Common Production Elements

Okay, so you’ve taken a bunch of raw screen footage and then edited the pants off it, adding everything from callouts to markers to an additional audio track. What other options do you have left that will affect the look and video of your final video? Plenty, as it turns out. Producing a video is all about taking that edited footage and then making choices that will have a profound effect on the final video’s size and quality. While the various file formats have very fundamental differences, there are some basic commonalities about the kinds of decisions you’ll need to make along the way.

Encoding Options

The first choice after selecting a file format typically involves picking how you want the file encoded, that is, the algorithm you’ll use to compress that file down to an itty-bitty size while retaining as much of the video’s quality as possible. The encoding options vary greatly according to the individual file type, and we’ll therefore discuss the encoding options in the next section, when we talk about the various file formats in more detail.

Video Size Options

While the Encoding Options screen will manifest itself in different ways for the various file formats, your Video Size dialog will remain constant for almost all video output formats^[*]. This dialog consists of two sections. The first section, Video size, will let you determine the dimensions of the final video as well as influence how your content is displayed within them.

The Video Size dialog.

For example, say you set your video dimensions to 640 x 480. Any included clips that are larger than those dimensions are scaled down. For clips that are smaller than the set dimensions, one of two things happen, based on your settings. If the Stretch to fit check box is checked, then the smaller content will be scaled up to fill the video window. If unchecked, the content will be placed in the center of the window, with a border around it to fill up the rest of the window, the color of which can be specified by clicking the Background Color… button. This background color will also show for larger clips that have been scaled down to fit your specified dimensions, but are either too tall or too short to fit exactly, thus leaving solid-colored bars at either the sides or the top and bottom of your window. To avoid this, use an image editing program to crop the image so its proportions are the same as your production dimensions.

The second section, File size, will let you check boxes to tempo- rarily disable callout fade effects and/or zoom-n-pan effects in an effort to get your file size down. It’s a nice “quick fix” if you find that your final file size just isn’t acceptable. If you have a lot of callouts and zoom-n-pan effects, it’s also an easy way to make high- and low-band- width versions of the same video, without having to maintain separate versions of the same project.

Video Options

Another dialog that is present for most file types is Video Options. This dialog consists of a series of (usually) four miscellaneous options that affect your video in different ways. Depending on the file format chosen, these may appear in a different order, or even not at all.

The Video Options dialog.

Video Info

If you click the Options… button in this section, you’ll have access to a dialog that lets you add supplementary meta-information about your video that can be accessed by others:

As you can see, you have three tabs:

• Project Information. General info about the video project. Where this information actually appears depends on the file format you’ve chosen. For some formats, it appears at the bottom of your video in ticker-tape style. In other formats, it’s a bit better hidden. Animated GIF files don’t preserve this information at all.

• Author Information. Allows you to take credit for this project. You can include contributors, add contact information, and even specify which person in your organization manages the rights to its content. Both Author Information and Project Information are based on the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, and allow users to search on any of this information when trying to find your video online.

• iTunes Information. These fields supply the appropriate information for setting up an iTunes feed. If you plan on using your produced video/audio for podcasting, this is essential information. Of course, it also means that you have to produce to a format accepted by iTunes (M4V, MOV, or MP3 audio) as well as post your video to a site and set up an RSS feed^[*].

Watermarks

As mentioned in Chapter 6, “Special Effects of the Camtasia Recorder,” watermarks are images that you can stamp onto a video. Usually a corporate logo or product icon, a watermark allows you to “brand” your content. Why would you want to do this? Here are a few reasons:

• You want to protect your content’s copyright, preventing others from passing off your video as their own.

• You want your audience to associate your videos with your name or logo, thus building your corporate or product brand.

• You want to mark sensitive video content as confidential or classified.

While you can add a watermark directly to your individual video clips in the Camtasia Recorder, it is far preferable to insert your watermarks here instead. If you burn a watermark into your clips with the Recorder, it’s pretty much there forever. With Camtasia Studio, on the other hand, you may change or remove the watermark at will - just produce a new version of your video.

To add a watermark to your final presentation, you simply enable the Include watermark check box, and then click Options… to choose the watermark image as well as to set the size, location, and formatting of the watermark to your liking. As this dialog is an exact copy of the Watermark tab in the Camtasia Recorder Effects Options dialog, please refer to that section of Chapter 6 for more info on tweaking these options.

SCORM Reporting

For those who routinely work with learning management systems (LMS), it’s good to know that Camtasia Studio supports the uploading of your video content as a lesson module. It packages your video for online distribution through a method called SCORM, short for Shareable Content Object Reference Model, which is a special standard for deploying e-learning content over a network (be it the web or a corporate intranet). It allows your web-based lesson to “talk” to your LMS, regardless of which one you use. SCORM is the standard used to deploy these learning modules, and can be set up to track learner progress. It can allow you, the instructor, to “direct” the learner in a way that you cannot with standard HTML, because you can set up a special branching order of modules. For example, if a student completes module X, the system then knows to serve up module Y next, and so on.

