Today’s collection provides some amazing examples of stormy photography which can be very difficult to capture. Lightning is one of the most intense and most extreme moments which require great skill to create an awesome effect and a good picture.
A perfect storm and lightning photograph is one which shows the incredible lighting, enormous shadows and a massive scale of energy. To capture such greatness in a single photograph is not easy at all. Here is a number of breathtaking photographs to inspire you!
Our friends over at BuySellAds.com have produced a pretty cool interactive map of the “The Design Galaxy” which we are happy to say features Design Reviver! if you haven’t seen it already you should definitely go take a look.
If you somehow haven’t heard of BuySellAds they are undoubtedly the most popular advertising platform for blogs in the web design and web development field. If you are looking to advertise to designers and developers you should give them a try.
After as far as we have come in equality of the sexes, it is still almost impossible to work with men/women. They are so strange and just don’t do things the way they should be done. They are moody, grumpy, too familiar, emotional, threatening and just plain men/women! Add the popular notion that all humans have these odd traits when interacting with other humans and you have the makings of a sexual harassment training video.
From the moment you step into a corporation, or really any office these days, you will be required to watch a sexual harassment video and answer a few questions to prove you understand saying “good morning� to a coworker of the opposite sex can be considered “threatening.�
Male-Female Office Interactions
Depending on where your HR department finds the video, the quality varies. The first video I was required to watch was transferred from a super 8 movie with “actors� who probably worked for the film company. HR frowns upon new hires laughing in hysterics while watching the video. That’s why I preferred the e-mailed link to the newer videos and a multiple-choice quiz at the end. Suddenly these videos have touched upon real-life office situations.
The last one I viewed was also a cast of familiar characters and sure enough, the “offended employee� was also the worst kind of person any office can have. In the video, she was offended at a conversation between a male and female coworker she overheard while poking her head above her cubicle. In another scene, she is offended at a gathering of employees across the room, telling jokes.
“Some of those jokes MIGHT offend the coworker,� states the video. I think the coworker is offended that others in the office might not elect her homecoming queen and therefore they must all suffer a Carrie-like prom-of-death end. HR will give this person more credence than the other 99 employees who love to stand around and tell jokes. Because of one unstable personality, who cannot fit into the flow of society, everybody will be brought down to lowest level to even the playing field. That’s always an engaging situation.
Are we such a difficult race of beings that we cannot work well with the genders that include our mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters? Yes!
Even with that, we are in the same solar system, while black holes, super novas, hurtling meteors and twinkling radiation tears at the rest of our galaxy. Do we really need to fight amongst ourselves? Let me rephrase that – can we understand the very things that are different about men and women and come to a middle ground that allows us to work together in a nurturing and understanding way? No. Tthe key word in harassment is “unwanted� advances.
*Did you know that HR rules allow to ask out a co-worker on a date once? If they refuse, you can never ask again. If they say yes, you might be “polishing desks� later. I gather even in the strictest corporation, men and women do fall in love with each other.
That is all due to our biological imperative. Under our clothes, we are animal inhabitants of this planet, and no different than other species when it comes to mating, although I don’t know of any other mating mammal that orders the lobster and two appetizers for dinner and then announces they “just want to be friends!â€�
But in the workplace, we all have our roles and responsibilities and must work in conjunction as a team of people. Not men, not women – co-workers.
So, It’s Not Just Me
I met a friend for lunch today to cheer him up and relay some stories that would make his dismissal from his current position a bit more hopeful. He is a VERY sharp creative director with an eye towards the future and pushing the envelope. He is hardworking and a no nonsense guy. He was doomed from the start. We sat down at a nice, family-owned Mexican restaurant and he started to relay the problems he faced.
“I just rubbed some of the people who have been there so long the wrong way.� He is very humble and I knew the entire reason needed to be pulled out of him.
“Some people found you curt or you didn’t involve them enough in decisions?� I asked, having worked with him and seeing the internal politics just enough to see the red flags. “They were women, right?�
He looked a bit stunned but it was the distance between Mars and Venus that was the problem. It was not a question of power, misogyny, racism or any other isms as much as it was inclusion and recognition. Nobody wants to spend the prom standing in the rain, looking longingly through the window.
