and Creativity
Monday, May 31 at 11am EST

Camtasia Studio 7: Quick Start Webinar
Monday, June 7 at 11am EST

You will need to register for the webinar here. And, there's no charge to attend - it is free!

Can't attend the webinar? Troy will be recording both events so I will share them here soon!

After a short hiatus, 'Screencast of the Week' is back! And, we've got a fantastic screencast this week from Red Gate Software.

This screencast has everything! A balloon release, gun fights (no need to worry - they're nerf guns), music (from their resident band, Macca), a guy inhaling a helium balloon and singing, Red Gate employees eating lunch at 40 time speed and various people describing the many projects they worked on.

I love, love, love this screencast for so many reasons! I love seeing inside Red Gate - the culture, the fun, hearing their philosophies and how they work. They also made great use of many of the new features in Camtasia Studio 7 like sketch motion callouts, adjusting audio points/volume leveling, and the 'Camtasia bounce track (one of the free Digital Juice music tracks).

Curious about how screencast was made? Anthony Osborn, who created the video, will share the project file with you. Just get in touch with him via Twitter if you're interested. Thanks for sharing, Anthony!

Down Tools Week 2010 from Anthony Osborn on Vimeo.

And, I love the idea of a 'Down Tools Week' - give developers a week and see what kinds of interesting new tools and programs they can come up with! Anyone else doing this?

Nominations are open for next week's Screencast of the Week. Don't be shy - you can nominate yourself! Email, leave a comment or tweet me!

Our newsletter Editor, Daniel Foster, caught up with a Camtasia Studio user, David Frazier. David was kind enough to share his story and screencasting insights with us. Enjoy!

Meet David Frazier, State of Alabama technology trainer

With budgets being cut left and right, classroom training often suffers..and workers can fall further behind on technology. But as trainers like David Frazier have discovered, screencast videos are the perfect way to get people up to speed on new technology--quickly and inexpensively.

What is your role as IT instructor...who are you training and what kind of skills do they need?

I work for the State of Alabama, Department of Finance, Information Services Division (ISD). Primarily, my job is to train state employees on the software that my department offers to state agencies.

For example, our newest software is for web conferencing. It's relatively easy to use but it still needs to have some familiarization training and most employees don't have the time or the knowledge to "play" with something to learn it--they need to be able to use it productively right away. That's where I come in; get them familiar with the software in as short a time as possible.

As far as the skills of the people I train, that can range from very little computer skills to IT Directors. We don't specifically offer IT software. We offer products and services that cover anything from networking services, data storage, telephone support, to email, and a lot more.

How long have you been working with video and screencasts?

As far as my own skills, video is relatively new for me, within the last 3 years to be exact. It has all been self-taught; surfing the web and using the TechSmith website to get a lot of how-to information. I also go to one of those "mega-churches" that has its own TV station and uses a lot of video during their services; so I pick the brains of the people that work there to get ideas on how I can or can't do something.

What got you interested in screencasts as a way to deliver training? What problems does it solve for your department and/or you personally?

My interest in video training really came about coincidentally. I came on to ISD to teach in the classroom, but that really didn't pan out as expected. Then one day, one of our PC Techs came by my office and said "Hey Dave, you need to check out this website called TechSmith; they have video editing software". I went to the website, saw a free Camtasia download and started "playing" with it. My mind started turning and I thought to myself, "web page", "training", "easy access", "that's it, video training". The rest is history.

This "Web" training can and does solve several problems, not just for our department but for all state agencies that use our products and services. Our state is currently in proration: big budget cuts, no new hires, no new programs, no raises, and a of course no training because there is no money to send people to classes. People still get trained on highly technical programs; but for the administrative assistant, supervisor or manager, training on products like Microsoft software or our web conferencing software just doesn't exist.

I started with our email service and scripted, recorded, and edited a complete program for it. I have done the same thing with several other services also. Yes, I know companies like Microsoft do offer their own online training and they are very good but are general in nature. I like to put a homespun flavor to my videos. I like to use examples that our state employees are familiar with so they can relate to the topic being discussed, customized just for them and our environment.

Using the video training will save tons of money because people don't have to go somewhere to be trained--they stay at their desk. There is no money spent for the necessities of travel, they can train where they want (even at home), when they want, and what they want (I have started using the table of contents feature so users can go straight to a specific topic and not have to listen to the whole session).

How did you go about learning Camtasia...and what were the most helpful resources?

I used to dabble with editing when VHS cameras were the rage. But unless you had all of the sophisticated gadgetry to edit VHS, it was very basic editing. But it gave me a basis to start from; so when I learned of Camtasia and downloaded it, I was able to start playing right away. I took a couple of weeks of trial and error to really learn the software. I used the TechSmith forums to learn from others and honestly, I just watch what was being done on television; transitions, openings, closing, effects, things like that. Once I figured out what I could and couldn't do with Camtasia Studio, I really started experimenting.