Keep in mind that SCORM presumes the use of a learning management system that will serve up all these modules. There are lots of LMS packages out there, of varying capabilities and price ranges. There are even some open-source (read: free) LMS systems that are actually quite good. I’m particularly fond of Moodle (www.moodle.org). If you have the task of setting up any kind of online course, whether or not you plan on utilizing Camtasia Studio videos, I strongly urge you to look at the various LMS options, as they can save you from having to design everything from scratch.

But assuming you do want to use CS videos with your course, let’s turn back to SCORM so that we can learn how to package them up. The first step is obviously to enable SCORM in the production dialog by clicking the SCORM check box. However, if you’re producing to SWF or FLV and you have a quiz or survey somewhere on your Timeline, the Reporting section of this screen will look slightly different:

You can still get to the SCORM-related options by clicking Options…, and then choosing Report score using SCORM. Don’t worry about the rest of those quizzing options for now - I’ll tell you all about them (as well as the quizzing-specific implications of SCORM) when we discuss the details of the SWF and FLV formats later in the chapter.

No matter what format you’re producing to, the next thing we’ll need to do is set up a SCORM manifest, which is a special XML file that lists the components of your SCORM package (in this case, your video content). This manifest sets up the structure of the module, informing the LMS how you want the module delivered.

To create the SCORM manifest for your video content, choose Options… (or SCORM Options… from the Quiz Reporting Options dialog if you’ve got a quiz) to open the Manifest Options dialog.

Let’s talk about the various fields that need filling in here:

• Identifier. This is the ID number that uniquely identifies this manifest. You’ve got one inserted by default, but you can change it if you want. The only rule here is that it can’t be blank or have spaces (Camtasia Studio will automatically convert any spaces it finds to underscore (_) characters).

• Title. This is the title of the e-learning course.

• Description. Enter a description of your course here.

• Subject. This is the subject of your course.

• Version. This is the SCORM version number. Choose the one best supported by your LMS.

• Duration. The duration of your video. This field is not editable.

• Language. The two-letter code (ISO 639-1) of the language used in the video. The default is en (English).

• Lesson information. Enter the title of your lesson here.

• SCORM Package options. Here you have the option of having your module packed into a ZIP file, produced unzipped, or both. Choose whatever option your LMS likes. If supported, uploading everything in a single ZIP file is a lot cleaner.

  Caution 

  Keep in mind that SCORM support in Camtasia Studio is pretty basic. In terms of tracking user progress, the module is checked off as complete the moment the user opens the video. It needn’t be viewed all the way through.

HTML

By checking Embed Video into HTML, you’re telling Camtasia Studio that you’d like your file inserted into a web page for viewing online. It saves you the effort of creating the page manually and then inserting your video. If you click the Options… button in this section, you have a few additional related options:

• Alignment. Place the video window on the left side, center, or right side of the page.

• Show Play Controls. Determines whether the user will have a control bar for playing back your video. It is on by default. Keep in mind that suspending the control bar can really detract from the viewing experience, so don’t clear this check box unless you really mean it. Also note that an animated GIF file will have no control bar regardless of whether this option is checked.

• Start Video Playing. Leaving this box checked means that the video will automatically start playing as soon as it loads. Unchecking it will open the video in paused mode. The user will have to click Play in order to start the playback. Leaving both Start Video Playing and Show Play Controls unchecked is not recommended.

Keep in mind that Flash (SWF/FLV) videos don’t sport this option, as all Flash videos must be embedded into a web page.

Marker Options

For almost all file formats, the next screen you’ll come to in the Production Wizard is Marker Options. iPod/iTunes is the lone rebel. The animated GIF format has an abbreviated version of this dialog because it can’t offer a table of contents, but beyond that, this dialog looks exactly the same for all file formats:

Now, in order to make good use of this dialog, you’re going to need some markers on the Timeline. You can technically produce a table of contents (or TOC) with only the default “Introduction” marker that corresponds to the beginning of your video, but if you’re going to bother offering a TOC at all, why not make it a bit more useful than that? If you need help on adding markers in Camtasia Studio, check out “Fun with Markers” in Chapter 9, “Working with Camtasia Studio.”

Okay, now that we’ve added (and hopefully named) a few markers, notice how they appear in the list window, directly next to a preview image. If you didn’t name your markers (or you want to change one of the names you’d previously given), just click the marker, and then click the Rename button, or simply click twice on the marker name. Note that the preview image is tied to each individual marker, so use it to help you if you can’t remember what the marker was supposed to be for. If you still can’t figure it out, you’ll have to exit the dialog and go find it on the Timeline. That’s why I generally find it helpful to name your markers before producing.