I relayed stories of a female manager who would call people into her office and trump up something so they would break down and cry and then she would comfort them and tell them everything was all right. Sick! She tried with me a couple of times but I would argue her points until they were transparent. I think when I left her office, SHE would cry. Men do this, too. So we share a cruel streak but I doubt that’s a mutual building block.
What this manager was doing was caring for people. She didn’t see what she was doing as cruel. She was filling people with emotion, dropping them down and picking them up so she would be seen as the confidant and nurturing boss. She was just mental about it!
My friend and I traded more stories and started coming down hard on some female coworkers. I had also been totally destroyed by a female manager. She made it her business to see me gone. It was a sharp contrast to the beginning years of our work together. She assigned me special projects and applauded me for my future climb up the corporate ladder. Then it all changed in what seemed to be a day.
“She was in love with you,� said a female friend, to whom I related the same story while we had a lunch far enough from the office to not be seen. I was dumbfounded except for the jokes around the office about how she was in love with me.
“When did it change?� she asked.
“She overheard me talking about a woman I liked in another department but that she had put on a lot of weight and my manager went off on how she knew what I ‘really thought’ and was a “typical man� and that’s when I started noticing being moved to the D list.�
My friend, who is one of the sweetest and most intelligent people I know, kept eating her salad and started to explain it to me. “She replaced the intensity of her love for you with hate.�
She kept eating and smiling as if it happens every day. Apparently it does and what was so easy for a woman to see, I wouldn’t notice if you tied it to a brick and smashed it over my head. I’m a man. I don’t think that way. My male friend who had met the same fate didn’t spot it as my female friend did. Men aren’t wired the same way women are. Do I even have to mention that?
To me, my manager shouldn’t have formed an emotional bond with one of her subordinates. Yes, it happens but it’s not right…unless both parties show the same interest. To hold me accountable for choosing another woman and broaching the forbidden subject of female weight gain, which was overheard by her, just doesn’t strike me as fair. It didn’t until I read a book I laughed off as another charlatan attempt to make money off those too poor to afford good therapy.
I never went for personal growth books but the title enticed me as I have always worked in a female-heavy industry and it was free. I wondered why some decisions were made that seemed to really please female coworkers but left me with my head spinning.
The book dove right in by separating how the genders approach a project.
There are the usual gender-bashing viral jokes about men and women floating around the web (my former manager/�future bride� sent me quite a few, which I still have…for evidence). We laugh and acknowledge that we have differences that make communications and proper toilet seat positions impossible at times.
The author took great pains to detail what men think/ women think, men say/what women hear and vice versa. Naturally, in the truth that comedy is, the jokes in cyber space were based on truisms. In it self that’s funny!
On a Seinfeld episode, the men talk about one of them getting a “Wedgie� (when the underwear is pulled up in the back by the waistband). The woman in the room asks why men torture each other and the men shrug it off as “guy stuff.� The men ask the woman if girls gave each other wedgies and she replies, “we just tease a girl about one of her body parts until she develops an eating disorder.� That was written by Carol Leifer…a female comedian.
As men, we are brought up with a team mentality. Most men differ to the team captain, play our parts, jockey a bit on territoriality and go from point A to point B with blinders on to all else, including any emotions people might have about their roles in the project. There’s no crying in baseball and if you do, General Patton slaps you silly.
Women, who celebrate the ability to have emotions and feelings, which was only discovered in the male animal in 1978 by Alan Alda, will approach a project not by dividing territories and making the plan for the shortest route from A to B, but by breaking down any barriers to someone feeling left out.
To some, this is the evil, mutant love child of men and women and it’s called “design-by-committee.� Men want to call the plays and women want to be involved and dissect the project to feel it.
To others, although vastly different in thinking and process, the mix could create a product or add or web site that would have broad appeal. Not that it seems to work 99% of the time. There is groundbreaking work being done and the teams are men and women together. So why doesn’t it happen more often? Why, if a man asks a woman, “what’s wrong?� and she replies, “nothing!� shouldn’t we think nothing is wrong? Because the woman has told us something is wrong. It’s just in a foreign language to men.