This may be a plug for him, but the one outside resource that probably helped me the most was the book Camtasia Studio: The Definitive Guide by Daniel Park. In it he explained in layman terms everything about Camtasia Studio you ever wanted to know and then some. I have corresponded with him through email on a couple of issues and also have gotten a lot of answers from him through the user forums on the TechSmith website. His information was invaluable to me.

What was the biggest mistake you made along the way?

I am a perfectionist when it comes to putting out training videos; I want them to be perfect. And if you were to watch my very first video to my most recent, you would see how I have matured. But I am still in my infancy and still have a lot of room to grow and improve.

Although I have stumbled along the way, I don't think there were any big mistakes made. HOWEVER, keeping track of everything has turned out to be my downfall. I did delete (permanently) about a month's worth of work because I had just gotten so bogged down with saving everything. This is not a Camtasia Studio problem, it's a user thing--how to properly file, keep in order, maintain everything during a project. That is probably my biggest mistake thus far.

What kind of feedback do you get about the videos?

So far, I have had great reviews from people who have seen my videos. I do some on-camera work, but mostly just narrate video captures. One of our email techs watched my videos and came down specifically to say how good they were and is recommending them to all new clients.

Some great feedback I got was from the Director for Mental Health, who requested that we use captions on the videos so that our hearing impaired employees could get the same training as everyone else. I thought "Wow, I hadn't even thought about those employees", I was embarrassed to say the least. Out of ignorance, I started searching for this capability but was shocked at the cost for this kind of software and backed off. But then, I happened to mention this to a tech support person there at TechSmith when I had called for a completely different problem and she said "Oh yeah, we have that" and she told me where to find captioning [currently available in Camtasia Studio only -Ed.]. Needless to say, when I saw how easy it was, I added the captions to the video he reviewed previously, he was overjoyed and wrote letters to my CIO and my supervisors about it. He was thrilled. I am so glad that I am able to reach those employees as well.

Can you give a quick run-down of your process for making a screencast? How do you get from concept to finished product?

I don't consider myself a professional when it comes to video and I am not as polished as those that come out of film schools or had classes in video. I have a degree in business administration and nothing in marketing. So again, I am self-taught and I try to use a lot of common sense techniques.

Generate topics

My ideas come from several sources, obviously, our products and services, especially new ones, like the web conferencing tool we just recently released. Other sources include other divisions within ISD. The customer service manager asked for a video showing how to correctly fill out the forms they require. I am currently doing a video for our CIO, selling our services to other agencies. The personnel department wanted an employee orientation video so all new ISD employees get the same information.

Write narration

Once I get the idea of what I want to do and the goal I want to reach, I storyboard it to some degree, really just an outline on the order of progression.

Then I script it, literally, word for word. I have a form I use that has four columns to it: Action, Narration, On-screen activity, and File location/Clip title. I write the narration first: introduce the subject, teach the subject, and then close it out. This usually takes me several days to complete. Each time I go through the script, I see changes that need to be made, the order of presentation changed, or just see something I didn't think of at the time. I don't like to rush this part because to me, this is where a good video starts, the planning and writing stage. But at the same time, I have to say "enough" and continue on with the project.

Write actions

Once I am satisfied with the script, my next step is to go back to my script, open up the software I am going to teach, and start stepping through the demo. I need to make sure that the script and the steps being taken in the software coincide with each other. As I progress along, I add comments in the Action column of what I need to do and at what point it must be done: file > open, move the cursor here and click, etc.

Once that is settled, I'll start thinking about what happens on the screen: zooms, pans, what callouts I need, where to put transitions, things like that.

Record

Next I record my narration. I have to admit I use different software for that, just because I am more used to it. I also edit the narration and take out all of the "ahhhs" and my breathing sounds.

Then I start the screen recording process. I print out the script, set it in front of me, and rehearse several times before recording. I've also learned to break my recordings and audio narrations up into segments instead of doing them all at once. I'll break at a natural stopping point, like a change in a subject, then come back and press on with the next step. It's important to double-check that all my audio and video settings are the same as before, especially if the break spans more than one day.

Here's a tip I have found REALLY useful! I had a subject out of order in an almost completed video and realized that it needed to be at a different point in the presentation. But because I record "modularly", I was able to just swap the two sections with each other, rather than redoing the whole video. It was so much easier.

Edit

Once recording is complete, I then go into the editing phase. I add all the scenes to the timeline, edit out the bad and keep the good, sync up the audio, add the transitions, callouts, zooms, and all the while I am saving, saving, saving.

