Dear Mom,
Following from the excellent talk about Bioscreencast that I attendend on Second Life last Monday, I thought I would have a go at making my own screencasts using CamStudio today.
I decided to start with something really simple: How to resize an image in Paint. At first I thought that I would be satisfied with not having sound, but after about half an hour I decided to go out and buy a headset with a microphone so that I could do this little project in earnest!
I initially made two versions: one using Screen Annotations and the other using Audio, and uploaded these in YouTube.
1. Screen Annotations
2. Audio
As you can see, I made the mistake with the videos that my video was trying to solve for pictures! That is, it is difficult to see what was going on in the videos because I had taken the screencast using a ‘region size’ that was too large.
I measured the ‘region size’ for YouTube videos and found that it was 454×336 so I tried again using these parameters. This was the result. Not ideal, but certainly better.
This was a very interesting exercise! Before I do anything more challenging I need to find out how I can pause the CamStudio recording without making the window that I am recording go grey, but otherwise I think I am set!
Yours etc.
Bronwen
PS If you watched the videos and noticed that I am using the ‘wrong words’ to describe things (very likely!), please let me know. Any other tips to improve my technique would also be very helpful.
Bronwen,
Glad to see you screencasting, and hoping to see you put something up on Bioscreencast.
The second video looks great. Image sizing would be a good thing to add to the Bioscreencast Wiki
Thanks for the encouragement Deepak. I will have another go (probably next weekend) with a more scientific-looking image and upload it onto the Wiki. :) I am sure that I still have the figures from my PhD thesis somewhere…
In Bioscreencast, is it possible/easy to delete an item if you are the person that created it?
Hi Bornwen,
Its great to see this.
For pointers on screencasting you can consult Jon Udells bookmark collection at http://del.icio.us/judell/howto+screencasting
We all spend a lot of time learning tools like photoshop etc as part of the paper writing / science publication process and screencasts like these make the learning curve a lot less steep.
On Bioscreencast you can easily substitute a new version for the old.
Just use the same name when you upload. ALternatively Delete the old one ( in the uploads section) and upload the new screencast.
Dont hesitate to get in touch with one of us if you have problems.
Thanks
Hari
(Vishwaroop Baroque)