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'Tis not very advanced though, even the blog post warned against its vulnerability against attackers (assuming you could actually connect it to the net that is).

My eldest is taking a class at school called CAT. They're taught about computers, and seeing she has another 2 years left before she matriculates, she can learn a lot from that class. Her class was asked to bring a piece of technology to school to show off to the class. (Almost thought I would have to chain my desktop to my desk), but after some thought, she's taking my old microATX board (with CPU intact), a 1 Gig Ram stick, and one of the screws used to seat the board into the case. (ah, to be a fly on the wall tomorrow lol)

Its kinda odd though. Now days our kids are always in contact with a PC of some kind and from a really young age, so they have it easy in a way. In our times as a kid, sometimes the first time you get to see a PC is when you're in grade 6, and you're cursing that darned Turtle. It was for the privileged few (well this side in any case). Or, in my case lol a way to get your kid to stop climbing trees

WhatsApp is extremely popular around these parts. Even my eldest has asked if she can get it for her phone. So as a marketing tool I can see merit in it, but can also see it as an annoyance somehow.

I;m not really fond of SMS marketing. its right up there next to cold calling (IMHO). To get a promotional message out of the blue from someone you don't know is a little irritating. We get promotional texts from our celphone carrier (sometimes as early as one in the morning), and it makes one want to take an axe to your phone (seriously). But that's just me I guess.

You more than likely have to be very sure of your target market, and not to blast texts to every number you can muster. Maybe also giving them the option to opt out is a good idea.

This side though, most times when you try opt out it costs you money to unsubscribe from a list you never subscribed to in the first place.

I am going to have to respectfully disagree there. This employee is not a freelancer, and is not meant to outsource their work. Which is why they gave him the access token. It was meant for him and him alone. He works a normal day just like anyone that wakes up and goes to the office. I can almost guarantee that their contracts are going to include something about outsourcing now as well.

Bottom line is, he applied for the job and got it according to his credentials. But, he sits around all day doing nothing, while someone in China is paid for doing his work for him. The work he originally applied for in the first place. So, even though he still had to pay the guy in China for the work, he was still pocketing a load of money yearly for doing nothing but watch cats on youtube all day (the mind boggles with that one lol). He was not meant to outsource the work. he was being paid to do it himself.

When you're finished all that, you can then produce the vid.

Click on produce and share, and it gives you a pop up where you can choose the final production settings. I use HD MP4 only. and it will produce your clip at your recording dimensions, so you won't lose any image or sound quality.

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you then click next, select the folder you want to produce to, name the video, and select the options below if you want to view the production information and if you want camtasia to play the video for you in media player.


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Click finish, sit back, grab some coffee and let camtasia take over for you

lol my blooper reel was full of clips where oDesk was popping up with desktop screenshots at one point. So now I close the lot, and set the odesk helper to make sure that it does not show me any screenshots until I'm finished.

Added a two post thread for you, over at the techie side. You should be able to see it when you search for new posts. Hope its not too generic.

Part two.

I realise a lot of this may be generic.. So if you have any q's, shoot Will try to help out.

Ok. So when I have edited out all the mistakes, I can then begin to add in all the other extra stuff.

Part 4. Adding effects

To use a backing track, all you need to do is import a music clip, or use one of the tracks that came with camtasia. If you're using a backing track, remember that you might need to cut it shorter to fit the video clip, but also that it must not overlap any of the music used in your intro.

Best thing to do then, is to make sure your intro tune, and your backing music are on the same tracks in the timeline. You can add as many new tracks as you need by clicking on the little plus sign above the tracks on the timeline. You can add call outs, and zooms as well.

To add callouts, click on the callout button on the taskbar.

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You select the callout you want to use, and then move it onto a separate track to the point where you need it. I normally use a mixture of animated and text callouts in vids. You can adjust how long they are visible, and you can also add transition effects to them, so that they fade, wobble or slide around the screen in the clip.

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Zoom is a nifty way to focus someone's attention on something. You can zoom into a section of your clip, and then zoom back out when you're done. To do this, you position the player slider where you want to zoom in, click on zoom-pan, and move the selection (at the top of the screenshot) around, readjusting it to the size you want by clicking and dragging. you can then move the player slider to where you want to zoom to stop, and then readjust the slider to show the whole page. Each time you readjust the slider and move the player "head" (slider - trying to avoid repetition lol), it marks a little zoom "icon" on your timeline. You can then adjust the zoom further from thereby clicking and dragging.

You can also create sounds and mouse effects.
Click on the cursor effects button on the taskbar, and it will load a few options for you for highlighting, left and right click effects and sounds to make when the mouse buttons are pressed.

