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Someone recently asked me how I created the Telligent Community 5.0 demo video that you can watch here.  The thing that made this the easiest was TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio product.  Using their fine software as a base I was able to use the following process…

1. Created the rough outline “on paper” of the scenes I wanted… like white boarding a real movie.
2. Used the Camtasia Recording tool to capture clips with audio notes… not final audio.  The key point is that I didn’t have time to try and do it all at once in one smooth 10 minute demo. 
3. Then I laid the clips out in the camtasia project, trimmed, and inserted the transitions/zooms, etc.  I had a time limit in mind that I didn’t want to go over and had filed too much.
4. I did the transitions because I didn’t want to try and fake like it was one smooth demo.   It’s a series of stories that are cohesive.
5. I recorded the audio.  Camtasia lets you do this one snippet of video at a time and has a great tool with keyboard shortcuts to pause the video on certain frames for callouts if you need to add more content. 
1. Each section was tightly scripted audio content so I didn’t stumble much.
6. Finally Camtasia lets you output in any number of formats depending on the need. 

Other Important Tips

• Find a good Mic.  I went through 5 before I found one with minimal static and background noise.  Camtasia has filters for this, but they can only do so much.
• Send dogs, kids, spouses, etc away or give them fair warning you’ll be grumpy if they ruin an awesome take.

Finally, show it to other people and watch it frequently yourself until you are convinced the points you whiteboarded come across.  You’ll find that some stuff just doesn’t work well.  What’s your process? Do you have any tips?

Josh Ledgard Software camtasia, recording, tips, video