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 turning the corner to the second week of the Camtasia Small Business Test Drive! If you missed out on the first week, catch up here.

This week each business created their first (or in some cases, second or third) screencast and sent us an exmaple. They also shared with us a little about their process, how they prepare and edit their videos, what challenges they faced, etc.

CiesaDesign

www.ciesadesign.com
@CiesaDesign

CiesaDesign consists of 16 staff members with a wide range of skills in print and digital communications. Thomas Ro is a developer at Ciesa and one of their heaviest users when it comes to screencasting. Thomas shared with us more about his process.

Do you like to prepare a script before recording?
We generally make a list of the things that need to be demonstrated or mentioned in the recording.  Since the narrative style tends to be similar between each screencast, an actual script isn't necessary. However, it's important to prepare the software you'll be using so that only the relevant items for the screencast are visible in the recording.

Do you have multiple takes, or just try to nail it one take and edit out errors?
Our screencasts tend to be done in takes. Sometimes that can mean one take or ten.

What's your editing process like?
For our purposes, the most interesting editing aspects of Camtasia are the callouts and the overlay abilities, to further highlight the things being discussed by our narrator.

How much time has it taken you, on average, to complete a screencast from start to finish?
This depends. Even a five-minute piece can take an hour or more, depending on the number of takes that are necessary. We also upload finished videos and share links from screencast.com.

What's your favorite thing about screencasting so far?
Screencasting allows us to communicate with client on detailed training and tech subjects. We've found that this is far more effective than written instructions or one-time live demonstrations. Screencasts create a lasting resource that clients respond well to, and can continue to refer to long after the video has been shared.

What's your least favorite thing about screencasting so far?
Doing multiple takes can be frustrating, especially with longer screencasts. Before using Camtasia, we recorded with Jing, which had a five minute time limit per video. This presented additional challenges for dividing up the subject matter across multiple pieces.

Gravity Works

www.gravityworksdesign.com
@gravityworksdd

David Silva Smith, Business Development Manager at Gravity Works, spoke with us about using Camtasia for Mac to communicate deliverables with stakeholders.

Tell us about your first experiences with screencasting. What was your process like?
Gravity Works launched an intuitive application for MSU researchers to replace programmable watches with an Android application while collecting survey data from research participants. We wanted to create a video showing off this cool project! Sitting down to create the demonstration video for prospective clients I thought of the message I wanted the audience to come away with, “this seemingly simple application serving up surveys has complex code running behind it.” Next, I thought how could I convey those two ideas: the complex code and the end solution.

So you had two different goals for the video. How did each one work?
Demonstrating the code was the hardest part. What does the audience care about? What should I show them? I got away from my original goal of wanting to show code and ended up focusing on the video. Getting away from the original goal of demonstrating complex code ended up hurting the messaging quality of the video, since the code is in there taking up half of the video real estate, but is not communicating effectively.

Demonstrating the software was easy. Launching our survey creation application I created a custom survey for the demo to show a sampling of the breadth of survey response types the application supports. It only took one recording to record the survey application. Camtasia enabled me to trim the beginning and end of the video to highlight the action, as well as extend the first frame so viewers could take in the scene before the survey goes off.

What did you think of the final product?
I was not happy with how the code recording turned out, but was happy with the application demonstration. I focused on the video strengths, using the Window Spotlight feature to highlight the application window and focus viewers on the action, while taking their focus away from the code area of the video. Camtasia’s Window Spotlight feature changes instantly which is jarring to the viewers. Splitting the clip onto a second track and adding a fade transition smoothed out the viewing experience.

What is your favorite thing about screencasting so far?
As a software development company, Gravity Works functions in an abstract world with clients ranging from expert computers to people who hate computers. Screencasts help us replace complex training instructions and technical terminology, with a video that everyone can understand. Instead of telling our users how the Android device goes off at a scheduled time, we show them a video. Can you describe what a word processor does to someone who has never used one? As software creators, we run into that communication issue every day. Instead of explaining our software for five minutes for a general idea of what the end product, we can show clients a short video, and they understand exactly what it does.

