Week 5 of my Practicum

This week I continued my exploration of Camtasia 8 and made two videos.  One new thing I learned was that I can cut out parts of the video where I am waiting for files to upload.  I am glad this is an option because thirty or forty seconds is a lot of time to fill when nothing is really happening. I also learned how to delete audio from a recording that I was using as background for my new video. 

The first video I made was on how to add closed captions to the video.  It is pretty simple, but the speech to text on my computer is not the best in the world.  I used the "train your computer" option twice.  I have not seen any real improvement in my opinion.  So, I basically have to go back and edit each box.  It is not hard, just time consuming because you have to play the box as many times as it takes so the text matches what you are saying. 

See the below video about closed captions:

The second video I made was on how to produce and share your recording.  It is a pretty simple function to perform on Camtasia 8, but as with most things, showing someone how to do it in a video is a little more difficult.  Within Camtasia 8, you can share to YouTube, Screencast, Google drive, and others.  This makes sharing your video easier. 

See the below video on how to produce and share:

I have also begun working on a 10-15 minute video describing my practicum experience.  My main focus this week has been to make an outline of how I want to begin and trying to figure out how best to incorporate some of the videos I have made.  You do not realize how long 10-15 minutes are until you are trying to make a video.  You can say a lot in 10-15 minutes. 

Week 4 of my Practicum

This week has been more about trying to organize my videos and manuscripts.  Now that I have become a little more proficient with Camtasia 8, I am going to work on not only making the tutorials, but putting them in an order that will benefit a new user of Camtasia 8. 

In order to do this, I have created a folder in Google Drive to store all my videos and manuscripts.  As I was going back over my videos, I noticed a couple of errors in the closed captioning and was able to correct those before sending them back to my professor. 

I made one video this week.  It is a basic introduction video that shows the main components of Camtasia 8. This video did not go into any detail because I just wanted the viewer to be able to see the different functions that Camtasia 8 will allow the user to perform. 

Introduction video for Camtasia 8:

This week I was able to use what I have learned in Camtasia 8 to assist a professor at my school.  The professor needed to know how to have their webcam displayed on their screen and also how to enlarge and move the webcam picture. It felt good to be able to provide that information and save the professor some time trying to figure out how to perform this function.

Next week, I plan on making several videos that deal with general terminology, adding captions, and how to produce and share.  Should be a busy, but fun week.

Week 3 of my Practicum

This week I worked on three instructional videos for using Camtasia 8.  These videos were somewhat shorter in duration then my previous videos.  However, that did not make the process go a lot faster like I thought/hoped it might.  I added closed captions to my videos and had some problems getting the captions to show up on the videos once they were saved, but thankfully it all came together.

The first video I made was a tutorial on how to use a callout in Camtasia 8.  Callouts are used to point out or highlight important information or objects on your screen.  This video was the quickest and simplest of the three I made because it is a simple tool to use and it was easy to demonstrate in Camtasia.

Below is the tutorial on using a callout in Camtasia 8:

The next video I made was a tutorial on how to use the zoom function on Camtasia.  The zoom function helps guide the viewer to where you want them to focus.  This, in turn, makes it easier on the viewer because they are not searching the screen for the information you want them to retain.  This video was a little more difficult to make because of the different screens and functions I was trying to highlight.  The more words in your script and functions you have to demonstrate, the more difficult it is to get right in one take.  I need to write Camtasia technical support and ask them to add a function where you can stop the recording and back it up to where the mistake was and just start the recording from the mistake.  

Below is the tutorial on using the zoom function in Camtasia 8:

 

The final video I made was a tutorial on how to show the creator via webcam on the screen of your Camtasia video.  This was the shortest video, but it was difficult because I had to use multiple screenshots to illustrate my points instead of being able to use video recordings.  One thing that threw me off at first is that when Camtasia is displaying your webcam feed in its video, it does not appear on the screen until you stop the recording.  After you have stopped the recording, you can move the webcam box and adjust the size to fit your video needs.  

Below is the tutorial on displaying your webcam within a Camtasia 8 video: