Here to for, I’ve generally built videos and tutorials with the unorganized approach of recording some video while I do something and then going back and editing it into something useful.

Today, I was working on a viral video for a client and actually built a story board of the video before I put it together attempting to plan out how I would present the video.

This actually worked pretty well for me, even though the story board turned out to be very rough.

Here’s a quick video showing the MindManager map I used for this situation.

Plus, here is the resulting viral video that I created from the story board draft.

Note. there’s a technical sound glitch in the final product that is the result of a problem with Camtasia’s ability to render 2 tracks of sound and a slow motion video clip at the same time.  I’m hoping to resolve this by reworking the clips in Pinacle.  If that succeeds I’ll add a third movie with the corrected result. For now, there are a couple sections where the volume level is a little buggy.

So now, I have to crack open this new software, get it installed and start learning some advanced techniques.  Coming soon, I will have my office on the fishing dock converted into a green room studio, you won’t even be able to see the patio furniture when I’m done, but I’m not sure what I’ll do when the occasional duck flies through my office.

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I have been conducting a few tests today with the Jing Video Capture tool from TechSmith.  I learned about this in September at the Podcast and New Media Expo, TechSmith had a great product and I didn’t need to be won over with advertising pens.  (note, it took me a few attempts to figure out how to install it on my machine running XP Media Center)

I noticed that when my microphone was set to red in Dragon Naturally Speaking, this seemed to turn off the microphone for Jing too.  Dragon Naturally Speaking does not normally have universal control over the microphone for other applications and I routinely shit in and out of it with other voice programs or recording programs.

I’m going to attempt to embed the video I created and published to TechSmith’s site, Screencast.com.

Here is the text I wrote with Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 during the test (not very polished, but it is what it is)

This is a quick experiment to see if I can use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 at the same time that I’m using Jing. Jing is a video capture software program from TechSmith.

The first time I tried this program I had the microphone for Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 turned off and I attempted to record sound with the video. The sound did not work on the video capture program. This time I have the microphone on for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I’m wondering if there’s an incompatibility with Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Jing.

As you can see Dragon NaturallySpeaking doesn’t like to spell the word Jing very much.

Note, I to get the actual video installed, shared on this blog, the steps were not obvious and I had to backwards engineer some code.  I suspect that this will be an area that I will focus my initial efforts to figure out the best way to apply the use of this tool.

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Last weekend I had the opportunity to talk with the developers of Snagit at the Podcast and New Media (Video) Expo in Ontario California.  This was my second year attending the show.  Next year it is growing up and moving to Vegas.

Anyway, I learned about a simple new screen capture program that TechSmith  (the makers of SnagIt and Camtasia) are working on.  Its a free software called, Jing.  It is like a super light and simple version of Camtasia.

You can snap screen shots, or capture video and upload and share it fast. 

Think screen capture mixed with YouTube, but faster and easier than both, oh and very very very basic and simple tools.

The Jing download is simple too, just 4.4mb and you are ready to run.

The .NET Problem

Jing requires a .NET installation on your computer to run.  I have .NET, but its installed on a separate machine.  When I attempted to run the installation, it died on me. 

So tomorrow, i will try and get VB .NET installed on this machine and then attempt to get Jingy on my machine.

If that doesn’t work, then I’ll try and contact the developers again to see what gives.

In the mean time, I’m diving back into my stack of work, as I attempt to catch up with a backlog of new business and projects.  I might as well mainline diet coke at this point or maybe get a diet patch for coke or something.  Anyone have a spare caffeine patch???

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The new version of Camtasia is out and it is packing a very useful punch.  Camtasia is a full motion screen recording software that can allow you to record presentations, narrate a recorded presentation, provide a training video or a mobile training video in an MP3 file.   Camtasia 4 is the latest version of this software from TechSmith the same company that has also created the very popular SnagIt screen capture software.

Camtasia Studio 4 is now designed for mobile sharing.  You can rapidly make a screencast presentation and distribute it to mobile players including MP3 players and iPods.  Its even integrated with Screencast.com’s hoting service, which can provide built in RSS and ITunes subscriptions capabilities.

You can create essentially a subscription link for your workers or students to subscribe to lectures or training videos and watch those videos from the internet or from their Video iPod.  It also provides integration into Flash Projects for easy web deployment of videos on your website.

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