What is your least favorite thing about screencasting so far?
My least favorite thing about screencasting are the differences between the Mac and PC versions. When creating a project, I feel like I have to pick my “favorite child.” Some things the Mac version does well, like all the Video FX; some things the PC version does well, like being able to change the video framerate. If I had recorded the MSU Survey project in Camtasia for Windows, I would have adjusted the video speed during the survey demo to speed the clip up. In Camtasia for Mac, adjusting frames would have taken too long to be practical. In the PC version, I miss some of the cool Mac video FX like the Window Spotlight used in the MSU Survey video. I’d like to have all the features in both versions and be able to work on my videos in both versions.

Loudpixel

www.loudpixel.com
@loudpixel

Allie Siarto, Co-Founder and Director of Analytics, told us a little more about her screencasting process.

What's your screencasting process like?
90% of the screencasts I've created so far have been personalized and more "on the fly" to walk my clients through a part of our software that is set up just for them. For these, I use the screencasts in lieu of complex emails--it's so much easier to walk them through visually rather than trying to describe these processes in words.

In these cases, I simply open Camtasia, select my custom region (I'm almost always working in a browser) and start walking through the processes. I spend about ten seconds editing the video (I remove the last few seconds of the mouse moving up to stop recording), then I export the video to screencast.com and send the link to the client via email. I can literally have a screencast created and sent in less than five minutes from start to finish.

What's your editing process like?
I've played with the callout arrows to draw attention to specific actions on the screen, and I've added simple transitions between my title slides and screen actions. I've found everything to be quite intuitive so far.

Are you running into any difficulties/confusing steps?
The only thing that has been tricky is geting my dimensions right for YouTube. I like that Camtasia has a preset for YouTube, but I want to expand the dimensions to fill my entire screen then have the video format accordingly (rather than being tied to a specific screen portion during recording).

How much time has it taken you, on average, to complete a screencast from start to finish?
For my quick client videos, I'll spend less than five minutes. For more formal training videos, I might put 45 minutes to an hour or more into a polished three minute video (including setting up my mic and editing the audio in Pro Tools).

What is your favorite thing about screencasting so far?
I love that I can export my videos to screencast.com with a few clicks and share them with clients within a matter of minutes. Our company works in a fast-paced industry--we're always looking for quick and easy wasy to communicate, so we appreciate that there aren't a lot of barriers to entry. Camtasia is easy to use (no steep learning curve), and it allows us to get our point across quickly and clearly.

What is your least favorite thing about the process so far?
When I do write a script, I have a hard time saying everything I've written in the script while recording the actions, which is why I typically end up recording my audio after the video.

Netvantage

www.netvantagemarketing.com
@netvantage

Jerod Karam, Director of Online Marketing for Netvantage Marketing, gave us an inside look at his process of creating his first and second screencasts.

Tell us about your process as you created your first screencast.
This week I completed my first and second screencasts using Camtasia Studio and became quite familiar with the software in the process. Since the inception of this project, we’ve always thought that Camtasia would be fantastic for creating client tutorials. In our world things get complicated quickly and trying to talk a client through an issue on the phone can be difficult. That’s where this week’s lesson comes into play.

For my first screencast, I demonstrated to a client how to set up a custom desktop background and then resize their browser window. This can be useful when our client is designing their website on a 24” monitor but most of their website visitors are viewing the site on a 19” monitor or perhaps even 13” to 15” laptops.

Watch Jerod's screencast demonstration for a client:

Watch on YouTube

How much time did it take you to complete the screencast from start to finish?
This was the very first screencast I attempted with the software. From the time I began playing with it until the time this 4.5 minute video was up on YouTube was approximately 75 minutes. I already had the custom background prepared but that 75 minutes includes learning time, a “do-over” or two, and the video rendering and upload time. It was a very quick process. All of the videos I have produced thus far have been speaking without a script and recorded all in one take.

(ASIDE: After learning the software and how to use it, I produced and uploaded another video--2.5 minutes--within 30 minutes beginning to end.)

What are your favorite things about the process so far?
The software itself seems pretty intuitive and pretty full-featured at the same time. You can knock out a quick tutorial as I did above and have it online very fast. This ease of use and quickness to produce a solid video is one of the things that makes me really enjoy working with this software. I also love the automatic zoom in feature that helps track and focus on your mouse movements. Those are unedited in this video and they work out very well.

