In that presentation, I use a PowerPoint 2010 template with nice design and some “pre-built” animation effects. What I found was:

I ended up using those particular effects over and over again in LOTS of PowerPoint videos since then!

So…I created a slide deck with my 4 favorite effects that I use as a template and I thought others might find it useful too.

I also had a bit of fun with this video by creating a little sound track for it in my recording studio! Here ya go:

You can open or download the PowerPoint file here:

==> Quick Effects Tool Kit #1

I’d LOVE to hear your thoughts, comments, or questions.

NOTE: This template only works for PowerPoint 2010…

Hey, if you enjoy this post, could you do me a favor and Like / Share it with others?

Thanks and have fun!

Lon Naylor

I’ve been singing this song for years now and have put out several training tutorials on how to do it and given several live presentations on my tactics to make it as easy as possible…BUT:

There has always been the nagging issue of: “How do I synchronize my audio narration to my slides??”

And over the years, I’ve come up with a couple ways I do it that work wonderfully but they can be a little intimidating for beginners.

BEHOLD!

This short tutorial was recorded during one of my weekly Learn Camtasia Question & Answer Webinars and, as you can see, is repurposed to be a sample bit of content to introduce folks to that program. A good tactic to copy!

OMG…I love this new technique!

I have to give big props to the amazing Chris Webb of Compelling.tv for turning me on to this PowerPoint setting!

Enjoy and PLEASE: Leave a comment, Like, Share!!

Lon

Check out the original post HERE.

You’ll see a Pop-up video that was created by the developer to “sell” the software plugin. It does a good job of showing all the nuts & bolts, features, etc. of the excellent product BUT…

You don’t actually SEE what the software DOES until 1 minute and 40 seconds into the video!

DON’T DO THAT!

Let’s think about that…a viewer has absolutely ZERO idea of what they are looking at (not to mention What they are going to Get) until 1:40 rolls by??

Folks, you have about 10 seconds to GRAB someone’s attention with a video. Use the time to try to find a way to:

Show The Last Thing FIRST!

Here’s a re-do I created of the beginning of that sales video. Watch as I spend the first 12 seconds grabbing the viewers attention visually and then the next 20 seconds SHOWING THE LAST THING FIRST!

See what a difference that makes?

In less than 45 seconds, I can demonstrate what a customer will get, and make them eager to watch the boring install and configuration crapand get the excited. More importantly…get them to subconsciously visualize their end result and when I top that with the demo of how EASY it actually is?

Yummy sales video goodness! Read that as…more sales.

Lon

If you watch this before 10PM EST on Friday, Sept. 2rd, 2011 you can still get Premium List Magnet for a stupid low $27. It WILL go up after that and they will not extend this 60% discount.

You don’t sell a million bucks worth of stuff in a week by using anything less than the most effective means available…

And the really big guys & gals use video.

We all know these are big ticket items pushing the latest, greatest, bright shiny object and I typically don’t promote or endorse them directly but I DO study the launch process and the VIDEOS!

The latest one is from Mike Keonigs who definitely knows a bunch about video marketing and, I have to tell ya…

This one is hands down the BEST series I’ve seen so far!

It’s really quite stunning…and I highly recommend that you watch and study them too.

HERE to opt-in and be sure to watch these awesome samples!

Here’s what I’ve taken away from them so far and what I’ll be ripping off and showing YOU how to do:

First, Mike uses a technique that I’ve been working on for some time now…

It’s a tactic for delivering visual imagery that focuses the narration using nothing more that text and it’s called typography video.

Now, this whole series, I can promise you, was custom made by a highly skilled video animator using high end video or animation software…

But there are some tricks we can do in PowerPoint to use the same concept.

Tell ya what…if this technique is something you folks would like a template for and a tutorial on how to use it, let me know by leaving a comment and I’ll get that done.

The second thing that struck me about the videos is that I looked at the page code (ya, I do stuff like that)…and I noticed…It’s a YouTube video!

I thought, that’s kinda weird…it’s a YouTube video but there’s no YouTube watermark…no player controls…

It doesn’t have any links that wisk the viewer away to YouTube…How did they do that?

So, I started looking into it and I figured it out. It’s not really that new, but it uses an embedding feature YouTube started introducing last year that uses an Iframe instead of regular embed code.

If you want to play around with it yourself, I created a page and a player image you can swipe.

Click HERE to go check it out and download my Sample Page and player graphic for free

After you watch the short clip, you can click the link to download my source file and player graphic…to your hard drive and…unzip it.

Follow the directions in the video above.

This particular page is designed for a wide-screen HD format so that makes the best choice.

There ya go!

I’ll cover all this in more detail soon but I love this new feature!

I’ll also be testing it on WordPress blogs so stay tuned.

Go watch these videos!

And I’ll keep you posted on how, once again… I’ll be rippin’ off the big boys!

Leave your comments, questions, below and I’ll talk to you soon.

Lon

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 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:

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:

• 15 Awesome Google Search Tips and Tricks
• Google Search Tips (Ultimate Google Guide)
• Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks
• Google Search Tricks and Tips

Music Links

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

Please leave a comment and/or Tweet!

Enjoy!

Lon

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:

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

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

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!

[viddler id=d16f4b98&w=437&h=370]

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 generic acomplia rimonabant 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.