The last thing I do before publishing is add the captions for our hearing impaired employees. Then watch the video one last time to make sure I am happy with it and publish it so it can be put on our website.

You mentioned that you're using the new Camtasia Studio 7 now...any favorite features?

Yes, the one thing I like particularly is the Library where you have intro and exit graphics. I was using Adobe Visual Communicator for this before and they have some good graphics. But this added feature is really good. I just hope that you will get some more of these from Digital Juice and make it available to us all. To me, it really adds a touch of the professional side to each video. I also like the new Sketch Motion Callouts where you "draw" a circle or a box. I added all of this to my last video even though it was already published and on the web.

What are your top three tips for a new screencaster (independent of which software they use)?

1. Storyboard/Outline your entire project to stay on track.

1. Record all of your narrations and videos modularly. It's easier to re-record a part of a video than the whole thing.

1. Do something different with each video. Be imaginative with your ideas and editing. Don't get stuck doing the same thing each time. Watch how others do things and see if you can adapt them to fit your situation.

At your company, you have people who know the best practices and are experts in certain subjects, right? How valuable is their knowledge to the rest of the organization? Often it would be helpful to capture and share their expertise company-wide and maybe even with the public. How do you get them to share their knowledge?

Paolo Tosolini has helped get employees at Microsoft recording, sharing and teaching their fellow coworkers. Paolo is making a series of videos about "Enterprise Podcasting" and in one of his recent videos, he shared a how-to video about "Employee Generated Content" and Microsoft's Podcast-in-a-Box program. Paolo also reviews the equipment and resources Microsoft used with their Podcast-in-a-Box program. Check out his video below - it's a quick one that runs less than 5 minutes.

It's great that Paolo follows his own advice to capture and share his best practices and expertise for crowdsourcing knowledge in a corporation. You can see Paolo's entire "Enterprise Podcast" series here. I hope you find this to be a useful video to get more people in your company screencasting and podcasting.

What have you found that works to get people to capture and share their best practices and expertise?

The day is finally here! And, I'm excited to report two good pieces of news! Not only do we have a new version of Camtasia Studio 7 available today, but we also have a new release for Camtasia for Mac 1.1! You can download trials of each here.

Over the past few days, I've shared with you some of the new features coming in Camtasia Studio 7. The last one I wanted to share with you was Camtasia Studio's new library. The library makes your videos look awesome - it comes stocked with a range of professionally-designed assets like audio effects, background images, and more from Digital Juice. You can find additional free library content here. The library makes it easy to store your callouts, title slides and other assets so you can use them again in your next project or even share them with colleagues.

Check out the quick video below to see the new library in action. It runs less than a minute long.

What's new in Camtasia Studio 7? Here's a quick list:

• Library for reusable content
• New callouts (including sketch motion and keystrokes)
• New cursor effects and workflow
• Copy and Paste functionality on timeline
• Improved SmartFocus performance
• Improved recording performance
• Improved YouTube integration
• Improved Audio Enhancements

If you want to see the entire list of what's new, please visit here.

And, while you talked and shared feedback, we listened and took notes. Camtasia for Mac 1.1 is also available today with your top feature requests added! It's a free upgrade for all Camtasia for Mac 1.0 owners.

Included in the update to Camtasia for Mac is the option to do a region recording. You can select a custom area or from preset dimensions to record only a part of your screen. This can eliminate the need to crop and zoom. Use multiple displays? You can also choose which monitor you'd like to record.

Also added in Camtasia for Mac 1.1 is the ability to pause your recording. Perfect if you take a breather or recompose yourself. Plus, there were several audio enhancements as well. You can do a voice-only recording and capture the microphone audio only (skip recording the screen video). It allows you to record a voiceover. You can also scrub your audio clean from distractions like keyboard clicks, fan noise, and overly loud or uneven voice levels. Effects include clipping reduction, clicking reduction, dynamics processor, noise reduction and pitch adjustment.

You can see more information about what's new in Camtasia for Mac 1.1 here.

Enough talk about the new releases! Go try them out. I'd love to hear what you think and your feedback! Enjoy!

In less than 24 hours you'll be able to kick the tires on Camtasia Studio 7! In lieu of a sneak peek video today, I thought I'd share an interesting time lapse overview video that we created for Camtasia Studio 7. It's a quick video that runs just over 2 minutes.

One of the common questions we hear at TechSmith is "How do we make our videos?" I asked Kelly Rush, our marketing video producer, to give a short overview of the process...