Let us now talk about those four check boxes sitting above the marker list on this screen:

• Produce multiple files based on my Markers. This powerful command actually tells Camtasia Studio to slice up your project into individual files. It’s useful for a particularly long project. Each marker will signify the beginning of a new file. The file names of these video files will carry whatever name you decide to give the final output, along with a number (MyVideo-0.avi, MyVideo-1.avi, MyVideo-2.avi, etc.)

• Include a table of contents with my produced video. Checking this option shows your video with a clickable table of contents. That’s right, friends: A single click of this button will use your markers to create an instant web-based navigation menu that looks something like this:

  

  Just click a link, and you’ll be instantly transported to that point in your video.

  Just keep in mind that your video will need to be embedded in an actual web page for this option to work, so if you haven’t yet checked Embed Video into HTML from the previous screen, the program will gently remind you to do so. Along with your video files and corresponding HTML page, you may also end up with some JPEG images in your output folder that comprise the border graphics of your menu and video (though this depends on file type).

• Cut off long marker names, don’t wrap. Here’s a handy tip for those of you who put five full sentences in each of your marker names (and you know who you are). If you don’t want to bother shortening them for your table of contents, and you definitely don’t want them ruining the aesthetics of your menu by having each item wrap onto 10 lines, try checking this option. With it checked, every marker name will take up exactly one line, trailing off into an ellipsis (…). Just make sure you “front-load” your marker names with all the important information at the beginning. Otherwise, no one will know what this cut-off marker name is supposed to signify^[*].

If producing to Flash, your TOC items can only take up one line each. You will not see this option.

• Number marker entries. If the order of marker items is of particular importance, you can have Camtasia Studio number the items on your TOC automatically.

One cool thing about your table of contents is that you can set up an outline-style hierarchy of menu items. Camtasia Studio supports up to seven full layers of nesting, so that you can categorize to your heart’s content. Simply select the menu item and then click Move Right to increase its indent or Move Left to decrease it (alternatively, you can use the left and right arrow keys). Just bear in mind that your menu items are always numbered sequentially, regardless of whether (or how) they’re nested. So if your main heading is number 1., then its two sub-headings will be 2. and 3., etc.

Finally, if there are markers you’d rather not have included in the file splitting and/or table of contents at all, you can remove them by unchecking the box next to the marker’s name. Note that this doesn’t remove the marker from your Timeline; it just removes it from split/TOC consideration when producing. Also, keep in mind that you cannot disable any marker that has nested markers underneath it, so plan accordingly.

Produce Video

Okay, congratulate yourselves: This is the final step for all output types. The Produce Video screen allows you to specify the name and location for your output file(s) as well as see at a glance all the files that will be produced. Additionally, it allows you to set several post- production options.

First, enter an appropriate name for your video output in the Production name field. Notice at the bottom of the screen how all the files in your final output will take on this name as their root. Next, we have to choose a location for your produced files. You’ve got three options here:

• You can enter a file path directly into the Folder field.

• You can click the Folder field’s drop-down arrow to display and choose from a list of recent production locations.

• You can click the Browse button ( ) to browse for a directory. You can also enter a file name here, which will subsequently appear in the Production name field when the Save button is clicked.

Now, one option you have is to push your produced content into a sub-folder of your selected directory so that it doesn’t get all cluttered by the (potentially many) files that get produced. Just click the check box marked Organize produced files into sub-folders, and upon production, Camtasia Studio will create a special folder, bearing the production name you specified, where it will place all your files. Otherwise, they’ll all go right into the directory you chose, where they can conceivably get mixed in with the files already present in that folder.

Note 

If you’ve chosen to embed your video into an HTML file and you’re producing to a format other than SWF/FLV or iPod/iTunes, a media folder (e.g., myVideo_media) will be automatically created where all production files except the HTML file are placed. It just makes things cleaner.

The above items are all the information Camtasia Studio needs to begin producing your file. However, you have a few Post production options you can check that may help enhance your workflow. Let’s talk about them:

• Show production results. When this option is checked, you’ll get a dialog with some handy stats as soon as production has completed:

  

  Included is a useful rundown of the files created, the file size and dimensions of the content, and a summary of all the production options you chose. I find it particularly useful for quickly eyeballing the overall file size to make sure it’s small enough for web distribution. I strongly recommend keeping this option checked.

• Play video after production. This option will automatically open the default media player for your chosen file type (or your default web browser if you chose to embed the content into an HTML page) upon the completion of production. This way, you can immediately have a look at what was produced to make sure that there aren’t any glaring errors or omissions. It’s a helpful means of doing a quick sanity check, just to make sure things are copacetic before blasting your content out into the world.

