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Do you get excited when you see "News You Can Use" appear in your inbox? I hope so! My goal is to make you drop whatever you're doing and read the newsletter as soon as it arrives. I want it to be that good. But I need your help.

Can you take a moment right now to answer six questions that will help us tune the newsletter so it's drop-everything good?

If you choose to provide your email address at the end of the survey, we'll enter you in a drawing to win one of five copies of Daniel Park's Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide. Winners will be drawn at random on February 14 and notified by email.

Thanks for your feedback…and for reading!

Daniel Foster
Newsletter Editor

If you are just getting started with screen recording, or if you want to become more of a power user, Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide will get you where you want to go.

Here's my mini-review:

With more than 600 pages of friendly tips, guided tutorials, and practical exercises (not to mention cartoons and screenshots), the book walks you through the entire process of planning, recording, editing, and producing screen videos. A thorough index makes it a useful desk reference. The accompanying CD-ROM contains project files for the exercises plus free trials of various tools and utilities Park finds handy for screencasters.

Want to meet the author? Read my interview with Daniel Park.

We got permission to let you download a full chapter of the book ( PDF, 134K) that will help you lay the groundwork for top-notch tutorial, demo, and marketing videos.

You can also download a few sample pages ( PDF, 132K) that give a taste of Park's step-by-step content.

Or just go ahead and order a copy of the book!

Demogirl.com is a great site for discovering useful applications or Web sites. Molly McDonald's screencast demos are just detailed enough to help you decide whether it's worth downloading or setting up an account.

Recently Molly recorded a screencast that shows how she records screencasts. It runs about 8 minutes and provides a nice "over-the-shoulder" look at how a professional screencaster works. She's using Camtasia Studio 4, but it gives a good sense of her workflow. Check it out...

Yesterday we released an important update to Camtasia Studio. The update is free for existing Camtasia Studio 5 users. To see what it includes, visit the version history.

Those who own version 4 or earlier may choose to upgrade to v5.0.2 for half the price of a new install (and get all the cool, new features, too).

Either way, visit the upgrade page to get the latest version.

Casey, a member of our friendly tech support team, says, "This is definitely an update you should install. Most of my support calls lately are solved when people update to the latest version."

To be notified of future updates automatically:

1. Open Camtasia Studio.
2. Click Tools | Options.
3. Select Upgrade Options tab.
4. Check the box for "Enable automatic upgrade check."

A recent update to Adobe Flash player causes some Flash SWF files created by Camtasia Studio 5.0 or earlier to sound like they were recorded by chipmunks.

If you or your viewers have encountered this problem, visit our support article to read all the details and download a free tool we created for fixing any affected SWF movies.

(Don't worry, any rodents extracted from your files will be released into a wildlife refuge...)

There are so many ways to kick off the new year with some Camtasia Studio learning! Here's another: attend a live training event.

Mastering Camtasia 5 Hands-On Workshop (U.S.)
"In this in-depth, two-day workshop you'll master Camtasia Studio with hands-on exercises and expert instruction from Chris Austin, owner of MasteringCamtasia.com."

    Upcoming dates in Irvine, Orlando, and New York.

WebNomad Camtasia Studio Training (U.K.)
"An intensive 1-day course in Camtasia Studio for those in a hurry to get results fast."

    Upcoming dates in Glasgow and London.

Check the TechSmith calendar for dates and details...

How many times have you quit watching a video because the audio was bad or unpolished? Audio is just as important as the video.

This tutorial, which runs a little under 3 minutes, introduces some of the audio editing tools in Camtasia Studio.

Do you want your video to start paused? Or end by jumping to a URL? Would you like to enable closed captioning or let viewers play back your video in full screen mode?

The new ExpressShow template for Flash video offers a number of nifty playback options...and this tutorial shows you how to enable them.

For more on using and customizing ExpressShow videos, check out the series of five tutorials in our Learning Center.