I'm also looking forward to working with some of the advanced editing features. I think splicing together several clips, recording voice-overs, and perhaps adding a sound track will be fun and open a new avenue for more professional-looking video production.

What are some things you found to be lacking?
There are a few points of improvement that I can already see are needed. First, immediately after recording the program opens a viewer window and auto-plays the recently-recorded video. I'd really like to be able to see the entire captured video, even if it's not a maximum resolution. Also, in the same preview window, you can "save and edit" the just-recorded video or you can "save as." In the "save as" option, I'd like to be able to save the mouse pointer movements when I go to save it as an .avi. Finally, I'd love to see additional options for transitions. The only one I'd use for professional videos at this time would be the "fade to black" option.

Having said that, the library effects, backgrounds, and intro sequences I stumbled upon are seriously cool. I will be using those perhaps with green screen in future screencasts.

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.

The Screencast.com team has been hard at work implementing some great new features. Dirk Frazier, the Screencast.com Product Manager has a blog post here that outlines all the new features.

One of the new big features if that free and Pro users can now tap into the power of Google Analytics. That means you'll have more data about the viewing of your content.

Also, we've created a Silverlight-based caption editor right on Screencast.com. That means you can add or change captions to your video if it is already on Screencast.com. Check out the tutorial!

Flash hotspots are now supported by our HTML5 player. This means your Camtasia Studio hotspots will work in non-Flash conditions- for example on an iPad. Screencast.com now also supports WebM video and we now have feature parity among our Flash, Silverlight, and HTML5 viewing environments.

Screencast.com gets social with this new release. We've integrate Screencast.com with Facebook, Twitter, and Get Satisfaction. Your viewers of public content will be able to "Tweet" or "Like" the content that they're viewing. We've also integrated with Get Satisfaction. You can join our community of users and interact with TechSmithies from all areas of the company. Get Satisfaction is a place for us to hear your feedback and help your answer questions. From your Library or Folder view, you can use the Feedback tab on the right hand side of the screen, or just visit http://feedback.techsmith.com.

Learn more about Screencast.com's social features in the video below. It runs less than 2 minutes and I promise you'll laugh after watching the video!

What other features would you like to see added to Screencast.com?

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?

If you're a Screencast.com user, you may have noticed some new features available to you today!

Customizable Pages: If you're a Screencast.com Pro user, you can now change the color, upload your logo, change the headers and footers, and customize your Screencast.com pages.

Training made a great video showing how to customize your Screencast.com pages. Check out the screencast below. It runs less than 3 minutes.

Optimized Display: One of the nice things about Screencast.com is that it does not alter your content by resizing or recompressing it. But, sometimes I'd have a problem sharing my image or video created on my large monitors. Often my viewer would have a smaller display. They'd end up having to scroll to see the image or video. Not ideal for my viewer or my content. Now Screencast.com will display your images and videos automatically at 800 × 500. This ensures that your viewers will not have to scroll and have a better experience viewing your content. And, they have the option to see your image or video full size if they choose. Oh, and your original file will not be altered.

My image before optimized display (Scrolling needed! Booooooo!):

My image after optimized display (No scrolling needed to see whole pic. W00t!):

Thumbnails: If you're like me, you have several different types of files in your folders. We've added icons for Flash, Quicktime, WMV, Camtasia Studio, PDF, and images so viewers can tell what type of file they are going to view.

Content Navigation: Viewers can now move easily between your content. You'll notice that there are now thumbnails below your content and above are 'previous' and 'next' controls. Viewers can easily navigate through multiple files you want to share.

I hope you like the new features! And, as always, we need your feedback to build better products. What would you like to see in Screencast.com next?

You can keep up to date on all the TechSmith blogs, including the Screencast.com one, here.

I am told that I didn't talk much until I was two years old and then I started to speak in full sentences. Maybe it was because I had an older sister to do the talking for me. Or, maybe it was because I had nothing to say! Regardless of what the reason is, I am now trying to catch up for lost time! :-) I love to talk - online or face to face! I even talk in my sleep! You'll often find me available to chat online via Instant Messager or on Twitter. And, I often like to supplement my chats with something visual - like a Snagit screencapture! And, this is where is gets difficult...

