We’re finding the popular, free voice and video conferencing solution to be very useful in the classroom. How about you?

This year, there have a been a growing number of cases where we are being asked to set up Skype in our classrooms and provide webcams to facilitate video calls.  This free application makes it easy to connect for free over the Internet, and coupled with a webcam, the free video conferencing capability can really extend student’s and teacher’s reach – the potential applications are limited only by your imagination!

So far, we’ve used Skype to enable home-bound students to offer presentations and to bring guest speakers into the classroom, and we’re considering using it to let people on campus connect when they can’t abandon their posts.

I’m sure we’re not the only educational institution putting Skype to use. How about you? Does anyone have a Skyping-in-School story to share? We’d love to hear it!

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
30 Posts About Free Education Technology Tools & Resources
6 Free Online Interactive White Boards
A Dozen Great Free Online Video Lecture Sites

Camtasia Studio 7 is an excellent video production tool, both simple and feature rich

Back in January I did a series of posts focused on finding free tools that would enable me to create video tutorials. While it was easy to find tools like Jing and Windows Movie Maker that could help me do this, these free tools did not meet some of my criteria.

To efficiently produce video tutorials, you really want to be able to record clips and edit them together, and while you can do this with Movie Maker, I was unable to do so without a loss of quality that I found unacceptable. I learned that this was a case of “you get what you pay for”, and ultimately decided I would need to purchase a product like Camtasia to do what I wanted.

I procured and installed Camtasia Studio, and went to work. One little hiccup I encountered along the way was that Camtasia upgraded from release 6 to 7 while I was learning it, and it made sense to me to convert what I had started in Release 6 to Release 7 and move forward. This was easy to do and produced immediate gains, since the “Produce & Share” wizard in Camtasia 7 enabled me to produce an HD quality final product with a couple clicks (I had struggled to get the resolution quality I wanted using Camtasia 6 due to my inexperience with the app, but this wasn’t a problem under Release 7).

Those “5 Reasons” I mentioned
Okay, so here are 5 reasons why I think Camtasia is pretty awesome. I have no doubt that once I have spent more time with the app, this list is going to grow. I’ve only just begun to tap into its potential.

1. Resolution Quality
2. Picture-in-Picture
3. Extensive Editing Capabilities
3. Transitions
4. Quick, Easy Production

Allow me to elaborate …

Resolution Quality: Not only does Camtasia enable you retain the original quality of the clips you record, you can choose from many formats for final production. While I stumbled a bit with Camtasia 6 to get the quality I sought in my final video, using the HD option under Camtasia 7 produces videos that look outstanding in YouTube (and allows the user to choose from various playback resolutions).

Picture-in-Picture: With Camtasia, it’s real easy to have a recorded video showing you speaking over captured screen activity displayed in picture-in-picture format in your video. You simply turn on the webcam capture while you are recording, and then when you edit and produce your video, you have total control of how big the P-i-P image is and where it displays over the screen content.

Extensive Editing Capabilities: I really haven’t even begun to tap into what Camtasia can do in terms of editing. Naturally, you can easily edit and arrange video and audio clips, but the capabilities extend far beyond that. You can add title clips and captions, use cursor effects, zoom and pan around a clip, and so much more. I have a lot to learn!

Transitions: One of the cool features available in Camtasia is the set of drag-and-drop transitions that are so easy to use. You can choose from options like “Page turn”, “Fade through black”, “Radial Wipe”, “Checkerboard”,  and so on, to get professinal looking transitions from one video clip to another.

Quick, Easy Production: Turning your edited video into a final product for distribution couldn’t be easier. A few clicks, and a little patience while the final product is created, and you’re done. Select from options including Web, iPod, DVD, HD, CD, etc., or create your own custom production settings.

An example
I used Camtasia to create a video introduction and ‘tour’ for EmergingEdTech. I have embedded this video below. The video includes examples of some of the elements I mention above. I use Picture-in-Picture, the end result is in HD quality, I use some transitions, and I used a caption at one point (although I would like to figure out how to change the default overlay font used there).

I’ll likely be making some changes to this video before long – there are some little glitches I’d like to correct and things I might do differently. Once you get a taste of the kind of professional results you can get with a tool like Camtasia, it inspires you to do your best, and there’s a number of things in my original effort that I want to improve on (I just ran out of time to do it now!). 