I’ve always worked in female-heavy offices, sometimes being the only man, or straight man and I never had any problems but while reading this book, my heart sank when I thought back to incidents that weren’t bad – they were uncomfortable, and it was because I was saying something that was not translating well.
The frightening thing is that men and women say things without any animosity but it can crush the other person. One example from the book spotlighted that a man will say “Ke$ha, we’re having a meeting tomorrow on the project. Have all of your designs together by 9AM.�
What the woman hears is, “I don’t care about your schedule, so I set up a meeting without consulting you or anyone else and I am threatening you to have everything together by a certain time I have also decided upon without anyone’s input!�
According to the author, the male coworker should first address the female coworker’s schedule (and that of the entire team) to work out a convenient time by offering a few time options, which involves her in the process. Then he should inquire as to her progress on the work she needs to provide, asking how he can help if she is behind schedule.
I’m sure this will be the hot point for the comments section at the end of this article. Keep reading — there’s more.
There are plenty of suggestions for women on how to communicate best with men. Reading the passages and suggestions can be daunting. It’s easy for each gender to communicate among themselves but to speak to the other gender takes speaking a foreign language like a native…but you will never be one.
The creative field was probably the first profession to be integrated with the addition of women. Even in old photos of animation studios there is a woman or two among the small staff. Figures cartoonists would be able to do it first…they speak yet another foreign language.
Comments on the book show that there is a basic misunderstanding between men and women in the workplace. A gentleman with an MBA wrote;
The biggest thing missing from my MBA education was learning how to interact with other people. Business is nothing if we can’t communicate effectively and regularly. This book explains in clear terms how men can understand women and communicate effectively. We men can’t talk to women the way we do with other men. We are very different. By following Dr. Gray’s guidelines, men can learn how to earn the trust and respect of female co-workers. We can learn easy ways to speak the woman’s language and understand her perceptions. The most fascinating aspect is the description of women’s emotions, what they mean, and positive responses men can use to increase productivity and create a pleasant workplace. Working in harmony is the only way to go.
I should think that this book is especially helpful to women, as they are basically working in a world that has been designed and run by men. As Dr. Gray says, a woman’s challenge in the workplace is greater than a man’s. While the books and research of Gail Evans and Dr. Deborah Tannen and others have described gender differences, this book by Dr. Gray sheds light on many aspects of workplace problems and offers solutions that are easy, respectful, effective, and even fun.
Chances are this man is working in a heavily male dominated business. Woe is the female who enters and struggle to keep a professional environment and treatment.
The creative field is different and I have found myself in many female dominated offices. Are they aware of what males endure in the flipped roles? A man replied;
I am the only man who works in management of 34 female managers. I could not be successful without the help of this book. I learned how not to insult my co-workers and bosses. I really think with men and women working together so much more these days that it’s important to understand the differences, and there are differences between the sexes. This book has helped me very much, and I think it will help either sex equally!
I wish he had talked about how HE was treated or insulted. I have actually found female bosses and coworkers to be kind and nurturing and enjoy it when you gab about your life and feelings and all that emotional hooey. Sure, English women enjoy a rousing whoop about Manchester United and French women love a good Grand Prix but try discussing baseball or curling to American women and you’ve lost them. So learn to talk about your feelings when you are surrounded by women and endure the occasional male bash or “Hunks of Smashing Magazine calendar pictures” (I’m February so no one has to look at me for more than 28 days).
A lady added her experience;
I enjoy research and stats but this was real life in action. When reading the scenarios you immediately recall a situation of which you have experienced and it’s almost like problem solving along the way. These ideas are good for everyone.
Of course neither planet is right or wrong, a great combination is best. Since reading this book, I have developed more “Martian” characteristics, but I will never give up my collaborating “Venusian” style. I have mixed both styles and I think this has made me a better communicator in the workplace.
In the business world if you know each other’s planet you are at an advantage. There can be so many misinterpretations if you don’t understand the other planet. Knowing more about Mars has made me happier at home and more confident at work.
This book will help you understand the differences in men and women when it comes to problem solving. Women chat about it and men want to be alone. In the business world, it is important to think about. Unfortunately, some male managers can see chatting as a sign of weakness. This sounds really discriminating, but it can be true in certain situations, particularly at meetings. And when it comes time for reviews and appraisals women often don’t credit themselves for ideas as a man would.
