3d Screencasting: Episode III – Building a Screenshot / Screen Video Sandwich

Hungry for killer screencasting chops? You’ve come to the right place. In 3d Screencasting: Episode III we’re going to combine our transparent Snagit 10 screenshots and Camtasia Studio video footage to create an independent window that can be animated in 3d space. I like to to think of it as making an open face sandwich–the Snagit screenshots are the bread and the screen video is the yummy content that sits on top.

To build this sandwich, we’ll use the rotoscoping skills we acquired in Episode II to trim away screen video footage that we don’t want and expose our transparent window frame. Once we’re done editing we’ll pre-compose our layers together into a single composition (layer) that can be easily repositioned, scaled, or exploded (hells to the yah, as the kids in here in the States say). Whet your appetite and dig in!

If you’d like to use the assets in this tutorial and view a completed After Effects sample project you can download the files here.

3d Screencasting Episodes

1. Episode I – It Ain’t Your Daddy’s Screencasting
2. Episode II – Rotoscope Our Problems Away
3. Episode III – Building a Screenshot / Screen Video Sandwich
4. Episode IV – The Magic of Inverted Masks
5. Episode V – Killer Animated Windows
6. Episode VI – Ultra Cool Shadows & Motion Blur

Screencasting as Art: Humanize, Structure, Pace and Production Value

In the previous post we began exploring screencasting through a cinematic lens – how we can use lighting, framing, camera position, window matching, and cutaways to create visual interest and engage our viewers. This article builds on those techniques and begins to explore additional storytelling and cinematic concepts, such as:

• Humanizing your video.
• Using narrative structure.
• The editor’s role in pacing and its impact on audience attention.
• Lifting production value with sophisticated bumpers / credits.

As usual, we’ll begin with an exploratory screencast and then return to the article for a bit more color on the intent / techniques utilized.

Humanize

Screen video alone is not enough. You need to humanize your content by getting in front of the camera and engaging your audience. And no, I’m not talking about long-winded monologues either. Several 5-7 second talking-head elements can go a long way toward winning over and maintaining the interest of your audience. Let people see your face and don’t be afraid to be emotive / loose. Let them see the twinkle in your eyes and the smirk on your face. As social creatures its how we empathize and bond with each other.

Viewers are most alert at the beginning and end of your screencast (true whether its a meeting, presentation, or screencast). In a recent webinar, noted presenter / storyteller Andy Goodman emphasized how important it is to take advantage of these naturally occurring periods of high focus. That’s why its critical to let viewers see your face and make a connection with you at the beginning of the screencast. It’s also why there’s a talking-head call to action at end of the screencast (during the closing credits segment).

Structure

Screencasts aren’t just raw data spewing out of an organic database. Make your screencasts accessible by breaking them down into logical elements that together accomplish the emotional, psychological and instructive goals of your narrative. Structure can help you engage your audience, build your brand, send your message, and motivate your viewers to take action. In this screencast, the structure – intro, bumper, message, bumper – was deliberately constructed to: create rapport and pique viewer interest, establish credibility and build personal brand, teach software functionality, and build brand while motivating viewers to watch other screencasts.

Making a connection with viewers, getting them to watch, and teaching them something they want to know are obviously the most important elements of this screencast. However, by thoughtfully utilizing structure we can add credibility, build brand, and make calls to action in such a way that they actually reinforce / enhance our top level goals.

Pacing

In the context of filmmaking, pacing is the speed or rate at which the narrative happens, transforms, or develops. It’s important to realize that pacing is more about the viewers sense of narrative speed rather than the actual speed of the event itself. Pacing, then, can be controlled by the rate at which you change what or how the audience is seeing.

In typical filmmaking, lots of “coverage” (extra footage) is shot from a variety of different angles and distances. This allows the editor to control how long any single shot is used by cutting to other views of the scene. This cutting can give a sense of activity and motion, or be used to create dramatic impact. All of these elements keep the viewer more interested in the scene than they would otherwise be if a single camera from a fixed position was used.

How does this all apply to this screencast you might ask? Good question. In order get good “coverage” I did two things:

1. recorded the entire desktop
2. filmed all of the actual hand / keyboard interaction.