As always, I welcome and encourage reader feedback. Have any questions – ask away! Want to share something about your Camtasia experiences, or uses of similar products? Drop a comment and share. Thanks everyone.

Related Posts (if the above topic is of interest, you might want to check these out):
Creating brief instructional videos (and more) with Jing
Comparing 12 Free Screencasting Tools
Testing free video editing tools (and techniques)

My quest for free tools to combine video clips to produce tutorial clips hasn’t yielded the desired results, but I’ve learned plenty along the way.

This is the final post in a series focused on creating video tutorials using free applications. Over this last week I’ve attempted to fill in the “missing piece” in the video production tool set I’ve been trying to put together – the editing application (a tool to let me combine video clips, trim them if needed, and more).

A ‘Dead End’
Unfortunately, after more effort than I care to admit to, I was not able to find a free editing tool that would effectively assist me in the production of video tutorials . I was able to combine and edit clips with some tools, but each time, the quality of the original clips was diminished to the point that the text on the screens in the clips could no longer be read. I guess this is one of the primary qualifiers that differentiate free tools from paid tools in this category.

Free Screencasting – Easy
The good news is that it was easy to find free tools for screencasting. There are plenty of tools available today on the Internet that enable users to capture screen activity and audio to create brief tutorial presentations. I took a quick look at a list of tools in this post. I used Jing, Debut Lite, and Screenr and found them each to be very useful (I briefly reviewed Jing in this post, Debut Lite in this post, and discuss Screenr below). I look forward to using these excellent tools to create brief tutorial clips, but it appears that I’ll need to purchase a paid tool like Camtasia if I’m going to get the editing capablities I seek (more on Camtasia below).

While continuing the search for editing capabilities this week, I spent some time with a few additional tools, and want to share a little about my experiences with them …

Screenr.com

I tested Screenr, which is a web based tool that creates MP4 files which can be left on their site and accessed via a URL or embed code, and can also be downloaded. Screenr markets itself as a tool for creating screencasts for Twitter, and they make it quick and easy to capture screencasts and tweet them, but these files can certainly be shared elsewhere.

The quality of videos created using Screenr is excellent, and I appreciate the simplicity of the app, and the fact that there is no need to install anything on your local computer to use it. I’ve embedded an example of a simple test video I created below (click the Full Screen button, next to the Volume button at the bottom of the video window, and check out the crisp resolution of this clip!):

Camtasia

I took Camtasia for a trial run (they offer a 30 day free trial), to confirm that it does what I needed. It does. I was easily able to combine video clips (even different formats) without losing quality. Camtasia appears to be capable of a whole lot more. I found the interface easy to use – it’s reminiscent of Windows Movie Maker. I’ll probably review Camtasia more in depth in a future post.

Utilities for file conversions, and for combining files
Oh. My. God. The number of utilities, free and paid, available for converting or combining video files is ridiculous – just do a search for “combining video files” and look at the results listing! I tried a number of free utilities, including the Aiseesoft MP4 converter and others (I ended up uninstalling them and can’t remember their specific names – there are a lot of similarly named products out there!). Sadly, my experience with each of those that I tried was disappointing. Several didn’t work under Vista, others either scrambled some clips or lost audio, or some just didn’t seem to work. The bottom line here is to proceed with caution – many of these free utilities will not necessarily do what they promise.

Next?
It’s definitely time to move on to another topic! Next week I think I’m going to update my popular “6 Examples of Using Twitter in the Classroom” post. This is a major topic of interest – I get a lot of search traffic on this post. It’s been 7 months since this post was originally published, and there are plenty of new stories and examples to share. After that, we’ll move on to something new.

As always, if anyone has anything to add about video editing, creating tutorial presentations, or anything else relevant to this post, please comment and share. Thanks!

Related post(s) (if the above topic is of interest, you might wish to check out …):
Testing free video editing tools (and techniques)
Screencasting with Debut’s Lite Version
Comparing 12 Free Screencasting Tools
Creating brief instructional videos (and more) with Jing
Using Internet story telling tools in education

The 3rd post in a series focused on free tools for recording, editing, and publishing video tutorials.