Part of the problem with "talking" online is that it can be difficult to share screencaptures via email or chat. Files are often blocked or people can't receive or open them. It always seems to fail when I'm sending the files to them.

There's a new, free output for Snagit that makes it easy to share your screencaps - the Snagit Screencast.com Output. Send your Snagit screencaps to Screencast.com and then just share the link - no more messing with files being blocked or lost. Easy! This is great to use for collaborating on projects, in blog comments, Instant Messaging or on sites like Twitter.

By the way, you can learn about Snagit and TechSmith news like this through our Newsletters. You can subscribe to them via email or RSS. They're free and full of news, tips and tricks. Enjoy and start adding graphics to your chats and emails!

What program or site would you like Snagit output screencaptures to?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes... I find myself often humming this classic David Bowie tune at TechSmith. We're always working on each of our products so they are often being updated or changed - Screencast.com included.

I wanted to share with you some of the recent changes. Screencast.com now has recurring billing so your account will now automatically renew at the end of your monthly billing cycle. Or, you can also set up your account to renew on a yearly basis - this option saves you money and is perfect for people like me who don't want to bother with monthly billing.

Also, instead of having several different tiers of accounts, we switched to having two options - a 'Screencast.com Pro" or a Free account. Hopefully this is less confusing than having multiple tier options. With the "Screencast.com Pro" account, you get 200GB of monthly bandwidth (2X the available bandwidth of the old Premium account plan) plus 5GB of storage space for only $9.95/month. And, we've added a Screencast.com FREE account that is not time limited. No more 60 day trial.

These changes are from direct feedback from users. Keep the ideas and feedback coming. We need it! The Screencast.com is still working away on thecustomer requested features and enhancements. Either leave comments here or via our product feedback form here.

Happy Screencasting! What else would you like to see added or changed at Screencast.com?

Oh! And, be sure to check out the Screencast.com blog for all the latest news.

The good news just keeps coming! In addition to releasing Morae 3 and Camtasia Studio 5.1 in French today, Screencast.com also had an update!

One of the things I love blogging most is getting comments. I love getting the feedback, having a conversation and getting input from readers. Well, why shouldn't your videos and other content have the same option? Good news - you can now have comments on your Screencast.com content! You can find out all the details on the Screencast.com blog here.

And, that brings up another point. Comments were added to Screencast.com because of direct feedback from users. We're listening - if there's something you'd like added, please make sure you send us your feedback here.

We're celebrating today at TechSmith! Our hosting service, Screencast.com has moved out of beta and into version 1.0! What does this mean to you? You get a totally redesigned and easy-to-use interface! Here are some of Screencast.com's features:

Take a tour here or if video is your thing, watch an intro video here!

And, don't forget to check out the Screencast.com blog for the latest news!

Have you tried Screencast.com? There is a free 60 day trial so you have nothing to lose. And, as you know, we're always looking for your feedback! Many of the improvements to Screencast.com's user interface have been the direct result of customer feedback. You can send your feedback to us in a couple different ways - you can use this form to email your feedback or feel free to comment here or on the Screencast.com blog.

Here's a place for you to not only learn what's going on with Screencast.com, but to also give your feedback directly to the team - many different members of the Screencast.com team will be participating from Developers to QA to Product Management. Dirk Frazier, pictured left, is the Product Manager for Screencast.com and would love to hear from you. What do you like about Screencast.com? What would you like changed or added? If you were the Product Manager of Screencast.com, what would you do? Check out their new blog and comment away!

Got 4 minutes? Then you have time to watch today's screencast made by Matt Pierce! Screencast.com was recently updated and this video will show you what's new. And, the screencast also has links going to additional videos that go into depth about using these features.

Like these screencasts? Wish they were longer? Wish they were sized bigger or smaller? Let our Training department know your feedback. They've been working hard. Thanks for watching!

The TechSmith Training Department wanted to kick off January with a bang! They are going to be creating a video a day, Monday through Friday, for the rest of the month! You'll also get to 'meet' the members of the Training team. I know you'll love this new series of videos.