"Hey everyone. For the Camtasia Studio 7 overview video, we wanted to try something a little bit different from some of our previous videos. Starting out, Daniel Foster (our newsletter writer) and I sat down and brainstormed what we thought would be an interesting story to tell, based on conversations that we've had with Camtasia Studio users. After we finished coming up with the concept, Daniel took some time to write out the full script, after which we did a quick storyboard (consisting mostly of professional-looking stick figures).

After that, we read through the narrative to get a sense of timing for each shot, knowing ahead of time that we'd need a lot of coordination between the time-lapse approach that we were going to be using, and the timing of each individual scene. When that was figured out, we recruited the services of Ann Morgan, graphic artist here at TechSmith, to begin more formally sculpting out the visual elements of the story (sans stick figures, thankfully).

The next step was the actual production process. Ann used the master drawings she created as a reference for what she would draw on the whiteboard. With my Canon Rebel XT set to one-second intervals, I'd instruct Ann when to begin drawing, and along the way let her know how much time was left. The result of this was around 2,000 still pictures, which were then stitched together into an animated video in Adobe Premiere Pro.

For the audio process, I used a Zoom H4 handheld recorder to record myself reading the narration that Daniel had previously written. I composed the music using Apple's GarageBand software on an M-Audio keystation digital keyboard.

The screen video elements in the video were recorded and produced with Camtasia Studio 7. This was then combined with the animated stills, audio narration, and background music, again in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Finally, the video was brought back once more into Camtasia Studio to add a Flash hot-spot at the end of the video (which won't be working on the YouTube version of the video, but will become available when the video appears on our website).

Thanks Betsy! Back to you!"

We also shot a "Behind the Scenes" video showing you how we did it... You can see Ann, Daniel and Kelly in action! The video runs just over a minute long and gives you a view of the 'set'.

Enjoy! And, let the countdown begin! More features and functionality will be shown off tomorrow so stay tuned! How are you going to bide your time waiting for Camtasia Studio 7?! :-)

I'm writing this post from Lansing GiveCamp tonight... one handed! I had minor surgery yesterday on my hand and I'm in a cast now. I've been having fun decorating the cast with some TechSmith stickers - geek chic! So, if you notice that the next few blog posts are short, you'll know why! :-)

Today's sneak peek video is about the audio enhancements coming in Camtasia Studio 7. The screencast runs less than a minute long. Sound good?! :-)

In just a few days, you'll be able to kick the tires on Camtasia Studio 7 yourself! I hope you like what you see! We can't wait to hear your feedback and see what you create!

YouTube is the world's leading video community on the web. In fact, in 2008 it became the number 2 search engine. Plain and simple... if you want your screencast in front of millions of people, YouTube is the place to be!

With Camtasia Studio 7, you'll be able to produce and upload HD-quality videos to YouTube without even leaving Camtasia Studio! It's even easier to share your screencasts with the world.

Check out today's sneak peek screencast below. It runs less than a minute long.

Just a few more days until you'll be able to try Camtasia Studio 7! I can't wait to hear what you think!

When making a screencast, you want to make sure your viewers are easily able to follow along. I've noticed in the past, sometimes I leave details out of narration. Maybe a task is routine to me, like using hotkeys shortcuts, and I forget to mention it. This makes my video harder to follow, less engaging and can confuse viewers.

A new feature coming in Camtasia Studio 7 is the option of making your keystrokes visible to viewers! We've added 'Keystroke Callouts'. Camtasia Studio 7 automatically takes note of any keyboard shortcuts used during recording and can show the keys as a graphic overlay in your video. And, the best part? It's fully automated which means less work for me and my viewers benefit! And, just like the other callouts in Camtasia Studio 7, you have the option to add keystrokes and change their style.

Check out the screencast below to see the keystroke callouts in action. It's a quick video running less than a minute long.

Will you use this feature?

Coming in Camtasia Studio 7 are editable cursor effects! A nice, new feature in Camtasia Studio 7 is that you'll be able to help viewers follow along by enlarging the mouse pointer, making it a spotlight, or visualizing clicks... while you're in editing mode. The cursor now has it's own track on the timeline. You control how (and whether) the cursor appears at any point on the timeline!

Check out today's screencast below. It's a quick one that runs just under a minute long.

Thanks for tuning into today's sneak peek... I hope you like what you see in Camtasia Studio v7 so far!

Are you ready to get a sneak peek at what's coming in Camtasia Studio 7? I thought so!

Our first sneak peek is at Camtasia Studio's callouts. You'll notice there are new callout styles and now there is support for image transparency. Also, check out the new sketch motion callouts - these are animated shapes that appear to be hand-drawn right onto the video. It's a great way to call out attention to the important parts of your screencast.

Watch the new callouts in action in the screencast below. It's a quick video that runs less than a minute long.

Any bets on what tomorrow's Sneak Peek will be?