I have read many pop culture self-help books and this book really made me self evaluate my Venusian ways and I definitely need to develop more `Martian style’ to balance out my sometimes too over powerful `Venusian style’. But as the book states-it’s not about changing you, but just to better your understanding of how men and women behave and communicate.
Another woman replied;
Should be called “For Women: How to kiss up to men, pretend their mistakes are okay, their forgotten duties are okay, never correct him, and allow them to take no responsibility in the workplace, even the men that can’t remember your name”
Perhaps as long as he notices you when you are looking particularly good and gives you a non-sexual compliment it’s okay, eh? (from the book)
This book takes the idea of equality back about 200 years, but in a smarter more devious way.
Just Read The Book!
There are pages and pages in the book on interactions of all sorts and handy observations for working with the other gender. It doesn’t cover what gay and lesbian coworkers may feel on office interactions. As with gender difference, culturalisms and economic upbringing, many of us hold to individualisms that separate us even from our own “group� in which we identify ourselves. Simply just compassion and respect are not enough. A deeper understanding, hence sexual harassment training, has become an important part of the workplace and life in general in a global economy.
A global economy means not only learning how to best deal with the other gender, but with other genders throughout the world and I would be lying if I didn’t say that different cultures have different ideas on how men/women should be treated in the workplace…if both genders are allowed to work together. Althought respect, compassion and kindness go a long way in any human interaction, surely everyone has to have noticed it’s in short supply in business these days and people are suffering “compassion burnout� as workloads and pressure increase.
A gentleman in Hong Kong wrote;
The point the author drills into the readers mind is: Men are quick to arrive at solutions whenever a woman approaches him with a problem, not knowing that this is her way of including him in her world and a way of leading up to her solution. It states, half a dozen times throughout the book, that women share their emotions with men in the workplace not as a way of putting blame or soliciting advice, but rather a way to make an emotional connection. Men, on the other hand, view this as a sign of weakness and a waste of time. The author terms men as Mr. Fix It because men seem to always quickly offer a solution not fully hearing out what a woman has to say. Believe it or not, that was the single most important takeaway of the whole book. Each chapter repeats a variation of this lesson.
Is a Female Boss Better Than a Male Boss?
Firstly, anyone who comments that a male boss doesn’t cross the line with sexual harassment and bullying female employees is either sense impaired or lying. Male bosses love having power over others and they exercise it as often as possible. So do female bosses. Having given two weeks notice to a small firm where the female boss was abusing me on a daily basis (right after attending a conference with her and declining just using one room), the very next day I was called into her office where one of the nice female partners fired me while my almost-lover, stood smiling with her arms crossed. I said, “okay but don’t you want me to train my replacement?�
“You can go!� said my love-muffin boss as she laughed.
Not just fired but destroyed in her eyes. I got six months of unemployment because, despite my two-week notice, I was fired within that time. My replacement at that firm saw to it my unemployment benefits lasted longer than the firm stayed in business. Men just fire me and try to make it sound as if it’s nobody’s fault, like when I asked a boss about his name being on an award for work I had done.
A woman added to this reality;
A lot of people get their jobs in management because they kissed the right asses. Me, I went to work one day and was told, “here your now the boss of a 40 person team make it work” I’ve been in said position for 5 years now and my team is over 200 and productivity went up 63%. My previous boss was a man and nearly sank the company with his inability to manage even his own personal life.
So, Can We Get Together and Make Wonderful, Bright Project Babies?
If I had to draw a conclusion from the book and comments the problem is, it is a different language but business is not combat. Emotions and compassion is not a bad thing and having a boss who shows caring and understanding makes for a healthy work environment. I’ve seen it from men and women – with humor and genuine feelings. I’ve also had male and female bosses who would make Stalin look like tickle-me Elmo.
At the same time, it’s not a “tea party� or “club� atmosphere. It’s hard enough to encourage ethics and employee engagement these days. Why create an even more difficult situation?
I imagine it all comes down to respect and understanding. We don’t get enough of it out on the streets, so why would we see it in the workplace? Because we deserve it? Of course we do! Who in their right mind would believe an abusive office is a happy or productive office? Well, Stalin, but that didn’t work out too well for everyone.