I’ve been working this month to find a set of free tools that can enable me to produce and distribute video tutorials. Picking up where I left off last week, this weekend I pursued the idea of using Windows Movie Maker as a free editing tool to pair with a free video capture tool like Debut Lite.

There’s so many good free apps available on the web these days (that’s the right price for me as a blogger, and a great price for many cash-strapped Ed Tech budgets too!). I started out on a good track with this effort by trialing tools like Jing and Debut Lite, that make it easy to capture screen video and audio to create video content. The next step is to get the video editing capabilities I need for effective and efficient production.

Why do I need editing software?
If I’m going to try to create a number of tutorials, I’ll really need to be able to do some simple editing, like combining clips, trimming them, adjusting audio, maybe use some fade-out and fade-in effects. Otherwise, the tutorials I can create will be limited to the one best continuous video clip I can record, and I will often have to record repeatedly in order to get a complete, acceptable quality “performance”. It’s just so much easier to produce an audio and video recording if you can create smaller clips and assemble them, and have some control over flow from one video clip to the next.

My goal in this example scenario was to append a brief clip that I created, to show what a Google Alert email looks like, to last week’s tutorial video (which shows how to create a Google Alert, which sends automated Google search results to your email), to create a more complete tutorial presentation.

Video Editing with Windows Movie Maker
I used Windows Movie Maker a lot last year to create my own amateur music videos, so I know it works, and I know how to use it. I combined pictures and audio in this musical montage (recorded over a song I wrote many years ago, inspired by the beauty of the island of Antigua). I combined video clips in the song video I’ve embedded below. I got a bit more sophisticated, combining pics and video and using a variety of effects in the Christmas song video I had posted on the site here last month, so I know WMM does this stuff well, and for free. Unfortunately, it didn’t go so smooth with my efforts to do similar editing with clips I recorded with Debut and Jing.

The mysterious loss of video quality
The main issue I had trying to use Windows Movie Maker (WMM) was that as soon as I pulled the source video into it, the resolution of the clips (as they appeared in WMM) were diminished, and you could no longer read the text on the menu screens in the video. I never noticed any similar loss of quality when creating the other videos I’ve made with WMM, but they did not include text in screen images like these. I’m a bit baffled though, as the original video files were clearly better, so why wouldn’t a .wmv file come into Movie Maker at the same resolution it was created with?

I tried a number of things to work around this. I normally work with the Windows Movie Maker app (Ver. 6) that came with my Windows Vista operating system, but I know that Microsoft recently added a Windows Movie Maker Live app to it’s expanding suite of Windows Live tools. I fired this up, and pulled in the MP4 versions of the files I had, but still ended up with the same loss of quality. 

To illustrate, if you look at this original video clip (created in Debut as one continuous ‘performance’) in full screen mode, you can make out the text in the menu options (especially if you enhance the resolution to 720P). In the new video I made (embedded below) by combining two clips in WMM, you simply cannot read the menu text (and it only lets me slide resolution up to 480p).

I have to mention that the WMM Live version drove me a little nuts because they’ve changed it quite a bit from the Op System included version that I’ve been used to, but I did like the ”Auto Movie” feature and the easy upload to YouTube. Nevertheless, the loss of video quality in contrast to the original clip is unacceptable (I also lost the audio along the way, as I struggled with the Movie Maker Live interface). Am I just doing something wrong, or is this video resolution problem inherent in the application?

What Next?
I did some searching for information about this type of problem on the Internet, poked around in various help screens from NCH Software and Microsoft, and tried a few different things but got nowhere fast. If any readers know of any tips or techniques that will allow me to use Debut and/or Movie Maker without suffering this loss of quality, please comment and pass them on.

The next logical step was to search for some alternative free video editing software. This lead me to the Aiseesoft MP4 Video Converter, which promised to let me trim and combine video clips, which it did. I still ended up with the same resolution issue though! I have a list of other free video editing apps to check out as well, starting with the many tools listed in this great post I found, so it looks like that’s the next step in this process. I sure hope I don’t keep hitting up against the same resolution issue. If anyone wants to suggest their favorite free video editing tool, that hopefully won’t result in this kind of loss of resolution, I’d love to hear about it (as long as resulting presentations can be saved as stand alone files, as opposed to only being publishable on a proprietary web site).