So, let's get started! Our first video is about how to embed your media from Screencast.com to a web page just like the screencast below! Click the play button on the screencast - it is a short one running just under 2 minutes.

And, if you haven't tried Screencast.com yet, give it a try. There's a free trial, so you have nothing to lose. More info is here. It's the perfect place to share a video or any file.

Matt Pierce created this screencast. Matt is the training manager for TechSmith Corporation. Previous to working in the training management role, Matt has been an instructional designer at TechSmith, The Eli Lilly and Company Tippecanoe Laboratories in Lafayette Indiana, as well as for WisdomTools, Inc in Bloomington Indiana.

Matt has a Masters Degree from Indiana University's Instructional Systems Technology department. He has a love of learning and for helping others learn.

When not designing instruction or managing Matt likes to spend time with his wife and three children (they're rascals- each in their own special way), try new foods, and sometimes play his guitar....

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

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

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

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

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

To quote the great Steve Winwood...'Roll with it!'. I'm not sure, but Steve may have been talking about Screencast.com's new MediaRoll in that song. OK, just kidding...But seriously, have you noticed anything new on the blog lately? If you scroll down and look on the right-hand side, you'll notice I have a nice 'MediaRoll' posted there. I've included my MediaRoll in this post below too.

What's a MediaRoll? It's like a blogroll...but for media files. Screencast.com creates a Flash widget which I can embed on my blog or website that shows off my Screencast.com content. It organizes and presents my Screencast.com files in a way that I can easily share with everyone.

Here's why I like it...I like the MediaRoll because it makes it easier for you to find my older screencasts and gives them more exposure. Without the MediaRoll, good luck finding this video I did earlier in the year with Kathy Jacobs about PowerPoint Smart Art or this screencast we did about OneNote. Without the MediaRoll, you'd have to dig through my archives to find any of my screencasts. With the MediaRoll, all my videos are much easier to find on my blog's homepage.

And, here's where the MediaRoll gets really cool. Imagine if you wanted to keep others up to date on your Screencast.com content and screencasts...Maybe you were responsible for keeping the Sales Staff up to date for training or making sure your resellers had the latest and greatest information. Or, maybe you have a weekly screencast that you want others to see. You can allow others to embed your MediaRoll on their blog or website. And the MediaRoll will update itself whenever you add to or edit the contents of Screencast.com folders even if the MediaRoll is placed on someone else's blog or website. You don't need to email anyone new links or files, it does all the updating for them. Perfect to keep everyone up to date and they don't have to do any work!

Click here to watch a screencast about the MediaRoll. It runs just over 3 minutes and will show you how to set up your own MediaRoll on Screencast.com.

If you haven't tried Screencast.com, check it out. We've been adding new functionality and changes all the time like the MediaRoll. And, there's a free trial...you have nothing to lose.

So, what do you think about the MediaRoll? Will you use it?

Justin Welsch is the lead developer on Screencast.com and has been with TechSmith since 2001.

First I'll give you some background. Screencast.com is TechSmith's answer to a long standing problem our users have. Once you have created your content with SnagIt or Camtasia how do you deliver it to your viewers? After all, you don't create a shiny new tutorial video for yourself! Screencast.com was designed to be a hosting solution that is integrated with our desktop products. This closes the circuit from content creation to delivery.

TechSmith has traditionally created desktop software that runs on Windows. So when we were given the green light to design and implement a hosting solution it was a large task in itself to figure out how we were going to build a full-featured and robust web application. We drew on resources from all over the company. We pulled in web developers who maintain our corporate website. We had UX (user experience) specialists to help design a user interface. We brought in documentation and training people to write help documentation and create tutorial videos. Initially, Screencast.com was to be a hosting site for Camtasia Studio videos so we had members of the Camtasia Studio team to represent that product's interests. There was a quality assurance team member who kept everything in line. Finally we had some of our desktop developers to round out the team (I was part of this group).