As you know, we're getting ready to release Camtasia Studio 7. It will be available on March 30th. Over the next few days, I'll be sharing with you several sneak peek screencasts of the new features so you can see Camtasia Studio 7 in action!

Also, we have a new Product Manager for Camtasia Studio and Camtasia for Mac - meet Shane Lovellette! We shot a quick video so you could meet Shane, hear what the team does with all the feedback you send in, and share some updates about the new Camtasia Studio 7 release. And, not to worry, the former Camtasia Product Manager, Troy Stein is still at TechSmith. He's on to his next adventure working with Sales to provide solutions to our customers.

Sneak peek videos start Monday! Hope you'll tune in and chime in on what you think, want and need...

I've heard a few questions from people asking about upcoming release of Camtasia Studio 7 and new purchases.

Because we are so close to the release date, anyone from now on who purchases Camtasia Studio 6, will be getting a free upgrade to version 7. You will not need to contact TechSmith, it will be automatic!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Sales

The rumors are true! I'm excited to share the news that Camtasia Studio 7 is coming soon!

UPDATE: Embedded video below should play just fine now. :-) Click the pic below to see the video. Sorry for problems with the embedded vid.

Stay tuned for news here on the Visual Lounge blog and on our TechSmith YouTube channel. More updates, information, and of course more videos about Camtasia Studio 7 will be posted shortly.

Should we save you a piece of the cake?

I'm always amazed at the screencasts I see Camtasia users create. And, you're in for a treat with this week's Screencast of the Week! I heard from Anthony Osborn, at Red Gate Software about a recent screencast they made. This video is just a little different... in a good way for many reasons!

I love this screencast because Red Gate does a great job with storytelling to make this screencast engaging and interesting, You get to see inside <a href="Red Gate and hear their story of how a group of programmers were taken out of their office and spent a week living by the seaside to work on a product idea. I loved seeing behind the scenes at Red Gate. By escaping their daily grind, they were able to create a product, SQL Search, for use searching SQL Server databases.

Many product videos focus strictly on product features, specs and technical details. I like this screencast because this one shows the human side and the people behind the product. Who better to hear about the product from than the people who made it. You really get to see their personalities and connect with them. Plus it is interesting hearing from multiple people.

Anthony makes great use of many of Camtasia Studio's features like multiple audio tracks, PIP, screen recording, zoom & pans, transitions, captions etc... Plus, the video's musical track was written by a co-worker's band (Macca) so getting copywrite permission was a breeze.

Click the pic below to watch the video (give it a few seconds to load):

Anthony describes how this was created:

I was asked to create a product video telling the 'coding by the sea' story after the event had happened so it was an unusual way to work. However, the team had come back from the coast with some great photos, a good story and a new product. I really wanted to communicate the human side of this story to our customers and so used multiple voice narrations running behind these images. I also added in a quick screen recording of our product (SQL Search) to give a tempting glimpse and encourage viewers to find out more.

After making this screencast, Anthony has several tips to share:

• Step away from your PC and storyboard your idea first on the back of a piece of paper, cardboard box or whatever is available to you

• Pay as much attention to your audio as you do to 'what's happening on the screen'

• Static photos with a good voice narration work very well because your speakers can talk more freely without a camera in their face and videos with moving heads + lips need a really high frame rate to look good so you'll save on overall file size without them. If you want to further improve engagement add a little zoom + pan to these photos

• If possible, get lots of people involved in your video - it will give your video a 'team feel' & more momentum - they'll also chip in ideas, spot your spelling mistakes, poor color choices, hic-ups etc.

• Keep it short - let people see the 3 minute version not the 33 minute version

Credits:
Edited & produced by: Anthony Osborn
Script writer: Phil Scott
The original 'coders by the sea': Alex Davis, Robert Chipperfield, Dominick Reed & Nagashree Manjunath
Photography: Dominick Reed
Musical soundtrack: 'Ever wondered' by Macca
Microphone (a good amateur one): Sony ECM-MS907
Camera (not that you need a fancy one): Canon 5D SLR
Edited in: Camtasia Studio 6

What do you think of this style screencast?

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

This week's Time Saver Tuesday comes from Nick Kwiatkowski! Nick's been using Camtasia Studio to record a live event in Lansing, Michigan called IgniteLansing. Ignite was started by O'Reilly and is an evening of 5-minute speed presentations about anything from Fighting Dirty in Scrabble to Clunkers for Cash and everything in between. These events are done around the world and run by local volunteers. Camtasia works great to capture these one time events for archive. Enjoy Nick's Time Saver Tuesday!

One of my side projects that I've been working on for a while is the IgniteLansing event. IgniteLansing uses TechSmith's Camtasia to record our presentations and allow users to view what they may have missed via YouTube.