I do realize that I might have to just cough up the cash and go with Camtasia or a Pro version of one of these other apps to get the functionality I need. If that is the case I can live with it, but first I will spend a little more time taking a shot at what can be done from the frugal perspective (and learn plenty along the way).

Related post(s) (if the above topic is of interest, you might wish to check out …):
Screencasting with Debut’s Lite Version
Comparing 12 Free Screencasting Tools
Creating brief instructional videos (and more) with Jing
Using Internet story telling tools in education

Testing the free version of NCH Software’s video capture application.

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been looking into a variety of free screencasting tools available on the web.

I’m interested in finding a free application that let’s me easily capture screen activity and record audio over it, and then save the resulting file in an easy to play, stand-alone format (some tools only allow created recordings to reside on their web site – I want more flexibility over how I distribute what I produce).

I started with a look at Jing from Techsmith the week before last, then took a step back and gathered a list of other free apps with similar functionality. After comparing basic functions and features of the many tools in this list, I decided that Debut from NCH Software would be a great app to check out next.

Debut was quick and easy to download, install, and test. I’m impressed with it’s capabilities, particularly for a free app. I appreciate the many formats that you can save recorded files in – MP3, WMV, MP4, AVI, ASF, 3GP, MOV, and FLV.  Another important difference between Jing and Debut is that Debut does not limit the length of videos you can record. You can also add a simple caption to your video. You even get to choose from various video and audio encoder options.

Below I’ve embedded a video I made using Debut Lite (note that it needs to be viewed full screen to really see the details of the screen activity). This video discusses how to use Google Alerts to create an automated Google search that will deliver a preset number of results to your email on a daily or weekly schedule, or “as they happen” (this is a great utility, and probably a blog topic for a future post).

 
Issues uploading video to YouTube
Preparing this tutorial video was easy, but I experienced difficulties uploading a functional copy of the tutorial to YouTube.

I initially saved my recording in WMV format, but the upload of this file failed repeatedly (I have uploaded WMV files to YouTube often in the past, and had no problems). I then took advantage of the free integrated Convert utility that is accessible from within the Debut application and converted the file to MPG format. This uploaded with no problem, but the resulting video was messed up - the video was shortened to under a minute and the audio was compressed and played faster than the accompanying video. Ugh. I imagine these issues were related to encoder settings.

Finally, after re-recording and trying various things to resolve the issue, I found that converting my original file to MP4 format worked fine – the resulting uploaded video played as it should.

The paid “Pro” version of Debut
It’s always nice when there is a paid version of an application available, to provide additional capabilities. The paid Pro version is $69.95 (I could swear it was $59.95 when I looked last week). Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any documentation on the NCH Software web site that explained the differences between the free and paid versions. I was surprised to find this question posed on their online forum, and not answered. If anyone knows more about the differences between the versions, please comment and fill us in.

Next Week
The next step for me is to combine the functionality of Debut with the capabilities of Windows Movie Maker, and confirm that the two of these free tools together provide the flexibility to deliver the results I want.

With Windows Movie Maker, it’s easy to organize video clips and images into one continuous video. WMM also lets you do things like control the volume of each clip, use a wide variety of effects (to fade one clip out and another in, for example). You can even assemble a video montage and record a separate audio clip to lay over it. I think that these two tools, along with web based video hosting sites like YouTube will give me everything I need to produce and distribute high quality tutorial videos, but I need to walk all the way through the process to confirm this.

Related post(s) (if the above topic is of interest, you might wish to check out …):
Comparing 12 Free Screencasting Tools
Creating brief instructional videos (and more) with Jing
Using Internet story telling tools in education

Combing through the basic functions and features of a list of tools I’ve become aware of, to select some for further testing.

Over the course of the week, the list of Screencasting tools that have been recommended to me, or that I’ve otherwise learned of, has grown to a dozen.

I have a goal of trying identify a free tool or set of tools to use to create stand alone tutorials by combining screen images and screen motion with audio. I would also like to have some editing capabilities, so I could combine multiple captures and rearrange the order of these pieces if needed, and to be able to re-record audio annotation if possible. I would also like to have screen annotation capabilities, at least for the screen captures.

