God knows what the HTML is going to look like!
Friday, 14 December 2007
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Camtasia Project Rendered As A GIF Animation
I must own up to having lain awake in bed last night, wondering what a Camtasia project rendered as a gif animation would look like. Intrigued, I decided to render a 30 second camtasia project as a gif animation using the default settings. The whole of the production process took around a minute to complete and yielded surprising results. The quality of the 'video' was actually quite high, but it made one huge gif - 2Mb. A 2Mb gif!
Of course, other disadvantages are that there is no sound and there are no video controls.
Behold - the Camtasia project rendered as a gif:
Note: for some reason Blogger doesn't like this gif animation and so is not 'playing' it, but you can gauge the image quality at least.
Of course, other disadvantages are that there is no sound and there are no video controls.
Behold - the Camtasia project rendered as a gif:
Note: for some reason Blogger doesn't like this gif animation and so is not 'playing' it, but you can gauge the image quality at least.
Thursday, 12 July 2007
What Is Camtasia?
Camtasia is basically a screen recording program that provides the following functions:
You can provide voice narrations for your video, either while you are recording the screen or afterwards.
With Camtasia you can produce the final movie in the following formats:
To emphasize particular areas of the screen you can zoom in on them. This is particularly useful if you are recording at a large resolution and it might otherwise be hard for the viewer to see exactly what you are doing in that part of the screen. Zooms can be smooth or instant.
There are some basic transitions available using effects such as checkerboard, pixelate etc. Their names give a good clue as to what they look like. If you have two separate recordings you might introduce a transition to move the viewer gently from the first to the second.
Camtasia enables you to create menus allowing the viewer to jump directly to a chosen video. If you have a large selection of videos, it may make more sense to provide a menu as opposed to forcing the user to sit through them all sequentially. Menus can be geared towards web or CD presentation, with the CD route also offering an autostart function that is triggered when the CD is loaded.
Typically users use Camtasia to produce the following kinds of movies:
Voice Recording
You can provide voice narrations for your video, either while you are recording the screen or afterwards.
Export To A Variety Of Formats
With Camtasia you can produce the final movie in the following formats:
- Flash (FLV or SWF)
- WMV - Windows Media streaming video
- MOV - QuickTime Movie
- AVI
- iPod/Itunes
- MP3 - audio only
- RM - RealMedia streaming media
- CAMV - Camtasia for Realplayer streaming media
- GIF animation
Zoom and Pan
To emphasize particular areas of the screen you can zoom in on them. This is particularly useful if you are recording at a large resolution and it might otherwise be hard for the viewer to see exactly what you are doing in that part of the screen. Zooms can be smooth or instant.
Transitions
There are some basic transitions available using effects such as checkerboard, pixelate etc. Their names give a good clue as to what they look like. If you have two separate recordings you might introduce a transition to move the viewer gently from the first to the second.
Menus
Camtasia enables you to create menus allowing the viewer to jump directly to a chosen video. If you have a large selection of videos, it may make more sense to provide a menu as opposed to forcing the user to sit through them all sequentially. Menus can be geared towards web or CD presentation, with the CD route also offering an autostart function that is triggered when the CD is loaded.
Typically users use Camtasia to produce the following kinds of movies:
- Video tutorials
- Marketing presentations
- Software demos
Wednesday, 4 July 2007
Check Your Work
This may sound obvious, but checking your work is vital. Camtasia settings are not saved with Camtasia projects. This means that if you start a project without mouse clicks being indicated, for example, then work on another project that does require mouse clicks to be indicated, when you return to the first project Camtasia remembers the last settings used and enables mouse clicks in your recordings.
Of course this happened to me.
I started a Camtasia project with mouse clicks disabled. I checked the first batch of videos I produced with a fine tooth comb and they were A-Okay. Later, I got to experimenting with mouse and keyboard sounds. On returning to the project in hand, I sprayed mouse clicks everywhere because Camtasia had retained the last settings used.
Rework.
A catalogue of retained settings that meant a whole lotta extra work now follows:
To view/amend your current Recorder settings, in Camtasia Studio click Tools > Camtasia Recorder. From here you can access all of Camtasia Recorder's settings. You can get to the sound settings by clicking Effects > Sound. The dreaded watermark setting is viewed by clicking Effects > Options > Watermark. Keep away, keep away.
So the recommendation here is to:
Of course this happened to me.
I started a Camtasia project with mouse clicks disabled. I checked the first batch of videos I produced with a fine tooth comb and they were A-Okay. Later, I got to experimenting with mouse and keyboard sounds. On returning to the project in hand, I sprayed mouse clicks everywhere because Camtasia had retained the last settings used.
Rework.
A catalogue of retained settings that meant a whole lotta extra work now follows:
- Mouse click sounds
- Keyboard click sounds
- Highlighted cursor
- Watermark (see note below)
- Video resolution
To view/amend your current Recorder settings, in Camtasia Studio click Tools > Camtasia Recorder. From here you can access all of Camtasia Recorder's settings. You can get to the sound settings by clicking Effects > Sound. The dreaded watermark setting is viewed by clicking Effects > Options > Watermark. Keep away, keep away.
