I’m rather proud to say that CNET covered my client BrandWatch and that my 3 minute screencast which introduces BrandWatch’s features is embedded in the article.

The article’s author, Josh, saw my ProCast whilst searching Vimeo for ’screencasts’.  BrandWatch received a great set of referrals from the article and Giles (CEO) is very pleased with the response.  I glow.

If you need professional screencasting services, get in contact.

Last week I completed a new ProCasts screencast for local Brand Reputation Management firm BrandWatch, the video is linked on the right of their frontpage (and on my examples page).

The screencast runs for 2 minutes and demos the main features of their app including Trends, Comparisons and how to drill-down into the source stories. The goal is to get more visitors to sign-up to a trial account.

BrandWatch Introduction from IanProCastsCoUk on Vimeo.

I used Barclays and HSBC as my examples, given all the news recently there was a lot of information to work from and BrandWatch neatly pulls out the pertinent articles.  I’ve also experimented with more backing music and a call-to-action at the video’s close.

If you need professional screencasting services, get in contact.

Jolt Magazine were kind enough to interview me about how ProCasts makes professional screencasts, the resulting article has just been published as Screencasting: An Expert Reveals the Dark Art.

“While researching one of these articles I did an interview with professional screencaster, Ian Ozsvald. It was so good that I just couldn’t bring myself to chop it up into sound-bites. So I’m damning the torpedoes and posting the interview in its entirety”

Update - Starr Horne has added another entry to his screencasting series on Jolt, I get quoted there too.

I’m also very pleased to say that Jon Markwell’s HowSociable webapp now has increased sign-ups and fewer support emails as a result of my 3 minute ‘Introduction to HowSociable’ screencast (on HowSociable’s front page):

“Adding a ProCasts screencast to our front page increased activated email conversions by 25% and reduced support requests by half”, Jonathan Markwell - Founder http://HowSociable.com

As a scientist it is so darn nice to have real figures to work by!  Hand-wavey arguments are all well and good but nothing beats a solid increase in conversions to let you know you’ve done the right job.

I’ve spent the last two days creating this 57 second intro to the Django web-app framework, after three years of development they’ve released the shiny, new and supported v1 version.

The screencast covers how to get started, example sites, documentation and where to get it - everything a new user needs to get up and running writing new websites in under 2 hours. Music by Mr Django Reinhardt. I’ve used Google’s new Chrome browser for this video.

Django In Under A Minute from IanProCastsCoUk on Vimeo.

The screencast is available in Vimeo, ShowMeDo, YouTube, and my ProCasts Examples page.

Last week I recorded a new screencast demonstrating Internet Explorer 8 (beta 1) vs Firefox 3.0.1.  The demo highlights some of the shortcomings of IE8 beta1 and generally works to show the viewer why Firefox is the better choice.

Annoyingly this week Microsoft released beta2 which fixes several of the short-comings and rather dates my screencast.  Darn.

It also takes a dig at IE6 users and reminds them that their browser is 7 years old and really needs to be updated.

The 8 minute video is linked over at ProCasts on the examples page.  I’ve also uploaded it to ShowMeDo, YouTube and Vimeo so we can compare the differences in visual quality.

YouTube is, as expected, rather yucky.  Vimeo’s copy is small but smooth with a decent framerate, ShowMeDo is larger but with a lower framerate (5fps) so the animations are a touch jerky, my example page has a large and smoother version.

Techniques include zooms, on-screen annotations and some fades and it ends with a clear call-to-action.  The main tools used is the lovely CamTasia 5.

I’m also pleased to have been linked in an article on ReadWriteWeb in the comments by Michael of SmashCut - cheers Michael.

If you need a custom screencast, ProCasts will deliver what you need.

I’ve just spent 15 minutes trying to figure out an odd behaviour in CamTasia v5.1.0.  The documentation (great video demo) explains that a call-out can be added, and then by dragging the call-out we can change the length for its display.

Only…it seemed that you couldn’t drag the length.  You can easily drag its position, but why not the length?

After some frustrated hacking around, I saw a solution (in the darned-awful UI!) at experts-exchange for Camtasia: How to Extend the Duration of a Custom Callout in the Timeline.  As wize-owl says:

“The timeline has a zoom feature to change the viewing resolution.  It is adjustable by the plus (+) and minus (-) symbols.  Click the + zoom a couple times.  This will expand the timeline and the callout, and give you a larger area by which to grab the edges.  Now you can expand the callout to cover a larger area of the timeline.”

I had to zoom in 8 times to see the +/- symbols, I’ve since reset the default time-length for call-outs from 3 seconds up to 8 seconds and the +/- symbols are more visible.

If you follow the above experts-exchange link, you might find that they’ve shielded the solution from you until you login (that darn awful UI of theirs…).  If so, either goolge for “camtasia length call-out experts-exchange” and click the cache’s link, or try this cached link.

Brought to you whilst I’m wearing my ProCasts professional-screencasting hat.