LibCasting » Screencasts

Music Only Screencast

Greg — Tue, 27 May 2008 03:47:43 +0000

I came across another screencast that only uses audio to add a music soundtrack. I was checking out the CrossLoop page which has a link to their demo video. Like the excellent CustomizeGoogle demo, the CrossLoop demo uses text within the screencast to communicate its main points. While I liked the screencast and watched most of it, I found that with this sound track I turned the volume all the way down part way through it. Is it more a sign of my musical tastes or do others share the opinion that the music at CrossLoop does not work while the CustomizeGoogle does?

Not to sound too negative to this screencast, I do like a couple of other aspects of the CrossLoop demo:

Small size (video window about 320×240 pixels, delivered by default as a pop-up)
The way it zooms in to the relevant section (it looks to me like it was created with Camtasia Studio 5 using the new SmartFocus pan and zoom feature.

For me, this is a good example of how adding music may turn out to take too much time and energy to find an engaging track that is not distracting from the information content.

Simple GIF as Screencast

Greg — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:05:04 +0000

While I have known for some time that Camtasia can output a video to an animated GIF, I never had need of it previously. But as I was updating my search bookmarklets page, I thought that it would be nice to have a visual example of how the transfer search bookmarklets work. So using Camtasia Studio 5, I recorded a short video (without audio), edited it a bit, and then generated it as an animated .gif.

Camtasia gave me several settings to choose from, including how many times to repeat the animation. I went with 3 and added ending title slide so that it would end on that description of demo. One great advantage of an animated .gif is that is is very easy to embed it in a blog post like this one or on a Web page like the search bookmarklets page.

The disadvantage is that viewers lose the controls of a standard video file. The stop, rewind, and replay functions are not easily available. I toyed with the idea of using a small .swf-based video instead of the animated .gif. But that takes much more work to get all the appropriate coding on the page, the JavaScript in the header, and all the embed codes working correctly. Despite their documentation’s claims, I did not find an easy way to use Camtasia’s ExpressShow to embed the small video on my page when I host it on my own site. If I use Camtasia’s option to upload to screencast.com, then I get a much easier embed code snippet to use. Trying that here in WordPress, it pastes fairly well, but for an unknown reason to me, it runs the 14 second video in about 3 seconds. Assuming that it ran correctly, I’m curious as to which version most people would prefer to see on a page like my search bookmarklets page.

Free Older Version of Camtasia Studio

Greg — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 15:24:44 +0000

Until January 7, Techsmith is offering a free version of Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 (the latest version is up to version 5.0). The download site says it is an “exclusive offering for PC Plus Magazine readers from the United Kingdom” but another site that links to the deal says that they “have confirmation from Techsmith stating we have now extended the offer to everyone.” This older version apparently will not with Vista, and it also will not have all the improvements found in versions 4 and 5, but my memory of using it was that it was still relatively easy to use and could produce good screencasts. If you had been planning on buying the latest version of Camtasia Studio, install this free download and you should be eligible for the upgrade price.

In addition, if you have been looking for a more robust screen snapshot program, Techsmith is also offering an older version of SnagIt 7.2.5 (current is 8.2) for free. For both of these offers, you first need to download the software and then register for the free key. Remember, these offers expire January 7, 2008!

Virtual Chase Screencasts

Greg — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 06:15:53 +0000

I’m pleased to see that Genie Tyburski is now adding screencast to her wonderfully informative Virtual Chase site on legal information. She is using Camtasia Studio 5 and discusses the software and hardware being used. I expect more will be forthcoming, but for now, here is a list of what she has available.

Camtasia Studio 5 is Out

Greg — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 03:56:36 +0000

Techsmith has launched a new version of Camtasia Studio. Officially released on Tuesday, I have not had a chance to try it out yet, but is is already building some buzz. At least I’ve been reading about it. If you’d like to see what’s new, try any of the following:

Techsmith Press Release, What’s New, and Documentation
Techsmith’s screencast overview
Amit Agarwal’s Camtasia Studio 5 Review
Detailed software update list
More posts and screencasts on Techsmith’s Visual Lounge blog

I’ll be curious to see how well the embedding option works, and if it will be easier to add screencasts to my blog posts if I host the screencasts myself. Stay tuned.

Screencasts for RSS Feeds in Ebsco

Greg — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 03:50:31 +0000

Paul “Distant Librarian” Pival has posted a YouTube video and a better quality screencast on how to find the RSS feeds now available on Ebscohost. The problem with posting a screencast on YouTube is that it is hard to read the text on the screens due to the YouTube resolution. I need to blog the details of how I’ve done it to try and get the highest quality possible. The advantage of YouTube is that it makes it very easy to embed the screencast in a blog post of on most any Web page. Note that Paul has to link to the “nicer-quality version” of the screencast.

