LIBR 246-04/13 Web 2.0 (Spring 2010)

My Experience Creating a Screencast

I had a very difficult time completing this assignment. First I tried out Camtasia trial version. First I recorded a tutorial that was too long (20 minutes). I recorded a second screencast, but this time decided to concentrate on demonstrating only one feature of Facebook, sending messages. I recorded a five minute screencast, and then I had to leave to go pick up my daughter from a friends house where she was working on a class project. I returned home to discover that Camtasia was closed out along with Facebook. Darn teenagers! I opened Facebook and Camtasia again to find that the Camtasia recorder interface was not coming up like it previously did. I spent a long time trying to find out how to bring it up, with no luck. Then I tried installing uTIPu. I did not like the interface that uTIPu and it didn't show the screen that was recording.

Then I tried installing Jing and using it. It installed alright on my computer, but then you have to sign in to Screencast.com. Every time I tried to sign in to Screencast it gave me an error that Screencast could not connect to the internet. It told me to connect to the internet and try again. I tried this repeatedly, I even tried several work arounds, going to Screencast directly, creating a user account and activating it through my email. It still would not connect.

I have had a strange error message popping up on my computer for a few weeks now, so I attributed my problems to a virus. I have run several virus scans, that have not discovered anything. I tried doing a system restore and restored my computer to a point a month earlier. After the restore the stupid error message popped up again. Next I opened my virus program AVG and updated it. Then I ran a full scan, where a generic trojan was discovered and the certificate. I removed both of these.

Then I reinstalled Camtasia trial version. The interface was there this time and I was able to record my screencast, plus create some slides in Power Point and import them into Camtasia. This all went relatively well except for some background noise from my son.

Then I tried uploading the screencast to Screencast. I still had the same issue that it wouldn't connect, so it would not let me save in Screencast format. I tried uploading directly from Screencast but it would not accept any of the other formats web, mp4.

Next I tried uploading to YouTube. Although I saved the screencast using YouTube format, each time I tried to upload I got an error message saying that it was not a supported format.

Finally, I went to Blip.tv.  I created an account, then I selected the MP4 format that I had saved. I filled out title information and hit upload and I received a message that it would convert to Flash format if it was necessary and just when I was beginning to bang my head on my desk a message popped up saying that my upload was successful.

Lessons learned from this experience

• It is important to have a virus free computer before attempting to install new software and be able to use it correctly.
• The other lesson learned is that you need a sound proof environment to create these videos without feedback from your surroundings, something that I don't have with two noisy teens in my house.
• Make sure your script does not duplicate when you piece together video from PowerPoint with video from Camtasia.
• Allow plenty of time for creation, creating Screencasts involve a lot of time and patience.

I also loved Blip.tv's ease of use. It converted the video for me before the upload, so that any non techie video creator can upload successfully.