Humans! Sometimes I think our ability to understand others is from Uranus!
When people think about how to start screencasting, they often forget that screencasting is not only a very interesting way of showing something quickly, comprehensibly and easily; it’s also a way of advertising their products. It’s a shame to see how many websites out there lack a beautiful looking screencast, as this can make products look a lot more attractive to potential customers.
What most hobby screencasters don’t know, is that screencasting is not simply the act of sitting down and recording the screen; simple screen recording was something we did four to five years ago. Screencasts have a long history, starting from “I just record my screen� to the fancy product demos you see today. Nowadays, a screencast is almost necessary for start-ups and new products, especially in the tech business.
My career as a screencaster started a couple of years ago. By that time, I was already blogging; sitting in front of Ableton Live (which I found to be a very original new workflow), I asked myself: what would be the best way to show others what I’m doing? The answer was clear: to record my screen.
That same night, I started using Snapz Pro X. My English was terrible and it felt awkward to record this thing — then to re-record it about ten times. Since then I have recorded hundreds of screencasts, including for Mac OS X Screencasts. Having gained a lot of experience, it’s now time to share this experience with others.
How Not To Do a Screencast
In the early days of screencasting, there were a lot of YouTube videos which now look like screencasting “dinosaurs.” This was to be expected then, but there are still people making the same terrible mistakes we all made in the early days.
Handheld Cameras
We probably all know that scenario; we’ve found a new function that apparently nobody uses in a program, and are so excited that we instantly want to share that idea on YouTube. It’s easy to grab a video camera or mobile phone and just point it at the computer screen, right? No. Never ever do that, as the videos will look terrible!
On the other hand, if the video shows something really, really extraordinary, people will watch it anyway. Content is king! If that video ends up on another website that showcases a product or service, it’s obvious that someone should invest precious money in screencasting software.
Facial Cameras
We have seen this a lot of times around the Web: screencasts with a smaller rectangular screen showing the person recording the screencast. Most of the time this screen is put somewhere in the video, and is always on. Even famous people like Merlin Mann are doing it. Merlin is great, by the way, although he’s no professional screencaster; all he intended to do was show his cool new workflow in TextExpander, which is great. Recording with built-in cameras is great too, but as I will describe later, use these functions wisely.
Consider the following:
Is it necessary for a face to be there all the time?
Does the audience really need to see a face to follow the screencast?
Will the face distract people from watching the screencast?
I agree that for introduction purposes, it’s a good idea to show someone on a built-in or external webcam; but as soon as we move to the main content, it’s a good idea to fade that video out. In my latest screencasts, I do exactly that: at the intro my facial camera is on while I tell my audience what they are about to see — and then when I get to the first section, I fade this video out.
Here’s a recommendation: do a big close-up as your introduction, centered on the screen. Then say something like, “Hi, my name is Andreas and today I’m showing you Whatever™ product by Some, Inc. Whatever™ is great, and I love it; you will love it too, and here’s why.� Right after “…and here’s why,� either fade the video out or decrease the size of the video while moving it to the lower right/left corner. Then, leave that video a couple more seconds on screen before fading it out completely.
Distractions During Screencasting
When I started recording screencasts, this was one of the hardest things to learn: leave the mouse pointer wherever it is on the screen and don’t use it as an extension of your hand. If you own good recording or production software, callouts or zooms and pans are better tools to emphasize a particular thing on screen. It’s not necessary to move the mouse while describing something. Also, when you are editing the screencast later on, it’s much easier to make your edits when the mouse stays still so there is no distracting mouse movement between shots, or mouse jump at a jump cut.
On the other hand, the mouse pointer has to be used at times as it’s the only thing people can focus on to follow detailed instructions. Just using keyboard shortcuts is a bad idea. I would recommend on first showing, that you display the menu entry and point out that there’s a keyboard shortcut. On the second showing, use the shortcut (please do tell the listeners prior to execution, otherwise they won’t be able to recognize what you just did).
Don’t Annoy People
A crucial part of a good screencast is entertainment, a fact that many people — especially beginners — don’t realize. Someone watches a screencast to get information, but why not make it a pleasurable experience? Try to create interest by using animations and other techniques.
