30th January 2008, 10:24 pm
Sportscasters sometimes make sports interesting to watch with their instant replays, on-screen pen drawings and playback narratives. After watching some recent political speeches and reading articles like this one on FoundRead about politicians’ body language, I wondered - what if speech instructors could use the same sportscaster-style tools to critique speeches? Invite some students to play the part of the “sportscasters” and you have an assignment students not only enjoy doing, but contribute to the content of the course. Have different students participate each week over the course of the class, and you have a video podcast the class can publish. Here’s a quick example of what your class could create using Camtasia.
The magic sauce for creating this type of video is the ScreenDraw tool. To make this tool easily available, click on View > Annotation Toolbar in the Camtasia Recorder window:
After you begin recording the screen, enable the annotation tools by clicking on the ScreenDraw icon on the Annotation toolbar. This gives you access to several screen-drawing tools, including a free-form drawing pen, several shape tools, a highlight tool and an arrow tool, all with configurable widths and colors. You can access the different tools and options by right-clicking inside the area you are recording:
For more information on how to use the annotation tools, see Techsmith’s online documentation.
Do you have creative uses for Camtasia in the classroom? I’d love to hear them - share them in the comments below!
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25th January 2008, 12:55 pm
I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts on a wide variety of topics lately, getting ideas for how faculty can integrate podcast creation into their own classes. One thing I’ve noticed is how polished and professional some podcasts sound - since I want our faculty to be able to produce professional-sounding media, I’ve been trying to identify specifically what separates the professional from the amateur. While many things seem to play a part in that professional sound, one consistent feature I can easily teach and replicate is the use of music. Some podcasts use only intro and outro music, others use music to indicate section breaks, and still others play constant, faint background music. However, all professional-sounding podcasts using music share one thing in common - ducking or fading music behind the voice track(s).
We’re promoting Audacity for basic audio recording and editing, so I looked into how to achieve ducking in Audacity. While there are several ways to duck or fade music, the most professional-sounding method involves the use of the envelope tool, which fades the volume of a track to a constant low level, then fades back to the original loud level. It’s pretty easy to use once you’ve gone through the steps; since video is much easier to follow than text-based documentation, I whipped up a screencast demonstrating the envelope tool, which I’ve embedded below. Tell me what you think.
As an aside, I also used this opportunity to play around with some alternative video upload services. Out of all the ones I tried, I liked Revver’s embedded video object the best. It’s interesting to see how some video services use more compression than others when transcoding the .avi I uploaded into .flv. Here’s the services I tried:
Do you have a favorite video upload service I didn’t try? Tell me about it - I’d love to test it out.
8th January 2008, 12:17 am
I put together a quick video demonstrating why someone would want to combine live video and screencasting. Filming live classes makes the video more engaging, since you benefit from the unscripted student/teacher interaction; however, if the instructor makes use of Powerpoint or whiteboards, filming the instructors’ visual aids is difficult at best and a complete disaster at worst. Combining the live recording with screencasts displays visuals in a clear format without suffering from a less interesting simple voice-over.
I cut this video quickly, in preparation for a workshop, so it’s pretty rough. One interesting thing - I really dig Adobe Premiere CS3. I haven’t installed the latest version of Final Cut yet, but I’m hoping it shares some of the more innovative features, like selecting which property to modify directly on the clip (opacity, motion, etc). I don’t, however, miss video editing on the PC - as a recent Mac convert, and briefly returning to the PC and suffering two video-related crashes, there is a definite benefit to video editing on the Mac - it just works.
Anyway, enjoy the film. This would also be a demonstration on why I didn’t go into math.
Get the Flash Player to see this player.
7th January 2008, 12:17 am
Recently, I’ve been assisting instructors interested in offering podcasts to their students. Since many others write articles on podcasting basics, I won’t belabor those topics here (unless, of course, I get requests for it). Instead, I intend to share some tips on topics that I don’t see others covering, starting with building a music and sound effects catalog.
When used effectively, music and sound effects give podcasts a professional quality - introductory and “outtro” music, background music, pieces of music separating show segments, and sound effects all contribute to a podcast’s polish. In some cases, like the podcasts (or “netcasts”, as Leo likes to promote) offered by the TWiT network, music choice sets the mood for the show and helps establish a brand. However, it already takes so long to record and edit podcasts without adding additional audio that often people find they don’t have time to add that extra polish. With the right tools and resources, I’ve found I can collect and maintain an easily-searched database of podsafe audio, ready to drop in podcast episodes in minutes. Generally, the steps I’ve taken to build my podsafe catalog include:
- Collect the music using Firefox and DownThemAll
- Import music into MusikCube
- Rate and tag songs as I listen to them
- Prepare frequently-used songs with desired volume, fade and trim edits
After the jump, I’ll cover each step in depth.
Continue reading ‘Build and organize a podsafe music library’ »