Our situation is very unique to most people's recording sessions - we have a string of presentations that we need to record, with about 30 second between. Luckily the Powerpoint tool makes it easy to record the sessions with minimal hassle.

Before you start your first session, it's best to setup the recording. Within PowerPoint, go to the Add-Ins tab and then click on the Snagit Preferences icon. Because we have to do quick turnarounds for our recording sessions, we make sure we turn off as much stuff as we can. We start the recording right away, don't record the mouse (they are PowerPoints), we don't want to edit the files in Camtasia when we are finished, and we want to stop the recording when we are done.

Finally, we go into the Advanced... settings for the Audio and Video setup to setup our microphone inputs. Run through the Audio Setup Wizard, and pay attention to what it is asking you to do (you shouldn't have to go into the Advanced Audio Settings). This is the MOST important portion of the exercise, and we need to do this right before we start recording our first presentation (however, we only have to do it once per event). If we get good audio, there is little to no work that has to be done after our recordings!

When we are ready to do our recordings, we launch the PowerPoint file, go to the Addins tab, and click on Record. When the presentation is finished, we are prompted to save the CAMREC file, and we can continue to the next presentation.
Now here is the time-saver. Because we already got good audio, and our screen was recorded in sync with it, when we are ready to do our editing, all we have to do is import the files into Camtasia Studio and clip the beginning and end of the document! We can usually do this editing in about 30 seconds before we have Camtasia encode and upload the presentation to YouTube.

Nick Kwiatkowski is a Telecom Engineer at Michigan State University. Additionally, he runs the Michigan Flex Users Group and helps run the Mid-Michigan ColdFusion Users Group, both located in Lansing, Michigan. On the side he also helps out with the IgniteLansing event that is based off the O'Reily Ignite series. You can read his blog at http://www.quetwo.com

You can see the Camtasia Studio recordings from IgniteLansing here on YouTube.

Big thanks to Nick for sharing his tip! Any volunteers for next week's Time Saver Tuesday?

There are a couple elements that can make screencasts interesting and engaging. Motion from drawing on the screen with something like a Tablet PC or Wacom tablet make a screencast dynamic and can focus viewers attention. And, the Picture-In-Picture (PIP) option in Camtasia makes screencasts lively and shows off the presenter's personality. Typically PIP usually shows a webcam recording or sometimes an image.

Some researchers at Microsoft have done something really creative for their screencasts using PIP! Using an eBeam interactive whiteboard (which can capture the pen strokes on any whiteboard) they created some PIP Whiteboard recordings! So, you'll see all the detail of what they're writing on the whiteboard up front and center in the screencast, plus you view the presenter in the PIP window. And, as an added bonus, when you record the whiteboard with the eBeam, you get a hard copy with what you wrote on the whiteboard that you can print out as a .pdf or .pptx. This is an easy way to add a handout to your screencast. You can read a blog post on Peli's Farm blog all about how they create whiteboard screencasts with Camtasia Studio and an eBeam.

Microsoft Research used the following setup: a camera plus a tripod to record the person at the whiteboard, the eBeam capture software running and Camtasia recording the computer screen.

Check out the whiteboard screencast below of their new show, The Verification Corner.

Great use of technology! Anyone else need to make screencasts like this or have found other ways to do something similar?

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? Email or post in the comments!

Ever wish you could go to class and learn all about Camtasia Studio? Well, you can! There are a couple upcoming classes I wanted to make sure everyone knew about.

Camtasia Studio expert, Kevin Siegel, will be leading an online class all about Camtasia Studio on February 10 and March 10. Kevin has also written a Camtasia Studio book and if you sign up for the class, you will get a copy of the book, Camtasia Studio 6: The Essentials (note: you can purchase the book by itself)! You can learn more about Kevin and IconLogic here. And, Kevin kindly shared a sample from the book which you can read here.

If you're across the pond in the UK and would like some Camtasia Studio training, the wonderful Stewart Milton from BlueOrange will have a 1 day class in London. You can see the details here. I attended Stewart's Camtasia Studio training class last year and it was wonderful. They are small classes so you get the attention you need and will learn everything you need to prep for your project and create your screencast.

Interested in where else we'll be or other training events? We post the shows we're attending and training events on our calendar here!

Say you were working on a series of Camtasia Studio screencasts for a big project at work. And, you create 20 videos. Your project manager requested the videos be in the SWF format to put on the intranet.

But, then the Sales team just all got iPods for training purposes. And, now your project manager wants all of your screencasts in a different file format and scaled down in size to play on the iPod... oh and they want to distribute the files at the next sales meeting in less than 24 hours! Ah, changing specs and short deadlines.

