Screencast Profits » QuickTips

Camtasia 7 Drag n Drop Custom Callouts

Admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:06:49 +0000

In this Camtasia Screencast QuickTip, I’ll cover a very nice “hidden” feature in the new Camtasia Studio version 7.

In version 6, to add custom images to your videos, you had to add something called a Custom Callout (in a somewhat complicated procedure) before you could add them to your timeline.

In Camtasia 7…it’s sublimely simple!! Check it out:

I totally love this new feature!!

Seriously, this could be worth the price of upgrading alone.

Oh…and this is a very small taste of the kind of content in my new, soon-to-be-released Camtasia 7 Training Course. Stay tuned!

Lon

Google Search Story Tutorial

Admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:20:44 +0000

After the 2010 Google Super Bowl ad I was inspired to try my hand at making one of these very cool screencast videos. In case you missed the blog post about it, here is the Google ad that aired and my first attempt to do one:

Google Search Video Post

Check it out and leave a comment and/or Tweet it if you like!

Lot’s of folks want to know how I did that so I made a tutorial covering the details. Here ya go:

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PRESS PLAY

I talk about a couple of main concepts used in this video that are applicable in a wide variety of screencast work:

1. Recording in “Scenes” - Have you ever gotten frustrated with trying to record a video because you messed up at some point or gotten out of sync? Maybe you’re just trying to do too many things at once!

2. Recording for Clarity – A couple of useful tips for getting crystal clear captures.

3. “Speed Typing” Effect – 3 ways you can get the nice fast typing effect.

4. The Power of Music – Music = Emotion and can change the entire “feel” of your video and the emotion of your message.

Cool Search Tips

Doing standard searches can be effective when telling your story but don’t forget to think “outside the box”. Here are some links to interesting things you can use that you might not know about:

Music Links

Stock20 – Register and get a song comped to you
MusicBakery
Digital Juice
StudioCutz

Please leave a comment and/or Tweet!

Enjoy!

Lon

Google Super Bowl Ad

Admin — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:23:36 +0000

Like a lot of folks, I was intrigued by the rare ad run by Google during the Super Bowl. Some people loved it, some hated it, some indifferent. Certainly, if loud action shots, side splitting humor, or just good ole’ fashioned big boobs are what float your boat as far as commercials go then this was a departure!

In case you missed it, here it is again:

Me? I saw a brilliant video…almost a work of art. The combination of imagery, perfect music, and use of screen capture “scenes” put together into a 60 second collage was awesome.

But when it was over, I immediately thought, “Whoa! I could do THAT!”

Since I’m speaking at Bob “The Teacher” Jenkins S.I.M.P.L.E. Event this month, I put together my own little “search story”. Here it is:

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The really sweet part? I don’t have to pay $3 million bucks to air it! Actually, this clip is WAYYYY long because I couldn’t resist putting in the Cape Fear clip, so the 3 1/2 minute video would cost $10.5 million during that TV time slot.

The biggest concept to understand if you want to make one of these yourself is that it’s made up of individual “scenes” captured with Camtasia individually and then stitched together during editing.

If you tried to just grab ALL the footage in one recording shot? Hmmm…that would be VERY messy and you would never end up with anything that looked smooth. The biggest problem is that most of the scenes are “sped up” to give that cool fast typing effect.

I tried using Camtasia’s Clip Speed feature for this at first but since you can’t see the effects of the speed up until AFTER you produce, it was a TOTAL nightmare (come on Techsmith!! Uggg…).

I gave up and dropped the clips into Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum where the whole thing was a complete snap and I could monitor the timing and tweaks in real time. Syncing the music, sounds, and other audio was also a breeze in Vegas.

I exported to a AVI file and did the Pan & Zooms in Camtasia (which is easier than Vegas to me), and rendered it out to MP4 Flash.

These kinds of videos aren’t new. They are called Search Stories and you can see other examples on this YouTube Channel.

A big thanks to Andy Jenkins (The Video Boss) for his blog post that gave me the inspiration and motivation to whip this out.

BTW…it took me about 7.5 hours, start to finish. Planning (as usual) took the biggest percentage of time (about 3.5 hours), setting up my “shots” and rehearsal about 2 hours, and the rest in editing and final production.

What do you think?

Lon

“Lower Thirds” for Camtasia Videos

Admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:42:57 +0000

Here’s a Camtasia Screencast QuickTip on how to create a “Lower Third” for branding and copy protecting your videos.

This tip is actually a video response to one of our members, Todd Doyle, and his question of “How to I make a clean, crisp, image for the bottom of my videos that shows my web address?”

I show two methods to do this:

1. Using simple Callouts in Camtasia Studio but adding a couple of design considerations to put a little flair into the mix…

2. Recognizing that Camtasia is not a full fledged graphics editor and pulling out a new graphics tool, the free to download and use PhotoShop alternative…GIMP.

GIMP is the GNU Graphics Manipulation Program. It’s a great addition to your toolbox! I highly recommend you check it out.

Hope this helps!

Lon

Cool Custom Images

Admin — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:01:20 +0000

One of the things that definitely separates marginal video from really good ones has to do with “what’s going on visually?” as the viewer watches. I almost always try to put some kind of visual spark to keep the video interesting. Lots of folks have asked me where to get graphics to use for this little tactic. I have several sources but here’s one that’s fun, interesting, and has just released a “Commercial” account membership so you can use them for marketing and commercial purposes.

ImageChef offers some creative ways to customize stock images with whatever text (and/or images) you like. It’s a quick and easy way to whip up a “just right” message into a nice image you can put into Camtasia videos, PowerPoint slides, post to web and social sites…cool!

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Create a Lightbox for Camtasia Videos

Admin — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 00:29:53 +0000

My good friend Brian Edmondson asked about how to have videos show up in one of those cool “lightboxes” where the video jumps off the page in a box and the rest of the page dims out thereby “highlighting” the video box.

These are also sometimes called a “modal dialogue” box.

Here’s one of the many ways to do this: Create a Lightbox for Camtasia Videos

I use a script called Videobox.

In this video tutorial, I’ll walk you through the whole process to get your Camtasia videos to pop up in a cool lightbox.

Replacing Bad Audio in Camtasia

Admin — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:34:44 +0000

Sometimes when putting a Camtasia video together you end up with audio soooo bad you simply can’t use it. You’ve got good video, great content, but the assault on your viewers ears prohibits using your existing audio track…

In this QuickTip, I’ll show you how to get around the limitation in Camtasia Studio 5x and earlier versions where the audio and video are “married” together making it difficult to replace the offensive audio track.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mes7SfGEtg&fmt=18[/youtube]

You can watch the MP4 high quality version at: Replace Bad Audio QuickTip

And for all the time saving, profit-pulling tips and tricks on using Camtasia to create killer marketing videos be sure to grab your FREE Screencast Profits membership!

http://screencastprofits.com

Oh…and be sure to leave a comment!

Lon

Removing the “Green Rectangle” in Camtasia Pan & Zoom

Admin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 11:00:59 +0000

Have you noticed that by default the new Camtasia Studio 5 displays a “green rectangle” around each Pan & Zoom event in the produced video?

At first, I thought it was kinda cool but now it just screams “Hey! I’m a run-of-the-mill-Camtasia-video!”.

Well, I hate being average so I found out how to remove the thing…here’s the deal in a Screencast QuickTip video tutorial.

Want more? Head over to ScreencastProfits.com and grab your free 94 minute video tutorial on the #1 thing you can do to make better videos instantly!