Another thing to keep in mind, is that there are some things a screencaster can assume: for example, that people can read and have used computers before, so they know how to click on parts of the screen and they know how to write.
In an online review of Snowtape, a Web radio recording application for Mac, the screencaster reads (starting at 0:38) every menu item in the Preferences. You don’t need to do that. Aside from being boring, the screencaster loses precious time for the screencast. On YouTube, a video is usually limited to ten minutes in length. (Pro tip: I have successfully uploaded videos which were 10:50 without getting rejected.) Just going through every single menu entry cost the presenter two minutes of precious time! That means only eight more minutes to show the rest of the application.
Some of my clients refuse to upload their videos to YouTube: Why should one want to upload a video to YouTube, rather than hosting on their own website? Creating a chic, customized Flash video player and all that stuff is fun, isn’t it? There’s one main reason why that’s not a good idea: YouTube is one of the biggest video websites we currently have on the Web. It attracts millions of users daily and has an embedding feature. Think of all the thousands of blogs out there. Creating a player just for one website is attractive, because the owner remains in control over the design and the video itself, but on the other hand, disallows and discourages their product from getting mentioned in — for instance — Smashing Magazine.
I would recommend staying within YouTube’s length boundaries not only for the sake of uploading a screencast, but also for the sake of audience attention span. Audience attention span seems to be gradually decreasing, which is another reason to keep a long story short. Common lengths for screencasts:
My recommendation is to write your script before an actual recording. I have found mind maps handy for this job (I’m a big mindmap fan anyway and use it for all kinds of things, like planning; sorting; thinking).
A screencast should have structure, but don’t “overplan� recordings either as it will suck the spontaneity out of your screencast. Sometimes, meticulous planning and sticking to your script is necessary to make a very straight-to-the-point screencast. However, in most cases keeping everything natural for the audience is the topmost goal. My recommendation:
Don’t try to sound unnatural by using overly complicated vocabulary. Keep it simple. Use spoken language. (No curse words!)
Try to follow the path laid out in the script, but feel free enough to make spontaneous remarks here and there. The audience will appreciate it! As I said before, they want to be entertained. Don’t try to sound like an over-enthusiastic moderator. You’re not! You won’t sound like yourself and your audience will switch off!
Organize in sections rather than trying for a single, long take. In most cases you may have to re-record several times, often because some little details didn’t work. This can cost you a lot of time, so dividing your screencast into sections makes recording much easier.
Sometimes, meticulous planning and sticking to your script is necessary to make a very straight-to-the-point screencast.
Sections should be three to five minutes each. After recording each section and saving it, import each section and put a transition between them. This is not only easy to do, it looks great, and helps the audience follow the screencast as they know that a new section begins when they see a transition.
One thing to keep in mind: use simple transitions over the fancy ones! Don’t think “awesome� transitions will also make a screencast look awesome. A bad screencast will not get a cool, fresh look from cool-looking transitions; what’s recorded, is recorded. Try to stick to the simple things; cross dissolve or dip through black, and if it has to look “flashy,� dip through white.
Division
When planning a screencast, I most often create three chapters:
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
Beginner
In the Beginner part, I talk about the basic functions of a program.[1] I tell my audience who I am; what they are about to see; what this application is supposed to do; who made it; and so on. After this short introduction I show a simple, short workflow demonstrating what the application was made for. This, again, draws people’s attention to the screencast: “Hey, that looks really useful. I’m doing that a lot. Maybe I should continue watching.â€� Then, the Intermediate part begins.
Intermediate
After an introduction and showing some basic functions, it’s time to go into detail:
What else does this software have to offer?
What are the functions a user discovers at second launch?
For example, for a text editor I focus on functions that make this editor stand apart. I might talk about software interface, shortcuts and useful functions — basically, the things users discover after the second or third time they launch the application.
Advanced
When it becomes clear what the application does, I then concentrate on showing the really advanced stuff. You have reached your goal when people think: “Wow! This is crazy! I didn’t even think that would be possible with this. I really need to check this out!� Maybe, it’s an export function nobody thinks of; or, a hidden preference setting somewhere. Who knows? This is why it’s so important to be well prepared and to be familiar with the product; for example, I recorded a screencast on how a very simple stop-motion app named Smoovie can be used with AppleScript and Automator to record time lapse videos.
