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In the first of a series co-sponsored by NTEN and Salesforce.com Foundation, I covered the integration of Google Adwords with salesforce.com. I'm pleased to announce that the second screencast is now available. It delves deeper into the uses of salesforce.com campaigns tab, "Salesforce Campaigns for Nonprofits". There some kind words over at the NTEN Blog about my most recent screencast.
Now comes the reflection on the process, the craft of screencasting.
I didn't know the software like the back of my hand. And, to make it more daunting, I'm hardly a database expert. If you're making a screencast, and you end up having a vertical monopoly on the process (you write the script, do the filming, operate the mouse, do the editing, and produce it), you need to become a super learner. As Stephen Downes notes, being a super learner takes time and practice.
So, I've been asking myself is there a way to make this process more efficient?
My first idea was to use Ready/Talk and its screencapture features. I made a few tests to see how it might work I also got some advice from Jon Udell. One thing I learned just two weeks ago from a phone call to the TechSmith tech support guy is that the .wmv files from Ready/Talk can be run through microsoft media encoder - so they could be pulled into Camtasia and edited. (However, the idea of editing a long file in Camtasia does not sound appealing to me.)
For this screencast, I conducted several interviews lasting approximately 50 minutes. So that left me with a few hours of video and audio to edit and that's too much to do in Camtasia. And, I don't have the patience to listen to the entire recording over again. I recently read a blog entry by Jon Udell about his editing process for a screencast that uses this interview technique. Because the screencast is conversational, the screen doesn't have to exactly synch the audio. He also notes that he doesn't log with markers, but edits as he is listening to the interview. I used a hybrid of his approach.
So, here's how I attempted to do this screencast in a documentary style a bit more efficiently.
- I started my research on a listserv of practitioners for SalesForce Nonprofit version asking for case studies and examples. I got enough information to put together an outline and rough storyboard So, I had the overall structure for the 15 minute screencast. I also got an good idea of who to interview in more depth and some ideas for examples/case studies.
- I interviewed four people on Ready/Talk using the recording feature giving them the ability to share their desktop. For one of the interviews, when they showed or mentioned something I wanted to incorporate into the screencast, I asked them to show it again while I recorded it locally on my desktop using Camtasia. I asked them to be quiet for a minute (this left a marker in the file - no sound and quicker for me to find during editing). I noted the start time and end time. Immediately after the interview, I edited the mp3 file to grab the sections that I needed to match the visuals. I was careful to name the audio and screencapture files the same so I could easily match them up in Camtasia. This became the case study in Act 3.
- For the detailed editing, I grabbed succint descriptions from the interviewee and took out ums and repititions (mine too!). I had to record some voice over narration and intros into each the different sub-sections to make it flow. I also had to edit down the screencapture to match the audio length. I imagine this type of editing is similar to putting together a TV news story which makes me think there must be a blog or book about that those editing techniques that might be useful to me at some point.
- Two of the other three interviews were more of a free wheeling discussion and I did not do any local screencapture. However, while I was interviewing, I noted the "tacit knowledge" bits - the tips and jotted down the approximate start and end time of the tip quotes I wanted to use. I grabbed these from the mp3 file from Ready/Talk recordings. I discovered that I could playback the Ready/Talk video file, and screencapture particular sections as either stills or video using Camtasia. Then I pulled together the visuals and audio and organized them by tips and wove them together. I filled in with voiceovers when needed.
- While I was in the final phase of editing, I realized that I really needed a quote from a particular person. So, I arranged for an interview over Ready/Talk and asked a specific question and did a screencapture locally on Camtasia while Ready/Talk captured the audio.
- I found that it was far more efficient to edit the audio quotes in audacity rather than pulling in to Camtasia and edit them while working the movie. I also found it more efficient to render together each audio/screencapture into an avi file and then pull into Camtasia as one file. Makes it easier because once the file gets too big in Camtasia it starts to crash and you loose you work. That was happening to me quite a bit in previous screencasts. Also, the detailed audio editing that I was doing - like pulling out ums and splicing together sentences - Camtasia editor isn't the best tool. Once you go in for close editing, it crashes. So, the big learning for me here was to do any fine tune editing outside of Camtasia and use Camtasia to pull in the chunks and add the titles.
- One my failures was an attempt to get the interviewees to use Jing to answer my interview questions. Then, attempt to screencapture the jing recording or transform the .swf file into .wmv or .avi and pull into Camtasia. It didn't work for both technical and human reasons.
Note to self: I need to ask David Tames for some tips or sources on this type of editing process - documentary/news style. It is getting faster as my skills improve, but I want to learn more about particular techniques to improve the end-product and efficiency.
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