Camtasia Studio
April 7, 2009 by kevin · Leave a Comment
Camtasia Studio
A fantastic tool for capturing your computer screen and anything that is on it. Camtasia Studio even has a plug in for PowerPoint so you can record your presentations without leaving PowerPoint. Add annotations, zoom in on the screen and export your finished product to a lot of different video formats including MPEG 4. Rumors have it that a MAC version will be released sometime this year.
Camtasia Studio also integrates with Camtasia Relay, a lecture capture system for a really cool system for capturing and publishing presentations. Educational pricing makes this tool a must have for educators building fully online courses and tutorials.
JW Media Player -
April 6, 2009 by kevin · Leave a Comment
JW Media Player
A flash based free media player that touts itself as the most popular player on the web. We are using it at USU now for all of our online videos and we really like it. It just works and has lowered our technical support issues with students. It is flash based so students only need to have the Adobe Flash Player installed on their computer (and I bet they all do, but some may need to upgrade). We love it because it supports closed captioning.
Visit the website for tutorials, information, and lots of examples on how to use it.
Episode Desktop - Video Compression and Encoding Software
April 6, 2009 by kevin · Leave a Comment
Episode Desktop - Video Compression and Encoding Software
Telestream is realitively new to the digital video market but they came in with a bang. I was first introduced to them at EDUCAUSE when they partnered with Apple to show off their Episode Podcast plug-in for Apples Podcast Producer.
Episode Desktop is a compression and encoding software package that the pros use. It is easy to use and comes with many presets. With presests you can tweak them and create your own for the way you want things to work. This is a fantastic tool, from a fantastic company, who makes a lot of other cool tools.
You might recognize the name from Flip for Mac. Software for your Mac that allows you to play Windows Media files within Quicktime.
Sorenson Squeeze - Video Compression and Encoding Software
March 21, 2009 by kevin · Leave a Comment
Sorenson Squeeze - Video Compression and Encoding Software
Sorenson Squeeze is a great desktop video compression tool for getting video into the format you need and looking good. It is really easy to use. It is a professional level tool, but is easy to learn for a novice. There are many presets for you to choose from. It will even capture video from a camcorder or other video device.
Sorenson Squeeze can even encode one video file to many different formats for you. Just select the file you want to encode, then choose the presets for the file formats and quality level you want. Walk away, and the software does all the rest. Easy to set-up watch folders allow you and your staff to simply drop video files into a folder and it will take it from there.
If you are an educational institution, be sure to take advantage of special educational pricing.
GarageBand - Recording Software for the Mac
GarageBand is a fun a powerful piece of software for creating podcasts on the Mac. It comes with the iLife software. With GarageBand you can record, mix, add sound effects, gingles, and music (all included or add your own).
In addition to podcasts, GaragerBand can be used to create your own music by connecting a keyboard, using the instruments, and rythm tracks and sound.
When you are done you can send the file to iWeb, another tool for creating webpages, or send the song to iTunes for playback. What is missing is sending the podcast to Podcast Producer. Come on Apple, make it happen.
Audacity - Open Source Software for PC and Mac
July 2, 2008 by kevin · Leave a Comment
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing audio. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. It is perfect software for recording audio for podcasts on your computer. Read more
Podcast Producer
June 21, 2008 by kevin · Leave a Comment
Podcast Producer is complete podcasting solution for the enterprise. It is very simple to use. Podcast Capture, the program you see a screenshot on the left, is part of the OS X 10.5 (Leopard) operating system. To use it, you need to have access to a Mac OS X server.
You log in, chose how you want to record, and choose one of the workflows available. Workflows tell the Mac OS X server how to compress the video and where to send it or publish it. Options for publishing include iTunes U, Apple Blog on the server, ftp, sftp, and to a volume. Read more