No need to worry or pull an all nighter to re-produce all 20 screencasts one by one. Camtasia Studio has a batch processing option that saves you time by allowing you easily produce multiple Camtasia Studio projects at the same time using production presets. Set your preferences, start the 20 files batch processing, walk out the door and let Camtasia Studio do all the work.

See these instructions here about how to set up the Batch Processing options in Camtasia Studio.

What tips do you have for Time Saver Tuesday? A limited edition Snagit sweatshirt could be yours if you share your tips!

I recently had a request by email to share a list of suggested books for screencasters. So, I asked a few people around the office like Daniel Foster, our newsletter editor, Matt Pierce, our Customer Engagement Manager, and Dave McCollom, TechSmith's Education Evangelist.

And, I was also thinking about different elements of a screencast: preparation, planning, writing, graphics, presentation, storytelling and promotion.

Based on that, here are some of the books we came up on our suggested reading list for screencasters:

Prep:

• Made to Stick, by Chip Heath, Dan Heath - This book gives you tips on how to keep your screencast viewers attention and make your ideas stick.
• The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam - A picture is worth a thousand words. This book helps you create compelling graphics and visuals for your screencasts.
• Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark - this is a useful book for any writer. Great screencasts start with great writing.

Presentation:

• Beyond Bullet Points by Cliff Atkinson - learn how to use storytelling and graphics to effectively communicate. I've seen Cliff speak several times - he has wonderful advice!
• slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte - effective visual communication for your screencasts. Make great graphics especially when recording PowerPoint. I've seen Nancy present several times - every time I see her speak, I am in awe.
• Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds - make better presentations which makes for better screencasts.
• Confessions of a Public Speaker by Scott Berkun - learn techniques behind what great communicators do and how to effectively present ideas. Use these tricks to make better screencasts.

Tools:

• Camtasia Studio 6: The Definitive Guide by Daniel Park - Daniel's book takes you through using Camtasia Studio from start to finish of your screencast.
• The Screencasting Handbook by Ian Ozsvald - Ian has created hundreds of screencasts and his handbook reviews software and microphones, processes and techniques.

Promotion:

• Get Seen by Steve Garfield - now that you've created your screencast, make sure your screencasts are promoted and seen!

I've started a list on Amazon - Screencaster Suggested Reading List And, I'd love to add what's on your reading list.

Here's where I need your help... As a screencaster, what books have you found useful and why?

It's time to get back into the Screencast of the Week!

I had a chance to catch up with screencaster, Tom Crawford from Visualization Network at CES recently. Tom helps people communicate more effectively plus use art and visuals to solve problems and sell ideas. Tom and I hopped in a gondola (Hey, only in Vegas!) and he shared how he's using Camtasia to help in his classes and also some of his tips and tricks. I have to say, making a video in a gondola is a first for me! It's a quick video - just over 2:30. You'll have to watch to see if we get seasick or not! :-)

Tom has several screencasts made with Camtasia Studio on his blog here. I like Tom's screencasts for several reasons. Tom uses a screencast to respond to a blog post. What better way to get your point across and share your knowledge than with a visual screencast. I also like the style of Tom's screencast. It's like I'm looking over his shoulder and that's how I like to learn.

Equipment and software used to create the gondola video:
* Kodak Zi8 camera
* Y-splitter (something like this one)
* 2 Lapel Microphones
* Camtasia for Mac
* Gondola

Any nominations for next week's Screencast of the Week? No gondola required...

We recently had our first DemoCamp in Lansing, Michigan. It was a great event where developers, designers, students and entrepreneurs come show cool stuff they have created and have been working on.

One of the presenters, Daniel J. Hogan, shared how he records his podcast, The Magic of Eyri.
And, he gave a great tip that could help all you screencasters and save you time editing.

When recording audio, I've learned it's not a matter of if I'll make a mistake in my narration, but rather when I'll make a mistake. For me, it's going to happen and I will have to edit that audio. Daniel had a great technique for editing audio. When he makes a mistake, he clicks one of those dog training clickers by the microphone. That spikes the audio so when you need to edit, you can easily see where on the audio timeline you need to focus on since you can see the spikes on the audio wave.

Don't have time to get a dog training clicker? You could also tap the microphone if you make a mistake.

See how you can easily find the section of audio you need to focus on? Makes editing a lot faster, especially if you're making a longer screencast.

Do you have any tips to share?

Kelly Rush, TechSmith's videographer and I have been roaming behind the scenes at TechSmith and filming as part of our ongoing series about the people at TechSmith who make the products you use. This time, we stormed Dave O'Rourke's office. Dave is the Lead Developer for Camtasia Studio. As Lead Developer he's not only involved in software engineering and design, but he's also responsible for the code that makes Camtasia Studio work. Dave also steers the development of Camtasia Studio.