This Camtasia-produced screencast is hosted on TechSmith’s Screencast.com, which is a fee-based system. It does not have an embed option like YouTube, and only provides HTML code for a fairly standard link. It would be nice if Camtasia provided a way to embed a screencast as easily as YouTube does, but with the higher quality.

Interview re: Camtasia Studio 5

Greg — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 17:59:54 +0000

Want to get an idea of what features might be available in the next version of Camtasia? See the “What’s coming in Camtasia Studio 5?” interview with Camtasia Studio Product Manager, Troy Stein. I was intrigued that the interview is presented as an audio-only podcast rather than a screencast. It makes sense since the interview took place by phone (well, Skype anyway). Maybe Camtasia 5 would make it easy to produce a podcast like this without the need to use the Flash MP3 player used on this site.

Screencasts for Tech Support

Greg — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:51:33 +0000

One other use I’ve been making of screencasting is for communication with technical support and systems departments. Ever call in a technical issue and have the tech person not understand the problem? As a reference librarian, I know that I get calls where I am trying to guess the problem based on a verbal description. It is much easier when I can look over the person’s should and see the problem when it occurs.

So, this evening on the reference desk, I came across a strange problem with subject headings in our catalog. After describing it an an email, I decided to use Wink again to do a quick screencast to document the problem. In between answering reference questions, I was able to reproduce the problem, add a few call-out text boxes, and upload the screencast. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have Wink at the reference desk since I can’t see recording audio there while I’m staffing the desk. Yet Wink lets me take a quick screencast for purposes like this one. Another benefit to creating screencasts for tech support issues is just that it provides another opportunity to practice making screencasts quickly. It is not (nor does it need to be) a highly polished production. Take a look if you would like.

Quick Screencast at the Desk

Greg — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 01:26:00 +0000

While I’m catching up, I thought I’d follow up on my process post from November. I still haven’t finished (or even worked on) the screencast I talked about in that post, primarily because our site was going to be changing and the steps I wanted to show would be changing as well. That change is not yet complete, so I’ll be waiting awhile to try that screencast. However, later on the same day that I posted, I was working at the reference desk and received a reference question on voice mail. The person left an email address, but the process to get to the wanted information had many steps — a perfect candidate for a screencast. Unfortunately, not only did I not have Camtasia available at the reference desk, but there is also no microphone. Nor could I see putting on a headset-microphone combination while I was supposed to be approachable at the desk.

So, I thought I might try Wink instead. I fairly quickly downloaded and installed Wink. Then I just recorded the steps as I wrote them up in a draft email as well. Then I produced the screencast and uploaded it to a Web server (fortunately, I did have access to my work Web server from the reference desk). Then I sent the email along with a link to the screencast (0.8MB, 1:10). I could have taken more time to add call-outs, but I thought it better to respond more quickly. I tried to make sure that each step was clear and had a couple seconds between. It seemed to work, at least based on the email thank-you response I received. I wonder if other situations like this will crop up. If so, that’s another reason to learn to be able to produce screencasts quickly.

Updating Screencasts and Posts

Greg — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:44:02 +0000

Now that the new semester is underway and both our library Web site and catalog have changed their design, it is time to get moving on updating some of my screencasts. It is also a good reminder to update this blog. I’ve just published a number of entries that had remained as drafts for the past month or so. If you’re interested, see the Linux Guide, OpenID, Meredith Muses, and PowerPoint Screencasts posts.

For my library screencasts, I started the update process with What Floor is this Book on?. Using Camtasia Studio 4, I found that on Windows 2000, it sometimes would freeze after I cut a section of the video clip. I also had a strange situation where the produced video had black bars on the top and bottom, no matter how I changed the output dimensions. I ended up having to re-edit the video which somehow avoided whatever caused that problem.
If you’re interested, you can compare the new screencast (1.4MB, 1:52) to the old one (1MB, 2:32). I ended up increasing the size, but I decreased the length. Some of the changes include getting rid of the keyboard sounds and reducing the dimensions. I found that the update process was more time consuming that I had hoped, mostly due to the problems mentioned above. However, now that I’ve worked out some of the problems, I plan on updating the others over the next week or so.

I also created a few screencasts for Search Engine Showdown over the last month or so. See my Overlap Showdown and my News Search Showdown posts. Both of those screencasts are hosted on YouTube. I host them on YouTube so that I do not have to worry about paying extra for the bandwidth on that account, but it also is nice to have the YouTube statistics, comments, and ability for others to embed the video themselves if they wish. Both of those videos were recorded and edited with Camtasia. I tried to record using a 320×240 window since that is the maximum YouTube dimensions. I then “produced” them as Quicktime .mov files which were uploaded to YouTube. In the Overlap Showdown, I used several blur call-outs to mask the personal information of the person for whom I was searching. This seemed to work well, but it was a bit tricky to make sure that the blur call-outs lasted for exactly the right amount of time to obscure the search term.