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Besides that, you can animate images, and loads more, so I will add that to the thread at a later point.

Finishing touches:

Now that you are almost ready to produce the vid, I add my intro and ending (outros). You find a lot of music and themes you can use in the library.

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You simply expand the trees, and select what you would like to use, double click allows you to preview the track, intro or effect, and you can then just drag it down to the timeline. Make sure that you move your tutorial a little forward so that ou can fit the intro in. You just select all the clips by clicking and dragging, and them drag them to the right a little.

Add your intro, edit the callout (double clicking on the intro itself allows you to do that), and then select your outro.

For the outro, you can either use a blank screen (colored, or not), or a simple title page, and then you can add callouts for the information you want to add to the ending of your video. I usually fade the intro into the rest of the clip, and then when I get to the end of the vid, I fade the music out, so that it starts and finishes quietly

Hope that helps in some way. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. The posts are kinda big and I daresay hop around a little, so shout if you don't understand anything. (I am slightly scatterbrained lol).

Extra resources: Library downloads from techsmith here and more tutorials here.

Hmmm, I added it here in the tech section, couldn't really find another place to put it.

OK. You can get a 30 day trial of camtasia here from Techsmith. Its a rather big download (about 243MB), but you can do a lot more with it and its a lot easier than a lot of programs I've looked at. So, to get into it, lets take a look at what you can do with the program.

For tutorials, I usually have an intro, and sometimes, I will have music underlying the track, and then finally, an ending (generic brought to you by with company information and such).

Step 1 - Getting started.
Use the screen recorder to make your tutorial. Whether you use scripts or not is your choice, but don't worry too much about mistakes. They can always be edited out (and the cuts added to a blooper reel )
If you do make a mistake, just pause for a second and then carry on. You can use that second's pause to cut your mistake from the clip.

Shortcut: F9 starts the recording, and F10 stops the recording, and you get three seconds to compose yourself before it starts recording.

When you've pressed F10, camtasia will show you a preview of what you've recorded and you can then click on save and edit, and the recorder will load the clip into camtasia for you, where you can choose the recording dimensions - In the drop down box, I usually choose recording dimensions, and then you're on to step 2.

Step 2. - Putting the clip together.
Camtasia has a library with music tracks and pre-made intros that you can use to start your tutorial with.
When you look at camtasia, your timeline is at the bottom of your screen, and it only has one track, which is the video and the audio combined.

Let's say that you want to change/improve the audio quality of the clip, you simply click on the clip in the timeline to highlight it, right click, and look for "separate audio and video" and it will separate the vid for you so that you can edit the audio, cut pieces of it, or add extra narration to the video. First things first, let's clean up the audio.

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Click on any of the clips on the timeline, and then click on the audio button on the "taskbar". It opens all the audio editing tools you can use.

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Enable volume leveling - levels the audio so that there aren't too many loud and soft areas in the audio. you can choose High, medium, low and custom settings for this tool.
Enable noise removal - says it all. it makes sure that all you hear is your voice (with a few keyboard click in between).

You can also choose to fade the clip in and out. I use this for my backing tracks though, and not the tutorial itself. Once you're happy that the audio sounds good, you can then add your intro and ending clips, or create more recordings, import them into the clip bin, drag and drop them onto the timeline and repeat the process of splitting the audio etc.

Step Three - editing out mistakes.

Just above the timeline, there is a smaller toolbar. There is a zoom function, that zooms in and out of the track, making it easier for you to do precise editing, The undo and redo buttons, the cut button (to cut mistakes, or make a clip shorter etc.), the split button (to help you split tracks), and lastly, the copy and paste button.

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To edit a clip, you simply play the clip until you get to an area you want to remove and using the red and green "buttons" on the left and right of the slider, you move them to the areas you want to remove. Green for the beginning, and red for the end, and you click on the cut button to remove those sections. The more you zoom in, the better you will be able to control how much is removed when you cut.

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Part two to follow

OKies Will put something together today, with links to techsmith stuff where you can learn more stuff. I'm not a pro, lol but I've learned a lot aver the last while (2 or 3 years) about camtasia.

They do. I noticed that once. A company I used to work for had their video tutorials added to their blog, and it was amazing to see how quickly that blog page was indexed and searchable.

Yea, Camtasia rocks. Maybe I should put a thread up today that shows you how to do stuff on it. If you think it could be helpful

You're welcome. U shud have 8 I think, 'tis the latest one. If u have any probs, let me know. and you're welcome. Glad I could help. Yea, a 2gb file size on audio is huge, camtasia won't get that big unless you create a really big vid.

Now, methinks tis time to learn how to add adsense to vids.