Jeremy Zawodny and I produced another screencast last week, a look inside Pipes with Pasha Sadri and Ed Ho. The Pipes guys shared their insights while we asked a few questions and recorded the screen and the audio.
I’ve been trying to improve on each screencast with a new trick or some efficiency. This time I tried to mix in some relevant still shots in the editing process to support the voice over.
Camtasia was a little stickier here but still very easy to use. After setting up the production and editing out some bits, I used SnagIt to capture web site screen shots and crop them to focus on a small area. I imported them into the production. Then I added the screen shots to the Picture-in-picture track. Lastly, I zoomed in on each PIP file so it took up the whole screen and slid it along the timeline to get the right positioning with the audio.
There’s a segment toward the end of the video where Pasha is saying some really interesting stuff, however I didn’t have anything relevant to splice in visually. So, I didn’t quite get this right. But you’ll see that it works nicely in certain parts of the video. It keeps the pace going while people are talking. It also allows you to grab additional media that you didn’t think to pull up while recording the original video.
For example, Pasha mentions that there are several sites that have begun creating tutorials for Pipes, so I grabbed screensots of 3 that I found and layered them in.
I don’t think this is what the software was intended to do, so please tell me if you know a better way to accomplish this same effect. Here is the screencast which is also available on Yahoo! Video: