Hide / Show Mac OS X Desktop Icons

So you want to make a screencast and you’d like to put your best foot forward which means, in my case at least, hiding the mess that is your Mac OS X desktop. No sweat. In the screencast below you’ll learn how to quickly build two Automator applications that will allow you to toggle the visibility of your desktop icons on or off.

The shell commands you’ll need to build your Automator apps:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
killall Finder

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
killall Finder

*Update*

You can reduce this to a single Automator app that checks the current visibility and toggles to the opposite state using the following bash script:

# checks visibility and stores value in a variable
isVisible=”$(defaults read com.apple.finder CreateDesktop)”

# toggle desktop icon visibility based on variable
if [ "$isVisible" = 1 ]
then
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false
else
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true
fi

# force changes by restarting Finder
killall Finder

***************************************************************************

And for the truly lazy–a precompiled app that toggles visibility on or off:

http://www.brooksandrus.com/downloads/hide_icons.zip

Importing Camtasia:mac Audio

In a previous post I demonstrated how to directly import Camtasia:mac screen footage into your professional video tooling. There is a small caveat that I didn’t mention–Camtasia:mac stores microphone and sound card data in separate file streams. The relationship between these file streams and your recorder settings is somewhat obtuse–thus, the screencast presented here.

After viewing you should understand which file streams in the recording application bundle contain audio. Luckily once you’re armed with this knowledge its a snap to import the audio streams along with the screen footage into the video tooling of your choice. Enjoy!

The Importance of Constraints

I stopped at the local Big Ten Party Store on the way to the golf course last week and busted up when I saw this sign:

Sometimes limits are a good thing. Now to convince my friends on the Jing team. ;-)

Import Camtasia:mac Recordings into Professional Video Tooling

Lots of folks use Camtasia Studio and Camtasia:mac to record their screen, but want to edit / composite the recording inside professional tools such as Final Cut Pro, Premiere, After Effects, or Vegas. The rub has always been that in order to get the footage into these tools you first needed to transcode the video from the proprietary recording format to a supported container / codec. Oh and by the way, you’d like to retain the lossless quality and small file sizes found in the original, but proprietary codec. Fat chance, right?

Not so fast. I’m here to tell you that its not just possible, but downright simple to directly import and edit screen recordings made by Camtasia:mac in the video tooling of your choice on the mac. You heard that right – direct import without transcoding the video. No long wait times. No bloated file sizes. Lossless footage. For realz. It’s the shiznit. Check it out.

OSMF + Flex Example

I’ve been checking up on OSMF (Open Source Media Framework) periodically, but found that many of their examples / samples don’t work at the moment (their APIs have been in flux). If you’re just looking for a quick way to get OSMF (v.9) up and running in Flex here’s a bit of code that should help.

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Adobe After Effects: 3d Spotlights

One of the more frequent questions I’ve gotten as the result of the Screencasting as Art project is “how do you pull off those lighting effects.” It’s a valid question and one I wanted to do justice by. So here’s the latest cinematic screencast detailing how to create and manipulate 3d lights in Adobe After Effects. Along the way you’ll learn how to:

• Configure your After Effects workspace to handle working with elements in 3d space.
• Manipulate the x, y, and z position of your lights.
• Adjust cone angle, cone feather, light intensity and light color.
• Animate the position and light properties.

The video runs 7:05 – feedback welcome.

Screencasting notes:

In this video, I again focused on narrative structure, pacing and humanizing the videos, but I paid special attention to making the production value of the talking head footage much higher. I once again relied on my trusty Flip Mino HD, but decided to try and frame things up a bit better and feed the Flip some light (the Flip really struggles in low lighting conditions). So after convincing Santa Claus (my wife Nancy) that I needed a soft box or two, I set up in front of a bare section of wall in my living room and filmed a couple of talking head segments off the cuff. They turned out well and, much to Nancy’s chagrin, have led me to set up shop in the living room permanently. ;-)