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I’m getting to be a real whiz with Camtasia. I guess when you make enough videos, that happens. Well, if you go through Camtasia’s course, which I plan to do someday, you know all this stuff up front. But I’m the kind of chick who likes to learn by doing, you know. I just jump right in and only look for help when I want to do something that I think is cool, but don’t know how to do. I’m terrible that way. I never read directions, either.

Anyway, today, I was making a pretty simple video, and I didn’t like the beginning. But… I thought. [see the little light bulb go on over Pat's head] Well… hmm… a PowerPoint could spice this up a bit.

But the trouble was: How the heck do I get the video and the PowerPoint to live together in one short film?

huh.

Well, when I thought about it, it was pretty simple actually.

• Record a video for both the PowerPoint and the screen capture. (I did the screen capture first, which was smart because then, I knew what I had to say when recording the PowerPoint. I left pauses where I wanted the video to kick in, you know? You can edit those out, which is pretty cool.)

• Then, on the storyline, put the PowerPoint in first, then split it where you want the video to come in.

• Plug in the screen capture video at that point

• You can split the video where you want the PowerPoint to come back. If it’s the end, that’s really easy because the end of the PowerPoint will still be there. But if you want PowerPoint and video to alternate, you can just continue splitting and alternating.

You may think it makes things jerky, and it probably will if you do it too much. Yet, Camtasia does a good job of making smooth transitions. You can always add transition screens to make it look even cooler, too.

This is probably soup simple for the video tech heads, but it’s an adventure for moi.

I’m really getting into this video creation stuff. It’s not just fun, it’s important! I really think it’s the way of the Web, folks. If you’re not at least exploring the possibilities of video, you’re behind the curve. I’m learning a lot working with Brian Edmondson, who’s doing some kick butt stuff for Overcome Everything, too. Brian is da video guy and he rocks.

But… I’ve also been watching Andy Jenkins’ videos about making videos over at StomperNet. Whoa.

Nothing like learning from a pro. I feel blessed. And thanks, Andy! You rock — out loud.

My site on blogging is all step-by-step video, so this is making it better all the time. Love it!

Popularity: 53% [?]

If you aren’t into making video for your website, your blog, or a membership site or whatever, you probably don’t know about the “Chipmunk Issue.” How did Alvin and his friends get into all those videos online?

It was an upgrade for Adobe Flash that did it. That new version of Flash wasn’t compatible with any Camtasia made before version 5.0.2. The new upgrade, and how most videos online are rendered, gave all those videos the effect of garbling in the audio, but only intermittently. It was weird.

There is a fix for it, but don’t bother. It doesn’t work.

The only solution that I’ve found is that you have to re-render all the videos in Camtasia 5.0.2 . Lots of incentive for upgrading, eh?

And it’s a total pain in the butt. It takes a while to render videos, but to re-upload them if you have a lot of them takes like… forever.

I had someone berate me for this in my membership site and ask for a refund. Argh! People can be very unforgiving, especially when they’re paying for something. So… beware.

If you have videos made before Camtasia 5.0.2, get busy. It should only take, like…

For.ever

Grrr…

Popularity: 41% [?]

Are you into using video yet? If not, and you’re well on your way with blogging, it’s time!

There are several reasons. First, you don’t have to make your own videos. Finding a video in your niche and adding it to your blog is a great way to add content and not have to think too much about it. Here’s how to embed video in your blog, if you grab it from YouTube, for example.

1. You go to the video page, and on the right hand side, as the video is playing, you’ll see a line of code in a box, and above it says, “Embed.” So, copy that code and put it into a plain text editor like Notepad (Don’t use Word. It does creepy stuff when you try to translate to HTML.)
2. Go to your WordPress blog dashboard.
3. Click on the Write tab
4. Give your entry a headline and write whatever introduction you want for the video into the blank.
5. Above the writing pane, you’ll see a tab that says “Code.” Click on it.
6. Under the introduction you just wrote, type in <center><embed>
7. Paste in the code you copied at YouTube.
8. Directly after it, type in </embed></center>
9. Go back to the writing pane and click “Save and continue editing.”
10. When the page refreshes, you won’t see the video in the writing pane, so DON’T FREAK OUT!
11. Click on Preview
12. You’ll see that the video is indeed working and you can give just a little shout of victory!

Adding video is very cool and easy to do, and there are plenty of sites to get it from–Google Video, Blip TV, Daily Motion, and so on. Just look for the embed code for the video and do what I mentioned above.

If you make your own videos, it’s not that different to get it into your blog, you just have to store the video on your own server, create your own code, and embed a player. It’s much easier to upload to a video directory site and let them do all the work, plus save space on your hosting account.

But if doing all that is beyond your realm of expertise, you can actually buy a product called “Video Web Wizard,” which I have used in the past, and it will do all the dirty work of embedding the video in a web page for you. It’s really inexpensive and works very well. It comes from Keith Gilbert, who’s like 18 years old. Wow! Wish I’d have started that young. But then, Tim Linden of StartXchange (the best traffic exchange on the planet) started when he was 15. All these Wunderkind. I think it’s awesome. Anyway…

If you use Camtasia, you can produce the video as a web page. The current Camtasia version is Camtasia 5, but you can get Camtasia 3 free at this blog:

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/11/22/techsmith-offers-free-camtasia-studio-download/

Lemme tell ya, Camtasia is the Bomb! If you’re going to buy it, however, it’s about $300 for the current version. I bit the bullet because video is where the Web is heading.

Then, when you’re done creating and editing your video, you can spend hours and hours uploading it to a gazillion different video sites. If you want a great way to do it and only upload the video once, you need to check out Traffic Geyser. It will upload the video for you to many different sites.

A new place, Tube Mogul, will allow you to upload to several sites free, but it has nowhere near the power of Traffic Geyser. Then, you can supplement by adding to sites that Tube Mogul doesn’t have by going to Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report and checking out his list of 50 video sites. Great post. Great blog. If you’re not a subscriber, well… You aren’t thinking straight.

But here’s the deal… People want to turn their computers into televisions, and with the speed of broadband and the fact that the majority of people have high speed connections now, it’s possible. And guess what? I bought Camtasia about 6 months ago and already made the money back and then some. So…

Get into video. Seriously. If you don’t, you’ll be left behind.

Popularity: 76% [?]