In order to manage this hodge-podge of a team, the company decided to use an agile development methodology. We did this for two reasons. The first is that TechSmith wanted to move away from the traditional waterfall method now that we were getting bigger. It just was not efficient enough for our size and was not a good fit for the product development culture at TechSmith. The second reason we used agile development was that it was thought to be a good fit for a web-based product. Desktop applications generally have development cycles of several months. For many reasons including lead time for marketing and pressing discs, once a new version is released it might be a while before another version is released. In contrast, a web-based application has the ability to be updated a lot more quickly. Since the files that contain the application actually reside on our servers (rather than on your desktop, as in traditional applications) we can change the code when we want.

The "agility" of web applications demanded a software development cycle that was flexible and able to have a quicker turnaround time. The answer lied in so-called agile development practices. If you're wondering what "agile development" means, so were we at the time. Basically, it comes down to keeping the actual team responsible for creating the product in control. The theory is that since the team is the closest to the product they are the best judges of how to implement features, fix bugs, and deal with issues that should arise. In practice this means that the team gets a great amount of autonomy to operate as they see fit within a block of time (called a "sprint", which is anywhere from 2 to 4 weeks long). Each team member is assigned tasks and is accountable for their completion by the end of the sprint. If a task ends up taking more time to complete than originally estimated or there are emerging issues that have to be dealt with, the team has the authority to either reduce the scope of tasks or drop them altogether. You can see how agile development looked like a good fit for creating a brand new application that was outside the core competency of the company.

We started out with an agile development implementation called Scrum. It is a team-based approach to agile development. It attempts to facilitate communication between team members and people outside the team (such as the marketing and executive groups). Items that need to be worked on are entered into a backlog, which is then prioritized. Since this is agile development, the priorities can change. For each sprint, items are selected from the backlog and presented to the team. The team then decides what can be done in the given timeframe of the sprint. Once a realistic amount of work has been identified, team members are assigned tasks and then work begins. To keep everyone on track and up to speed on the team's progress one of the main components of Scrum is a daily meeting where each team member gives a status update.

We started our first sprint in June of 2006. We were given a launch date of around 3 months in the future, which coincided with the release of Camtasia Studio 4.0. Our web developers concentrated on the front end and the help portion of the site. Our desktop developers worked on the back end, web API, and client communications from Camtasia Studio. As you can imagine there were many issues to be dealt with right from the get-go.

One of the biggest was whether to use a LAMP stack or Microsoft stack. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. It is the defacto open source solution for web applications. The Microsoft stack generally uses Windows, IIS, SQL, and .NET. Our web developers were more comfortable using LAMP where as our desktop developers were more familiar with a Microsoft solution. For better or for worse (and you could argue it was for worse), we came to a sort of compromise. We would use PHP for the front end and IIS and .NET (running on Windows, of course) for the rest. If you talk to almost anyone who deals with web systems, they'll tell you that while a solution like what we did is theoretically possible it is not even remotely recommended. Alas, given our launch time frame and the resources we had to work with this is what we went with.

Another huge issue that we had to overcome was inter-team communication. This was to be the first time two product teams (Screencast.com and Camtasia Studio) were to work together in a concerted effort. We solved that problem by having the developer working on the Camtasia Studio client that would communicate with Screencast.com be an active participant in our daily scrum meetings.

Team management became another looming issue. We had three major obstacles. The first I already mentioned: inter-team communication. The second was figuring out how Scrum worked and adjusting the team and the company to work within the Scrum framework. The third was pulling together two differing development cultures. The web development staff and the product (desktop) development staff had evolved in different ecosystems and under different sorts of leadership. We tried to take the best of both worlds, along with the new idea of Scrum and mix them together into something that could help us meet our goals. It was quite the challenge and something that turned out to be an iterative refinement. As I write this we are still refining agile development in terms of the Screencast.com in particular and TechSmith in general.

Work progressed throughout the summer of 2006. As our launch date approached it was evident that the amount of work left to do was too much to accomplish by the established launch date. Camtasia Studio felt the same and so our launch dates were pushed back. This gave both teams breathing room to finish up some features that were taking more time than anticipated and to do thorough testing to ensure a quality product. Finally on October 17, 2006 Screencast.com was launched to the public. The launch was coordinated with Camtasia Studio 4.0 and we saw Camtasia Studio customers taking advantage of the integration of Screencast.com.

