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April 24, 2007
"My favorite software on the planet."
Steve Garwood is a highly quotable man. He gave us Just Push Play! - an introduction to screencasting. Screencasting is the process of recording all of your on-screen activity: mouse movement, typing, clicking, etc., and adding voiceover narration to create a tutorial video. There are lots of applications of screencasting for libraries: show patrons how to renew a book, how to find an article in Ebsco, how to place an ILL - and on and on.
Camtasia is a piece of software that creates screencasts quickly and easily. Says Steve of Camtasia: "I LOVE Camtasia. it is my favorite software on the planet." It costs about $300 and is worth every penny for the ease of use. Steve did a live demo of Camtasia - it really is quite easy to use. Here are some random tips:
- Make your screencasts two minutes or less because "everyone has ADD" (another Steve quote).
- Sizer is a piece of software that opens all your windows at 800 x 600 pixels, which is a good size for creating screencasts that will look good on most computers.
- Any screencast you make is a video, so it's going to result in a very large file, which is going to eat up your server's bandwidth everytime someone watches it. So get free bandwidth: use YouTube or SplashCast. These services will give you a video with much smaller dimensions, but that's ok, because Camtasia has a "Zoom and Pan" feature which lets you just zoom in on the important part of the screen.
There are a couple of free screencasting programs - they will not be as easy-to-use or produce the high-quality product that Camtasia, does, but they're free. Try Wink or CamStudio.
Posted by Jessica Adler at April 24, 2007 2:50 PM
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