Screen Recording Software
People often wonder what screencasting tools are available, and how to decide on one or the other. Although some tools are already mentioned in the article Screencasting: How to Start, Tools and Guidelines, I want to make a short addendum to this list. Since the release of Snow Leopard, QuickTime Player is also capable of recording the screen. Although it leaves an icon in the top-right of the screen, this is probably the cheapest solution.
Using simple “screen-record-only” software has the downside that you need to find other software to edit your video; this means, again, a bit more time and effort. If someone wants to take screencasting more seriously, I would recommend ScreenFlow or Camtasia. Both are well equipped “editing-and-recording-all-in-one” solutions able to handle everything needed for a good screencast. They have layers, editing tools, callout functionality and more. Most screencasters edit on ScreenFlow or an equivalent before exporting the video to Apple Final Cut or Adobe Premiere, where lower-thirds, transitions or a table of contents are added (this is the workflow of Don McAllister, for example).
Animations (Using Zooms, Pans and Callouts)
A common mistake among screencast newbies is not to make use of the zoom and pan functions. While I recommend their use, there is a slight difference between using and overusing.
Zoom
New screencasters often don’t use zoom [2] at all, but don’t be afraid to zoom in to show something with bigger detail. In a standard ten-minute screencast, often all I see is someone else’s screen; a moving cursor is all that changes, or maybe some windows pop open or a checkbox gets ticked. Wouldn’t you feel totally bored watching a moving mouse cursor move for ten minutes? I have had clients saying they want exactly that. Honestly, although I usually enjoy hearing myself talk, watching such screencasts makes me sleepy.
Zoom in on a detail, talk about that function, and then zoom out or pan to the next function.
So, make use of the zoom function to make a screencast a bit more exciting. Zoom in on a detail, talk about that function, and then zoom out or pan to the next function. That way people see a more dynamic visual change, which creates interest and holds peoples’ attention. As with other things, like callouts, this function should be used wisely: not wherever possible, but wherever useful.
Pan
While zoomed in on a detail, the audience can’t see everything outside the cutout. Pans are useful to move the “camera� around — while remaining zoomed in! I use pans when my (mouse) cursor is about to move out of a cutout area. I try to move the camera along with the mouse pointer; that way the pan action looks very natural and seem to make more “sense� instead of moving the camera first, and then the mouse.
As a rule of thumb, choose the solution you think makes more sense to a person watching your screencast. Always consider the audience! Standard pan lengths, as well as standard zoom lengths, can get annoying as they are very repetitive. Professional screencasting applications allow you to customize the length of an action. Make use of that possibility!
Callouts
As an example of what not to do, a common mistake is to have the checkbox in ScreenFlow which says “Show modifier keys when pressed� enabled during the entire screencast. Another checkbox says to display mouse-clicks as Radar, or to make clicks audible. These options are not bad, but again, overusage is not a good thing; people intuitively know that when a window comes to the foreground, someone must have clicked on it, so why bother them with a stupid effect?
On the other hand, when saying something like: “…and when this checkbox is enabled, the app automatically does such-and-such…�, it’s a good idea to turn on visual click effects. Split the clip before the click happens, then split the clip afterwards, and enable click effects for this new separate clip. Done! Probably the best tip for you: use effects to support your explanations, not as something fancy to have. When I realized this, it changed my whole way of doing screencasts.
Overlays And Lower-Thirds
When all the edits are made, it’s a wise idea to add a bit more of that extra magic to the video such as a table of contents or lower-thirds. The options here are wide open. Although professional apps like Camtasia offer mandatory support for animations, they are no power houses in that regard. Try to find another application to create those overlays and import them to your screencast.
An animation program needs to be capable of producing transparent movies, which are added as a separate layers on top of the screencast. I create mine with Keynote, which can export transparent movies using the Share function. Go to Share > Export. Then select Custom… in the Formats drop-down menu. Make sure to enable Include transparency. I use the Apple Animation codec for exporting.