The birth of Screencast.com was a learning process for the company. Everything about Screencast.com was new to TechSmith. Agile development, inter-team coordination, and this being a web-based application were all unknown quantities from a development standpoint. From the perspective of the rest of the company, marketing and selling a web application and working with a team using agile development were all something everyone had to learn. The fact is TechSmith is still learning about what we have created and we will continue to grow from this experience as a company.

I met-up with the fabulous John Bristowe at EnergizeIT in Toronto last weekend. John is a Developer Advisor for Microsoft Canada and a Camtasia Studio user (which makes him not only fab but also very smart in my book).

John brought up an interesting Camtasia idea...why not invite our users to send us feedback and comments with a Camtasia Studio video?

What better way for you to convey your feedback and ideas to us? Also, in my experience, it's often faster to make a video versus typing my comments and feedback.

Don't have a place to host your video to share your feedback with us? Make use of Screencast.com's free 60-day account.

So, who's going to send me the first feedback screencast? Not feeling inspired? Here are some questions to give you a start for your screencast:

• What's the one feature in SnagIt, Camtasia, Screencast.com, Morae or UserVue that would make your life easier?
• Have our products changed the way you do work? How?
• What would you like me to blog or screencast about and why?
• What topics would you like to see tutorials or training on?
• How can we make you happier?
• If you were President of TechSmith, what would you do?
• Random question: If you could pick one superpower, invisibility, super human strength or flight, which one would you choose and why?

Remember your physics class in high school? This week's Screencast of the Week comes from Joseph Liaw, a high school physics teacher at Hinsdale Central High School.

Joseph has been using Camtasia since version 1.0! He mentioned in a recent email to me, "I actually had used Lotus ScreenCam for Windows 95, and when I found Camtasia, I was in tech heaven!"

Joseph shared with me his Camtasia screencast that he used to create training on using Camtasia in the classroom.

Click the screenshot below to watch Joseph's screencast. You'll even see a little physics in the video.

On a sidenote, I've had a few people ask how you use Camtasia Studio to record Camtasia Studio. There are a few different ways you can do it. You can use the Camtasia PowerPoint add-in to record Camtasia Studio or use an older version of Camtasia Studio.

You've heard me talk some about the upcoming release of Camtasia Studio...you can now try it yourself!

Here's the marketing spiel on the new features:

Camtasia Studio lets you publish videos and MP3 files for iPods and portable media players. Click here to watch a video about this feature.

With Camtasia Studio 4 you can simultaneously produce multiple kinds of videos. Want a SWF, MP3 and MP4? Make it with the click of one button. Click here to watch the video about this feature.

One of my favorite new features is the improved audio - as you know I like to record on the tradeshow floor, at airports or wherever. This feature will be handy in those situations since Camtasia Studio can improve the audio by editing out background sounds and equalizing volume levels. Troy made some videos showing off these features here.

Something that used to bug me in Camtasia Studio 3 was that you never knew what your video would look or sound like until after you spent the time producing it. Now you can preview and compare the results of different file formats and compression settings so you know which format is best for you! You can watch a video about this feature here.

There are new playback bars and Flash pre-loaders so you can customize your video's look.

We added an option for survey questions and improved our quizzing. You can watch a video about this feature here.

And, one of the things I always struggled with was sharing my videos. I never wanted to bug IT or the webstaff to post my videos. And, I didn't want them scaled or altered from the originals - so other video sites wouldn't do. We've launched Screencast.com. It's a service which makes it easy to post your videos, screencasts, and files online. There's even a way to deliver content directly to your viewers with RSS and iTunes output. And, you can make your content private and allow only invited people to view it. I also like the fact that I can get some stats about my videos on Screencast.com. The webstaff is happy that I don't have to bug them to post videos anymore. ;-) You can learn more about Screencast.com here

There's a trial of Screencast.com. Try it out here.

Rich Boys, the Screencast.com Product Manager, did a quick screencast with me about it. Click the screenshot below to watch the tour.

I'd love to see your videos and share them on the blog. Post them here or e-mail them and I'll add them our set of del.icio.us bookmarks to share with everyone.