Disruptive Conversations

Those following my tweets or listening to my reports on For Immediate Release know that a few weeks back I was experimenting with a new screencasting application called "ScreenFlow" available only for the Leopard o/s on Mac. As a result of Voxeo's launch of our new "Prophecy Log Search" feature, these screencasts/video tutorials are now available publicly and I can show what I did with ScreenFlow. In fact, I uploaded them to YouTube to make it incredibly easy for me to embed them.

INTRODUCTION SCREENCAST

The first "introduction" screencast, embedded here, was actually the fourth one that I did. It had to be last because I needed some shots of the web page which weren't finalized before launch (and have already changed such that I'll be reshooting this screencast). It's also the only one to use video. ScreenFlow is very cool in that it can capture the video from my MacBook's built-in webcam and lay that out as another track that I can incorporate into my screencast. As you'll see in the intro, the video zooms up and then after the intro fades away. I actually just give the video an opacity of 0% so that it's invisible. The audio you hear throughout the screencast is actually coming from the video track.

I'm fairly happy with how this screencast came out. The video and audio don't seem to be exactly in sync which I find a bit strange. There's also a brief flash of black in there in the transition from the slide that forms the intro into the actual browser screens. One thing ScreenFlow currently lacks (or at least I haven't been able to find) is an easy way to transition between clips along the lines of the transitions available in iMovie '08.

Now that the service has been released, I'll be re-shooting this screencast and look forward to seeing if I can make some technical improvements to it.

THE OTHER SCREENCASTS

The other 3 screencasts are just the screen and audio. I like how ScreenFlow can let you zoom in on the cursor and highlight only the area around it:

DIVING INTO SEARCHES

REPORTING

SAVING AND EXPORTING
I'll be re-shooting this one as well since we have already changed the interface so that people don't have to type in "| reverse". (This is, after all, a beta release for this very purpose.)

COMMENTS?

Comments and feedback about these screencasts is definitely welcome. The Voxeo blog post explains a bit more about what this product launch was all about. So far I've been quite pleased with ScreenFlow. As I use it more I'll write more about the experience.

Technorati Tags: screencasts, screencasting, tools, screenflow, vara software, voxeo, prophecy

I had to laugh when I saw in my Facebook News Feed that several of my friends had joined a new Facebook group "I am a screen shot addict" (You must be a Facebook member to see the group). I laughed a bit more when I saw Betsy Weber's blog post which in turn pointed me to the creator of the Facebook group, Bryan Eisenberg, and his post "Confessions of a Screen Shot Addict".

You see, I am a screen shot addict. Always have been. Probably largely because I used to write a lot of courseware related to computer programs and so naturally I needed to illustrate those documents with screenshots. Now, I take screenshots galore for these blogs. I just like illustrating my articles with graphics... and screen shots are one of the best ways to do that.

On my Windows laptop, I was using TechSmith's SnagIt and loving it. I was also using TechSmith's Jing Project for quick screen shots that I wanted to reference in, typically, an IM conversation. Now that I'm on the Mac, I've got a wonderful built in utility (I love Shift+Ctrl+Cmd+4) and I'm also checking out Jing for the Mac.

So yes, I love screenshots... if you do, too, and are a Facebook user, feel free to "join the group".

Technorati Tags: facebook, bryan eisenberg, screencaptures, screenshots