So the recommendation here is to:
- Always check your Camtasia Recorder settings before you start recording.
- Always check the final product. Hopefully following step 1 will reduce the number of duh! moments in step 2.
Monday, 18 June 2007
Camtasia Batch Production
The project I'm currently working on requires me to watermark some AVI videos, compress them and export to the FLV (flash video) format and SWF. 105 of them. Exporting to FLV is notoriously slow; for example, a 6.5 minute AVI took 45 minutes to render to FLV this morning. So you can imagine how long it's going to take to render 105 videos to both flash formats. More than 45 minutes is my guess.
Enter Camtasia's Batch Production facility. To export your movies to any Camtasia compatible format is a 2 step process:
On the next screen use the Add Files/Projects button to select the files you want to export.
Click Next. On the next screen click on the Preset Manager button (unless you are going to use an existing preset). This is where we will create a preset comprising all the settings used in the export process.
On the Manage Production Presets screen click New.
Give your preset a name and a description. Make the name meaningful, and add a description that summarises what exactly the preset is doing (see my example name and description below).
From here, specify your export settings as normal. If this is all gobbledy gook to you, check out my post on Specifying Camtasia Export Settings. I can't link to it as I haven't written it yet! Having created your preset, select it and ensure that 'Use one production preset for all files/projects' is selected.
Click Next. Select a location on your hard drive where you want the exported movies to go. I like to check 'Organise produced files into sub folders' so that Camtasia keeps the bits for each movie separate. I'm also not too bothered about reviewing the movies immediately after they have been rendered because invariably I'm in bed when that happens - so I uncheck 'Show production results'.
At this point click Finish and go and do something that takes lots of time. I think Camtasia is pretty nifty when it comes to the movie rendering phase, but if you're rendering multiple FLVs, it's going to take a fair amount of time. I generally set Camtasia off just before going to bed.
Don't make the mistake I made the first time I did this, and check the 'Show production results' box. When I did this I was awoken in the early hours of the morning to the sound of my own voice blaring out from the spare bedroom where my pc lives (I was exporting a tutorial I'd created earlier in the day). A chilling experience.
Enter Camtasia's Batch Production facility. To export your movies to any Camtasia compatible format is a 2 step process:
- Create a preset. This includes all the settings you want to apply in the export process (e.g. JPG compression, screen resolution etc).
- Select your files and apply the preset to them.
On the next screen use the Add Files/Projects button to select the files you want to export.
Click Next. On the next screen click on the Preset Manager button (unless you are going to use an existing preset). This is where we will create a preset comprising all the settings used in the export process.
On the Manage Production Presets screen click New.
Give your preset a name and a description. Make the name meaningful, and add a description that summarises what exactly the preset is doing (see my example name and description below).
From here, specify your export settings as normal. If this is all gobbledy gook to you, check out my post on Specifying Camtasia Export Settings. I can't link to it as I haven't written it yet! Having created your preset, select it and ensure that 'Use one production preset for all files/projects' is selected.
Click Next. Select a location on your hard drive where you want the exported movies to go. I like to check 'Organise produced files into sub folders' so that Camtasia keeps the bits for each movie separate. I'm also not too bothered about reviewing the movies immediately after they have been rendered because invariably I'm in bed when that happens - so I uncheck 'Show production results'.
At this point click Finish and go and do something that takes lots of time. I think Camtasia is pretty nifty when it comes to the movie rendering phase, but if you're rendering multiple FLVs, it's going to take a fair amount of time. I generally set Camtasia off just before going to bed.
Don't make the mistake I made the first time I did this, and check the 'Show production results' box. When I did this I was awoken in the early hours of the morning to the sound of my own voice blaring out from the spare bedroom where my pc lives (I was exporting a tutorial I'd created earlier in the day). A chilling experience.
Friday, 15 June 2007
Video Publisher
Lately I have been creating a lot of video tutorials. It started late last year when I was browsing rentacoder for something to do to pass the time. I came across a project that required someone to make video tutorials for a variety of graphics applications: Fireworks, Photoshop etc. Well, I know Fireworks and I've got Camtasia by Techsmith (more on that later) so I made a bid and the next thing I knew I had a high quality microphone and stand by my work desk and my spare room had transformed into a recording studio. I sold myself short massively on that project - 6 hours worth of video for £350. It might sound like a lot of mazoola (and then again it might not), but set that against the amount of work that this kind of project needs and you have to ask yourself whether it's worth it.
Since then I've done many more projects through rentacoder and also for previously made contacts but I've learned to be a bit more assertive with £££ estimates.
If the pressure is not too great you can actually have a lot of fun making video presentations/tutorials. If the videos are for publication on somebody's site, you even get a shot at glittering everlasting fame.
In these pages you'll find information that is designed to help you if you need information about many aspects of producing your own tutorial style movies.
Have fun!
Since then I've done many more projects through rentacoder and also for previously made contacts but I've learned to be a bit more assertive with £££ estimates.
If the pressure is not too great you can actually have a lot of fun making video presentations/tutorials. If the videos are for publication on somebody's site, you even get a shot at glittering everlasting fame.
In these pages you'll find information that is designed to help you if you need information about many aspects of producing your own tutorial style movies.
Have fun!
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