Apart from Keynote or even Linux software, and if you want to invest a bit more money, Apple Final Cut Pro’s Motion; Adobe After Effects; Red5, and a lot of other programs are specialized for creating these effects. Most screencasters I know use the Apple Final Cut Pro Suite, where Motion is included. Others stick with After Effects. Both are professional, advanced tools.
Recording Equipment
The audio quality of a screencast is often determined by the hardware used. Many people use their built-in microphone on a laptop, which is fine most of the time but has several downsides:
People will hear you typing and clicking.
The recording will have more hiss, because of the poor microphone quality.
The recording will have more ambient sound (such as a printer printing, the phone ringing, the wind blowing or a car honking).
Buying a good microphone is another steep investment, but it’s definitely a good one that adds a lot of value to your recording equipment. Sure, for me as an audio engineer, it’s quite easy to pick the right set of equipment. But newcomers often have problems with this. The good news is that most screencasts don’t need high quality recording equipment. There are dynamic and diaphragm microphones to choose from; in my opinion, it is usually better to buy a diaphragm microphone, although it picks up more ambient noise. Dynamic microphones are less sensitive to accidental “pops” or other unwanted noise, but sound less clear and clean.
Wrong tools doesn’t necessarily mean that you are using wrong coding or designing applications, it also can mean a wrong environment or computer setup. On the photo above, the setup looks solid and well-organized. Image credit.
I ended up buying a USB microphone that has an amplifier built-in, so it doesn’t need any other special equipment; dynamic microphones usually need a separate amplifier. I know some screencasters who buy “standâ€� microphones, which they attach to a freely movable arm that is attached to the wall. That way, they can move their microphone around and always have a good position to their microphone.
Placing a microphone is quite easy. I would recommend not putting the microphone directly in front of you, as some vowels (like “p” or “t”) can “pop” the microphone, resulting in a distorted recording. Most recording microphones have a cardioid polar pattern that records well when sound comes from the front, but is less sensitive to sound from the side and the back. As humans, we are orbital emitters which means that for us, speaking into a microphone placed to the side of our mouths sounds equally good as speaking directly into it. The only difference is that the “p” and “t” sounds don’t influence the diaphragms’ movement, because all of the sonic energy doesn’t go in the microphone’s direction. [3]
Some screencasters, like me, prefer headset microphones as they are always the right distance to the mouth. A possible downside of professional diaphragm headset microphones, however, might be the need for a separate audio interface. Fortunately, mine wasn’t that expensive; I’m using a MiPRO MU-55HN.
I can’t recommend buying microphones that just “look good,” such as those blue-light emitting microphones. Low price usually means low quality. I suggest going into a professional music shop to ask for help, as they have enough experience to sell you the right microphone — perhaps an even cheaper and better one — than the amateur shops would.
Recording Studio
How do you choose an appropriate recording studio? Some people record their screencasts in their offices, which have bare walls; this makes the recording sound equally “bare,â€� like you have recorded in a washroom. There’s nothing you can do about that, except by putting more stuff on the walls and desks. Placing “reflecting material” helps the sonic waves spread across the room, resulting in better audio quality. The recorded voice will always sound like the room it has been recorded in. If it shouldn’t sound like your office, don’t record there! It’s simple as that! Spend one or two hours in a different venue getting your audio recording right, and then move back into your office for editing. It’s really worth it!
Summary
This article gives you a brief overview of some of the most common mistakes screencasting beginners make. I have great hopes now of seeing fewer screencasts recorded with a mobile phone! I tried to explain how to use zoom and pan more effectively and how to emphasize different portions of a screencast; we discussed that click effects, or keyboard-shortcut-overlays, should only be used wherever helpful, not wherever possible. Some of you may have decided to acquire additional or new gear for your recording equipment collection. And of course, choosing the right place to record your audio is the final icing on your screencasting cake.
Footnotes
I’m using the word “application” here as an example, but it can apply to everything. (jump back to the article)
Zoom may be called “scale” depending on the software in use. Professional video editing suites tend to use the word scale rather than zoom, whereas screencast-specific programs use the word zoom instead of scale. (jump back to the article)
This is because high frequency sounds are emitted more directly from our mouths. (jump back to the article)
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