Given this set of desired functions and features, and the long list of tools, it’s only logical that I briefly review each application to see what they can do. Based on these initial fundings, I’ll select a number of tools to take for a trial run, much as I did with Jing last week.

I realize that in a quick overview like this, I may miss something important about how one or more of these apps work, so if anyone notices any errors or important omissions in my summary table, please comment and let us know about them. I wish I had the time to actually try all of these tools out, but I don’t, so I am sticking with this broader approach of learning a little about each app and using that info to inform my decision about which to spend more time with.

Feature/Function Summary Table

Summary of Findings
Several of these tools seem to be provide the same basic function - screen motion and audio capture (with no editing capability) and the resulting captures can only be published right on their site. Screentoaster, Screenjelly, and Screencastle each look like they fall into this category. I much prefer a tool that allows files to be downloaded, providing more flexibility for distribution, and the potential for combining clips with a tool like Windows Movie Maker to create a desired end result.

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Click here for a PDF version of this article,
which provides a clean, uncluttered copy 
for printing or e-mailing to friends and
colleagues!
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A couple sites don’t meet my criteria and therefore won’t be further considered (Screenpresso is just for images, and Faculte’s free version limits the no. of users who can view presentations). This leaves Jing, Screencast-O-matic, Freescreencast, CamStudio, Webinaria, and Debut to consider for further review. I’ve already test Jing a bit (see last week’s post for more on this).  Debut looks like it has great potential, with it’s editing capabilities and available paid upgrade. It also allows for screen image capture or screen motion capture, like Jing. Of the rest, based on a review of the information on their websites, I would rank my interest (most to least), as follows: Screencast-O-matic, Webinaria, CamStudio, then Freescreencast. [Ed Note - After writing this article, I learned that Screenr.com allows files to be downloaded, and after trying this tool, I really liked it - KW 1/31/10]

Of course, you may have different goals than I, and some of these tools may meet your needs even though they are not necessarily what I am looking for, so feel free to check them as you see fit!

Next Week
Based on my findings, I’m going to take the free version of Debut for a spin next week, with a few others to follow. In the meanwhile, I’m sure some readers will have some feedback on some of these products, and I look forward to reading some informative comments, so please weigh in if you have anything to add.

Related post(s) (if the above topic is of interest, you might wish to check out …):
Creating brief instructional videos (and more) with Jing
Free screencasting – easy; free video editing – not so much
Using Internet story telling tools in education

A growing list of free Internet based applications for screen capture and presentation creation.

In response to this week’s post about Jing, my colleagues at Classroom 2.0 have informed me of a number of similar tools (“thank you!” to everyone who responded to my Discussion Post on this). Of course, it’s easy to search this stuff out, but recommendations from informed and experienced users are always preferable. To that end, if anyone reading this post has any apps to add to this list, I’d love to hear about them, so please comment.

Below is a list of the applications that I’ll be looking into over the upcoming weeks, as I seek a preferred tool or combination of tools for combining screen images and activity with narration and editing capabilities, to enable the creation of easy to share  tutorial presentations. If you include Jing in this list, that makes 10 screencasting tools that are available to everyone for free!

• Screentoaster.com
• Screenjelly.com
• Screenpresso.com
• Sceenr.com
• Screencast-O-Matic
• Freescreencast.com
• ScreenCastle.com
• Webinaria.com
• CamStudio.org

I don’t know if each of these is going to meet my criteria, but I’ll give them each a quick looking over. To achieve my goals, I’ll probably need to combine functionality from a few different apps. For example, I’m not sure if Jing will allow me to combine screen image captures with screen activity video captures (screencasting), but I ought to be able to do that by using Windows Movie Maker Live to combine video clips.

In the meanwhile, thanks to everyone for their input, and feel free to comment with any other ideas, feedback, etc.

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I’m still looking for readers to take this quick little survey
to provide some insight into who you are and what topics
would be of most interest in 2010. Responses were sparse
over the slow holiday period, so your input would be greatly
appreciated!
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Cool free app for combining screen shots or screen motion with audio, to create instructional presentations.