Dave started at TechSmith around the same time I did in 2000. There were less than 20 of us at TechSmith at that time! Now, we're over 200 people. Dave talks about his history at TechSmith, what a typical day is like for him, how he uses TechSmith products as a developer, how he uses the feedback you send, and what he loves about TechSmith.

It's a quick video running 4:37 minutes. Enjoy!

Any questions you would like to ask any TechSmithie? Kelly and I will be wandering the halls of TechSmith and conducting more interviews.

It's that time of year... And, I need your help! In the past, we've done gift lists for Screencasters in 2006 and 2008. It's time to compile the list for what to get your favorite screencaster for 2009.

I'll get the list started for the screencasters on your 'nice' list:

Storyboard graph paper - perfect for planning your screencasts and stories. I like that one side of the paper is a story board and the back side is just a dot grid if you need to map out bigger ideas without the constraint of the storyboard.

Kodak Zi8 HD Pocket Video Camera I just switched to this video camera because it has an external audio jack. I can use my own microphone with this camera and get awesome audio even when I'm recording in at a tradeshow or other event. It is a nice camera if I want to mix real world video with my screencast.

And, here's where I need your help. Chime in! What equipment, software or other items would you get for your favorite screencaster? What if they are on the naughty list?!

Sorry for the light blogging, but I'm having too much fun meeting up with users and going to User Group meetings in the UK this week! We had some fun geek dinners in London and Edinburgh. Big thanks to Ian Smith and Colin MacKay and the Scottish Developers for setting them up! That's Colin in the pic sporting a spork mustache with one of our TechSmith Sporks!

I haven't even had any accidents (or caused any) driving over here... yet. :-)

So, on to the Screencast of the Week... Since I'm going to Paris, France for LeWeb, I thought it would be nice to highlight a screencast from France. This week's Screencast of the Week comes from a violinist, painter and sculptor France, Stephanie Valentin.

I like this screencast for several reasons. Stephanie does a great job at utilizing captions to teach how to draw and give tips. And, think Camtasia paired with a tablet (Wacom or Tablet PC) can make interesting content. Check out this quick screencast on 'How to Draw Realistic Mouth". It's a short screencast running 3:40 minutes.

My suitcase is packed. I'm sad to leave the UK, but looking forward to heading to Paris for LeWeb. Would anyone like to meet-up in Paris? Drop me an email or call me (+1.517.410.0030)...

I had a great time in Berlin, Germany for TechEd Europe recently. Not only was the conference great, but it was also the 20th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall falling. I was very fortunate to attend both events (You can see some pics here).

I met a lot of great people on my trip! I heard a really great story from Bob Simms about how he got to TechEd. Turns out he had arrived at TechEd on a bus! He made a Camtasia Studio video that won him a prestigious award from Microsoft and a free trip to TechEd Europe with a bus tour!

I got a quick interview with Bob from the Expo floor. He shared with me his story about how he won the Bus Trip with Camtasia Studio. The video runs just over 2 minutes.

You can see Bob's award winning video here that got him on the bus.

Also, check out another one of Bob's videos below. Bob sent me a video that got him into the heats of the Speaker Idol competition at TechEd (you can see the Camtasia Studio portion around the 2 minute mark)! I love how Bob uses beer to illustrate his example!

Check out Bob's travel diary from his bus trip to TechEd Europe here.

Congrats on your winnings, Bob! Very creative use of Camtasia Studio!

Have your screencasts won you anything?

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

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

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

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

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

;

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

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

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

A blog post title caught my eye last week, 'Why Most Screencasts And Online Presentations Are Tedious (And How To Fix It)'! I knew I had to check it out! Turns out it was written by Sean D'Souza who has a great site, PsychoTactics, that uses an understanding of psychology to understand why customers buy (or do not buy).

I love Sean's blog post and screencast. He talks about techniques they use in TV programing like the scene, camera angle or some other change in the shot. Typically there is a change every seven seconds. Now, if you look at the typical screencast or tutorial, you're more than likely watching the same single frame with the same presenter. No change. Makes it hard for the brain to pay attention at this point without movement on the screen.

What can you do to keep your viewers attention? Sean tells you the answer about how to not put your viewers brains to sleep, how to replicate the movement you see on TV and how to solve other problems on his blog post here. He answers many of the questions about on his blog plus he even has a great screencasting comic!

Here's Sean's great screencast. I like his use of music, narration, titling, SmartFocus and of course, his content! It's a short screencast that runs under 3 minutes. Enjoy!

Congrats to Sean for winning the Screencast of the Week award!

Any nominations for next week?

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.