My First Screencast
I’ve installed Camtasia this week, and started learning how to use it to make screencasts. I’ll be doing many screencasts in the next few weeks, both of myself and others, so I need to get up to speed.
Here’s my first attempt. WARNING: there is no useful content in this screencast. It’s only a test. And it may take a while to load — I’m still figuring out the optimization details. I’ve ordered a lapel mic for use in these recordings, but I think I like the way this big condenser mic turns my creaky morning voice into a rich smooth Barry White baritone.
Stay tuned for more screencasts on Open XML development, which I’ll be posting in a variety of places. Oh, and if you’d like to see how that empty presentation turns out, sign up for the webcast next Monday in which I’ll be covering Open XML for Architects. Everyone’s invited, although a bit of experience in C#, .NET, XML and related topics may make the presentation a little more interesting.
Mom, you don’t have to try to stay awake through this one. You’ve done that already.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 14th, 2006 at 11:06 am. You can subscribe to comments on this post through its RSS feed.
on September 14, 2006 at 11:14 am Doug wrote:
Hmm, looks like I’ve got some more learning to do. That doesn’t seem to be streaming at all, just a big 2MB blob that takes forever to download. And you seem to have to click Play and Stop a couple times to get it started. Oh well, that’s why I’m experimenting …
on September 14, 2006 at 12:52 pm Tom wrote:
Camtasia is awesome - I’ve never used it personally, but Steve Krug uses it regularly for usability testing and demonstrated it in much detail during a seminar I went to last year. Did you install it somewhere I can fiddle with it when I’m there next week? I’d love to play with it for a bit if possible. Anyhow, it’s crucial to solid usability testing - I was amazed during the testing I watched how strangely unpredictable one user’s mouse tracking was compared to another’s.
on September 14, 2006 at 1:07 pm Doug wrote:
It’s on my laptop. I think a video of “Tom’s guided tour through the internets” would be a great place to start.
on September 14, 2006 at 2:15 pm Tom wrote:
Cool - I’ll bring my laptop so I have my Web with me.
on September 14, 2006 at 2:18 pm Tom wrote:
Oop - Steve Krug uses Camtasia, but he also uses Morae (by the same people). I think that might be what he demonstrated at the seminar, but he did say that Camtasia can be used in the same way. Your link shows Morae, too. It’s $1300, which is pretty much the main reason I don’t have it.
on September 15, 2006 at 8:34 am xorge wrote:
Hey, if you’re a closet Barry White wanna-be check out Heil Sound:
http://www.heilsound.com/amateur/default.htm
Any of these mics will give you the best sound at each respective price point but the PR-40 is an amazing vocal mic - you can really tell the difference when you listen to podcasts done with it verses lesser quality mics.
As to the Camtasia test - the first time it failed but then I turned on Javascript for your site and it worked fine (I just switched to runnig with JavaScript turned off by default for security reasons via “NoScript” in Firefox and had notyet added you to the list of auto-on allowed sites.
How soon can we expect a photo slide show with comentary?
Xorge
on September 15, 2006 at 2:19 pm Doug wrote:
Great idea, George — a slide show with commentary could be a lot of fun.
I’ll check out the details on that mic. I’m expecting to receive my lapel mic today or Monday. It won’t offer the quality of some of these other options, but I’m thinking if I can always have it with my laptop then it will be easy to do spontaneous little screencasts about various things.