Explore Camtasia Studio

Thanks to everyone who responded to last month's survey...and congratulations to the prize winners!

You made it clear what we should emphasize in the newsletter and what we should cut. Video and tutorials were the runaway favorites, with 82% of respondents rating tutorials as one of the "most useful" sections...and 68% saying the same of user video examples (we let you select more than one).

This theme carried over into the "how can we improve" department—you told us you want more tutorials, more user stories, and more video content, including interviews with developers of Camtasia Studio. We hear you loud and clear!

Our tireless training department will continue to provide at least two tutorials per issue. I'll make a point of sharing helpful example videos from users (want to send me yours?). And we're starting work on video interviews with developers (want to suggest a topic?).

The least popular item, by far, was news about conferences and training events. It received the same number of "thumbs down" votes as all the other choices combined. So we're dropping this as a regular section and replacing it with a permanent link to the calendar. See it up there just above this letter?

Well, that's a lot of housekeeping. But I wanted you to know that we took your feedback to heart and are making changes right away to ensure this newsletter is "drop-everything" good!

Daniel Foster
Newsletter Editor

Did you know TechSmith created a Web site where you can share digital media files with your customers, clients, even co-workers and friends? It's called Screencast.com...and unlike those other video sharing sites, it gives you control over quality, intellectual rights, and access to your content. How cool is that?

Wait...it gets better. Screencast.com was just upgraded with a bunch of new features that make it even easier for you to upload, organize, and share digital content. Watch this 4-minute video to see what's new!

Personal productivity expert Peggy Duncan created a subscription site called WhichButtonToClick.com that provides 1-2 minute screencasts of the computer tips and tricks she offers in her live seminars. Tips like how to email one worksheet out of an Excel workbook (40 seconds).

Peggy uses Camtasia Studio to produce the tips, which serve as a follow-on product to her live training events.

"Most of the time, I'm presenting at national conventions with a full room and they're not on computers," she said. "I might have 1 or 1.5 hours on the agenda. I'm demoing tips and it's fast. They'll buy my book, but the fact is, most people will not read a computer book."

Keeping the videos brief makes them more accessible.

"Subscribers love the movies because they can learn 24/7 in 1-2 minute bytes and not get overwhelmed. I'm showing them features that have been available for years, but they had no idea. It builds their confidence because they can see with their own eyes that most of this stuff is not hard."

As a solo entrepreneur, the subscription site also makes good business sense:

"I work and live solo...have no safety net. Always in the back of my mind...'what if I get sick and can't work'... This is my answer!"

Tutorial-type videos don't need to be long to have value. How can you offer your customers or clients bite-sized training that perfectly meets their needs?

At the Investor's Business Daily Web site, you can get your investing news in the form of video. These screencasts are a great example, both in terms of content and execution.

Check out the IBD "Market Wrap" video from this past Monday. The narrator doesn't just tell you what happened in the markets...she also provides tons of tips for how to read the charts and tables so you can learn how to do this yourself! The video communicates the value of the IBD data in a way that text alone never could. (Consider: how could you make informative videos that also demonstrate the value of your product or service?)

Five respondents to last month's newsletter survey were selected at random to win a copy of Camtasia Studio 5: The Definitive Guide. I asked them to say a quick word about how they use Camtasia Studio in their work...

Sheilah Fournier works as a training manager at MKS Inc. in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She says, "We currently use Camtasia to record product feature demonstrations both in house and for our potential customers. We are looking to extend the use of Camtasia to our product training materials."

Director of Distance Education at Tyler Junior College, Ken Craver, says, "I am in the process of creating tutorials for our distance students to teach them the computer skills they need to begin taking online classes." (Ken agreed to share a few "quickly done screencasts" he's creating for faculty.)

Roger D. Muller, Ph.D., uses TechSmith products to document on-screen procedures for his firm Data-to-events.com. "Our goal is to document procedures that we use on a sporadic basis in the future and may have some problems recreating the exact workflow," he said. "Why waste time learning to do the same thing twice?" Good point, Dr. Muller!

Bokjae, who lives in Selangor, Malaysia, is part of an Internet marketing group called the ebizwizards. Bokjae comments, "We find Camtasia a really useful tool to prepare multi-media content for our sales and marketing buzz as well as some teaching stuff for membership sites!"

Carl Frazee, of Shelby, North Carolina, says, "I am just now starting to use Camtasia to create some lesson material for small groups. Nothing completed yet: that is why I wanted the guide book. Thank you!"

Thanks to all who completed the survey! And if you were waiting to see whether you'd win the book, we still have some copies for sale...

Have you ever finished creating a video with Camtasia Studio, sat back in your chair, and then realized, "Bummer, now I have to figure out how to post it so others can see it." You could upload it to a popular video sharing site, but they would resize and compress your sharp, clear video—making it blurry and hard to see. (Plus you'd have no way to control who sees it or what appears next to it.)

Instead, you could just post it to Screencast.com!

This video tutorial shows how to upload your finished video directly from Camtasia Studio to Screencast.com...so it's ready to share in just a few moments, with no hassle!

After uploading your videos and podcasts from Camtasia Studio to Screencast.com, you can provide an option for your audience to subscribe to an RSS feed of your uploaded media.

(RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. When a viewer subscribes to your RSS feed, they can automatically view the latest content uploaded.)

Use RSS in Screencast.com to:

To create an RSS feed to your content

The RSS feed button  appears on the page.

To show users how to subscribe to the RSS feed

The RSS feed appears in the user's list of feeds in their RSS feed reader. The example below shows how Internet Explorer displays the feed for the Camtasia Studio tutorials we post to Screencast.com.