This week I got my Jing on! I recently heard about Jing (found on the web at jingproject.com), and after a quick visit to their web site I knew that this might be the type of tool I’ve been thinking about trying out for creating some brief instructional videos. The fact that it was free made it a no brainer to go ahead take for a spin (there is also a paid version, with a little more functionality – more on that below).

Jing lets you capture screen shots or capture screen motion (a.k.a. “screencasting”), and record audio at the same time. Captured images can be annotated with text, arrows, and highlights. This makes it pretty easy to make a brief presentation to demonstrate how to do something on the computer.

Jing in action
I used Jing to create the video that I’ve embedded below (this tutorial discusses e-mail storage constraints and some suggestions on how to work with them). I used the (inexpensive) paid version of Jing, since I wanted to create a file to load on YouTube where it would be readily accessible. Jing also enables easy sharing of presentations through Screencast.com. See below for more on the differences between the free and paid versions.

To make this video, I created a Powerpoint Presentation, which I played slide by slide and spoke over. I interspersed this with captures of screen activity in Outlook, where I demonstrated a few ideas as I discussed them. 

While the result is only 5 minutes long (Jing videos are limited to 5 minutes), it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that it took a much longer time to put together. I had to script out what I wanted to discuss, create the PowerPoint slide deck, practice the presentation, and record it a couple times to try and get a good take (I still made a couple minor errors). The good part is that it was simple to do from a technical perspective and the result can be viewed over and over again.

For an overview of how to use Jing to create presentations, check out this video from the Jing web site.

Free vs. Paid options
The free version of Jing has a great deal of functionality, and will probably be more than adequate for most users. If you find you really like the product, but require some of the advanced features, the good news is that the paid version is very inexpensive at only $14.95 per year.

One main difference between the Paid and Free options for Jing appears to be the ability to save files in MP4 format using the paid option, which makes it easy to upload high quality copies of your Jing presentations to YouTube and similar hosting sites. Another advantage of the paid version is better quality motion capture for screencasting, although this is probably only important if you are capturing from a video source. You can also capture directly from a Webcam using the paid version.

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I’m still looking for readers to take this quick little survey
to provide some insight into who you are and what topics
would be of most interest in 2010. Responses were sparse
over the slow holiday period, so your input would be greatly
appreciated!
———————————————————————————————-

Improving learning outcomes with tools like Jing
So, how can tutorial presentations like this help to enhance learning outcomes? By using both visual and audio content, they engage the visual and auditory learner, which is a good thing (but of course nothing is quite as engaging as an enthusiastic instructor!). Being able to easily rewind and replay this a presentation on demand is another benefit of this format.

I believe that one very good way in which a presentation tool like this can be used constructively is to have students view it outside of the classroom (as homework, for example), or perhaps at the start of a class session. Valuable, face-to-face classroom time can then be focused on reviewing and discussing the tutorial’s content, and reinforcing and practicing it’s lessons.

Next week I am going to look into other tools like Jing, and related tools like Screencast.com. Throughout the month I will be focusing on free and low cost tools for for creating engaging presentations and instructional materials. I hope you’ll join me, and as always, please offer comments and share any insights, questions, etc. – I love to hear your feedback, and other readers do too!

[Ed. Note - I just noticed this "Introduction to Screen Capture in Education"  page on the Jing site, figured I should include mention of it here. - KW].

Related post(s) (if the above topic is of interest, you might wish to check out …):
Using Internet story telling tools in education

When I first heard of Faculte.com, I thought “faculty”, as I imagine you may be thinking now as you read this. Turns out Faculte.com is an online tool for creating interactive video presentations.

Using Faculte.com, one “producer” can create a presentation that can be viewed by up to 200 viewers (more or less) for free. Doing more with the tool than that requires signing up for a paid plan. Looks like an interesting approach to creating and delivering instructional materials. Click the “Watch Demo” button here to view a demonstration.

This company is relatively new, so I don’t know if many readers will have used their product. If anyone has any experience with it, please comment and let us know about it. There are so many options available today to do this sort of thing, but many of those that I know of do not seem quite as flexible as Faculte. If anyone cares to recommend other tools that provide a comparable level of functionality, we’d love to hear about it.