Monday, March 14, 2005
Breakthrough
Breakthrough
Originally uploaded by ash3.
Wow! I did something that I never thought I would BE doing. Filming Quicktime tutorial movies of myself demonstrating a software program. I am working with a group to create a website resource for a teacher inservice showing teachers how to use the graphics program Inspiration. I was directed towards a program for the Mac called SnapzPro X by Dave, one of my group members. At first, I could not see how the program functioned. Then I found the users manual in the download folder. My eyes were opened! It is really a cinch to use and it allows for all kinds of video compression modes to keep down the file size. In order to keep the ENTIRE workspace for the Inspiration program on the movie screen, I had to adjust the window size on Inspiration and set SnapzPro X to fixed a camera size of 640X480. Then I went searching for my microphone to record my voice annotations only to find out that iMac has NO AUDIO INPUT JACK!! Aargh. Okay, so off I went to find my little imic external usb sound card. I had to search the reviews for this product to get it to work properly with the microphone. Finally I got imic to work (the little toggle switch is confusing) and set the imac sound system preferences correctly. After all that, the SnapzPro audio STILL did not want to work AT ALL even though the microphone WAS working. I started reading message boards and found out that many people had this same problem with SnapzPro X! I, at last, found someone with the solution. A setting of course! The sound compression setting option that comes up just before instructing the program to save the movie needs to be changed to ALaw 2:1. By the way, the video compression I picked was Sorenson 3. Now I had it all figured out and was ready to make the first "complete" tutorial movie. About 30 seconds after I started, the dogs went berzerk and started barking like crazy. Yes, it recorded quite well. I will try again tonight. Hopefully I will have all the variables under control this time. :-) I did it! View the tutorial movies on our web resource HERE.