• Upload video to Screencast.com. In an effort to make online distribution as hassle-free as possible for its customers, TechSmith Corp. recently launched a special service called Screencast.com. When choosing to produce with this option enabled, Camtasia Studio will prompt you for your Screencast.com login information:

  

As you can see, you have links to sign up for a free trial or purchase an account right from this dialog. Once you’ve taken care of the particulars, you’re free to start uploading content.

After production (and after clearing the Production Results dialog if you opted to see it), you’ll be prompted to continue with uploading your video to the service. Click Yes, and you’ll be able to view the progress as the file uploads^[*]. Upon completion, you’re presented with a special dialog that contains the project’s URL:

Click Launch URL to instantly view your project page on Screencast.com. You can also choose Copy to clipboard for pasting into an e-mail address if you want to share with others. As the content owner, the page you’ll see will be very different from that of your audience. You’ll be able to:

• Set permissions for viewing your video.

• Upload additional supporting media files.

• Send out invitations for others to view your content.

• Add/edit the video’s metadata.

• Organize your video projects into distinct collections, and set up RSS feeds for those collections.

You get a free 30-day trial of the service, and once that’s over, you can continue by paying a monthly or yearly fee, and at the time of this writing, several tiers of storage and bandwidth are available according to your expected usage, starting at just seven bucks a month.

Even if you already pay for web file hosting, the features collected here are particularly useful for Camtasia Studio users. If you want to set up a separate space for hosting your videos, I strongly urge you to consider picking up a subscription (or at least giving the free trial a whirl). For shooting out a quick tutorial to colleagues or showing a work-in-progress to a client, there really is no easier way of sharing your work online.

At any rate, once you’re ready to produce, click Finish. You’ll be able to see a progress dialog that looks like this:

The amount of time it takes to produce a video can run anywhere from a few seconds to many, many hours. Depending on the file type and the media streams you’ve included in your project, there can potentially be numerous steps in the production process. Each step has its own progress bar, shown alongside the bar signifying the total production progress. The amount of time needed for each step is equally varied, according to the complexity of the content, the length of your video, and of course, the processing power of your machine. Your average three- to five-minute tutorial video should typically only take a few minutes to produce with a garden-variety PC.

Production Preview

But what if you have a very lengthy video, and you just want to do a quick sanity check to make sure that your settings are correct. Do you go through the hassle of producing the whole thing? Of course not! This is where production preview comes in. Regardless of whether you choose the simplified or standard Production Wizard, in the lower left-hand corner of any of the production settings screens, you’ll see a small drop-down list called Preview:

You’re given two options. The first, Preview Current Settings, lets you produce the first 30 seconds^[*] of your video so that you can quickly proof the dimensions, compression, audio, and other settings as they currently stand in the wizard. Alternatively, you can bring up the Preview Manager, which is a fantastic tool for helping you generate and compare multiple previews, letting you easily contrast video dimensions, audio quality, compression settings, etc.

So how does it work? Well, every preview you create is stored in a folder called Production Previews, located in your default Camtasia Studio directory. This lets you play back any preview you’ve already done as well as do a side-by-side comparison between two project previews. It also lets you reuse settings from the preview of another project with your current project. To get started, first select the project you wish to work on from the drop-down list at the top of the dialog; a list of previews you’ve created for that project will appear. When you select a preview, its details pop up in a separate pane. Once you settle on a particular preview, you can:

• Play Selected Preview. This opens the selected preview video using the media player (or web browser) that corresponds to the video’s file format. Camtasia Studio maintains every preview you ever create unless you consciously delete it.

• Delete. After creating an endless stream of previews for a multitude of projects, things can tend to get a little cluttered over time. Just select the preview and click to remove it. When you delete every preview in a given project, that project will be removed from the drop-down list.

• Compare Setting Details… This command will open a special dialog allowing you to compare the settings of two different previews, side by side. It’s only available when two previews are selected (use Ctrl to perform multiple selections).

• Use These Settings. You can use the settings from any pre-existing preview (including from other projects) to create a new preview for the current project.

^[*]Two exceptions: iPod video size cannot be adjusted at all, whereas SWF/FLV does allow you to specify the video’s dimensions, but only from the Flash Templates dialog.

^[*]Details on creating your own RSS feeds are available at http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html.

^[*]If you’d prefer to have the video automatically upload to Screen- cast.com without prompting you first, just choose Options… from the Tools menu, and on the Screencast.com tab, choose Automatically upload to Screencast.com after my production is finished. You can also reset your Screencast.com login info here.

^[*]Keep in mind that you can customize the length of your previews (from 10 to 60 seconds) by choosing Tools > Options…, and adjusting the Production Previews duration field.

^[*]Note that this has become less of an issue in recent years with the success of the iPod and its corresponding iTunes software, which cleverly integrates QuickTime as part of its structure.