Recording the entire desktop allowed me to create a versatile array of wide, medium and tight shots. If you notice, the majority of the shots are either zoomed in (medium / tight shots) or zoomed out (wide shots) from the actual recording dimensions (you aren’t limited to just selecting quadrants of the screen at 1:1 scale). Filming the hand / keyboard interactions allowed me to cutaway to an alternate view of the scene (the hands interacting with the keyboard).

In order to control pacing I alternated between wide, medium, tight, and keyboard cutaway shots every 2-8 seconds (2-5 seconds is the optimum range). This technique creates visual interest and lends speed to the narrative by changing the shot frequently. In effect, I never let the viewer’s eyes get bored by frequently changing what or how they are looking at the scene and I get to “weight” the importance / impact of each shot by the length of time the shot is on the screen.

Production Value

Production value: A method, material, or stagecraft skill used in the production of a motion picture or artistic performance; the technical quality of such a method, material, or skill.

One of the simplest ways to improve the production value of a screencast is to use sophisticated bumpers and closing credits. The quality of these segments affects the perceived value of the enclosed content, reinforces the message, helps establish your credibility as an expert, and, as an added bonus, can help you define your personal brand.

Remember, you’re not just presenting static information. You’re selling it. You’re selling your authority as a subject matter expert. You’re selling the quality of the content the audience is about to watch. And, all the while, you’re establishing a style and building your image / brand.

High production values set your screencasts apart and give your audience another reason to believe in their investment in you. At the beginning of a screencast you’re looking to make your audience believe they should invest their time. At the end, you want to reinforce that the message they just heard was special and significant. Use these elements wisely and you can make all that effort expended recording, editing and compositing worth it.

Animating Text on a Path in Adobe After Effects

Another Obfuscated Auto Launch Behavior

It drives me nuts when software menus aren’t logically ordered. Sure no one is perfect and I’m guilty of some super bonehead moves, but it sure feels like some of the design decisions made in some products intend to obfuscate control and thwart user desires.

I’m guessing the fear is that if Bridge isn’t on by default and the preference for controlling is too obvious, then no one will use it. Maybe it would be wise to consider the negative vibes this generates towards the app…

Day Three MAXies

The final day of a conference is always brutal. Multiple nights of vendor supplied beer, limited sleep, and a steady river of technical information lead to, well, a sore ass and a limited attention span. Despite this the final day of MAX 08 was solid for moi. Here’s the round up.

I was blown away by the morning session on the Flash Platform’s new text engine. It seems the InDesign team has been hard at work on an AS3 framework called TLF that will be released to labs this Friday. TLF provides enormous framework agnostic (works with Flex or Flash) layout capabilities built on top of Flash Player’s low-level APIs. Very cool stuff that definitely builds on Flash Player’s legend as a cutting edge experience-delivery runtime.

It’s areas like this where you really see the enormous payoff from the Adobe / Macromedia merger. Not many people in the world have the deep typographic and layout knowledge necessary to fully utilize the low level text API’s exposed in Flash Player 10. Adobe, however, has deep roots in type with everything from print drivers, to document formats designed for consistent cross-platform type rendering, to best-of-breed layout tooling. There’s scary potential for the platform when you consider they’ve already delivered Pixel Bender shader effects and are sitting on top of serious video tooling / expertise.

Next I sat in a fantastic Pixel Bender lab put on by the AIF crew. These guys ran the best code oriented lab I’ve ever sat in. I wish I could describe code as clearly and efficiently as these cats–I’d be a code super hero, or an even larger pain in the ass to other developers. Regardless, I should note there’s killer tooling built up around Pixel Bender. A shader language with a code hinting IDE, debugging, breakpoints and export of pbj (bytecode Flash Player 10 runs). Slick stuff–the little girlies over at Adobe should be proud.

I also got to sit in another session on XMP with some silly name like, “Use XMP Metadata to Label, Track, and Manage Assets within Creative Suite.” I’m hoping it was the designerish name that scared everyone off–less than 15 people were in the session. That’s seriously disappointing my fellow meta-nerds. Regardless, Gunar (a Sr. PM with Adobe) gave a super articulate overview of what XMP is, it’s alignment with various industry standards and how it provides tangible benefits throughout the create, edit, publish, deploy and consumption lifecycle. Good stuff that should be mandatory viewing for the lot of you (if only so you can mock my meta fetish).

That’s a wrap for MAX day three. If I get a chance I’ll type up some additional thoughts on the long plane ride home.