Week 2 of my Practicum

I dove a bit deeper into using Camtasia 8 this week.  My first video on how to take a screen shot using Camtasia 8 turned out pretty well.  However, I needed to make a couple adjustments.  The first correction was not introducing myself because of how these videos will be used in the future.  I added a call out to one segment of the video to give a better visual instruction of what needed to be done.  I also zoomed in and out on certain portions of the video so that the viewer would be able to follow along with more ease.  Now that I have made these adjustments, I think it is a much more user-friendly video.

This week I made a tutorial on how to create a "screen-capture" using Camtasia 8.  A screen-capture is a video recording of the screen.  This took some time because of the information I was providing.  I was hoping I could record the screen and then bring up another recorder interface while making the video.  That was not the case. I ended up taking quite a few "screen shots" of different items in Camtasia.  A screen shot is a still image of the screen.  The next step was pasting the screen shots in the paint application and cropping them to an appropriate size.  After I saved the cropped screen shots, I imported them to my Camtasia Studio.  I adjusted the dimensions of the recording box within Camtasia to fit my needs and began recording.  I have a brand new appreciation for anyone that narrates anything because it took me at least 15 takes before I got the speaking portion correct.  Finally, I added closed captioning to the video.  

I am also working on several other videos that will be posted in this blog in the coming weeks.  I was given a YouTube video to watch and I am making several videos that will instruct the user on how they could make the same style of video in Camtasia 8.  

The below video is the revised Screen Shot video tutorial in Camtasia 8.

The below video is the Screen Capture video tutorial in Camtasia 8.

The Beginning of My Practicum

I am finally starting my practicum for my graduate degree in Online Teaching and Instructional Design.  The focus of my practicum will be to create user-friendly tutorials for designing projects within Camtasia 8 Studio.  Camtasia 8 Studio is a software that was developed for creating videos and presentations directly using screen-cast.  It can also be used as a direct recording plug-in to Microsoft PowerPoint.

My first task was to familiarize myself with the software and make a video that instructs the user on how to take a screenshot using Camtasia.  The actual process of taking a screenshot on Camtasia is pretty straight forward.  However, my first attempt at making a video within Camtasia was somewhat challenging due to some technical issues on my end.

I was able to take and edit the video without too much difficulty.  The problem was that I did not realize my speakers had not been plugged in since we changed the layout of our office.  I spent around 45 minutes trying new options within Camtasia to add sound to my video.  After recording my video, I played it back and there was no sound.  There is an audio record option in Camtasia so I thought I might be able to start the video recording and the audio recording at the same time.  This did not work because when I started the audio recording, my video would play straight through without letting me stop the video.  I finally realized the speakers were unplugged!  With the speakers plugged in, I was able to make more progress. 

Once the video was completed I added Closed Captions as an option.  The speech to text function is not the best in the world.  I corrected all the errors of the speech to text and saved my first project on Camtasia.  I converted the video into a MP4 format so that I could send it to my professors.  Having spent some time exploring Camtasia, it seems to be an excellent way to make videos and I am excited to learn more.

The video tutorial on taking a screenshot in Camtasia 8 Studio is below.