Adding Pizzazz to your Website using Video Capturing Software OLA 2005 James Watson Information Services Librarian (Education) Trent University Jennifer Thiessen Education Librarian Brock University

Outline What is screen recording/video capture software? Why do it? Drawbacks Comparison of products Planning Conclusion Questions

What Is Video Screen Recording? Creating full-motion video of PC screen activity (basically what you see on the screen gets recorded) Produce videos in one of many used formats for distributing streaming videos over the Web

Why Do It? Realistic and interactive Learning styles Visual Auditory Psychomotor/Kinesthetic Student characteristics Reach off-campus learners Good marketing tool for the library

Are There Drawbacks? Amount of time needed for screen recording, editing, audio narration Need to edit or totally redo recording if resource changes Will students use the tutorials?

Comparison of Products Qarbon Viewlet Builder/Cam Macromedia Captivate TechSmith Camtasia

Qarbon Products - http://www.qarbon.com

Macromedia-http://www.macromedia.com

TechSmith - http://www.techsmith.com

Factors to consider Cost Ease of use Compliance with Web standards Prices vary; some educational discounts Leading products all cost over $100 Ease of use Personal preference Editing callouts, arrows, boxes, etc. Voice narrations Compliance with Web standards Produces videos in formats widely accepted and accepted, ie. AVI, Flash, Real Player, Microsoft Media Player Ability to produce in more than one format

Factors to consider… cont’d Ability to produce videos in different ways Ready for Web publishing Publish directly onto CD for distribution Fit within organization's IT structure Access to Web server and/or Webmaster? Partnerships with other units Compatibility with other software used Staff and ongoing maintenance issues Staff willing to learn to use technology? Support for creation and maintenance of videos?

Comparison of features Camtasia Captivate ViewletCam Output formats AVI, Macromedia Flash (SWF), Macromedia Flash Video (FLV), Windows Media, QuickTime, RealMedia, etc. Flash AVI, Flash, Animated GIF Output options CD, Web CD, Web, Word, E-mail, FTP Customize settings Many Some Not many Organize several videos Camtasia Theater MenuBuilder No

Planning Content Length Audio/no audio Publishing Formats (e.g. Flash, etc.) Content should match your instructional goals and objectives. If the purpose is to show the principles of boolean searching and basic search strategies to 1st year university students you’d probably want to use a database content covering many disciplines and a simple, easy to follow interface. For example, EBSCO Academic Search Elite or Premier would be a more suitable product to use than Web of Science. You may also want to think about how much is enough to show them. The inclination when first using Camtasia is to capture and demonstrate every possible feature and options available in a database. Is this necessary for demonstrating a basic search? Content will largely determine resulting length. However, there is no reason you can’t take the content needed to be covered and split it into a series of small videos. Callouts and text boxes are often adequate. Audio adds that extra touch that can be appreciated by those who learn better by listening to instructions. If you expect users to be opening these videos on machines with speakers in quiet areas be prepared and have earphones available. Flash is usually included with most web browser installations. You can publish videos more than once and have the different formats available to your users. Publishing to CD can be great if you are providing instruction to users and you don’t have internet access in the classroom for the instruction session. If you are attending conferences capture and put on CD things you want to demonstrate.

Examples of Screen Videos Trent University’s Thomas J. Bata Library Gibson Library, Brock University UBC

Conclusion Lessons learned Future directions Trent Brock Too early to tell at Trent what the impact has been. I did receive positive feedback from a few students and faculty who looked at the PowerPoint presentation I did for Education. Here are some things that I have learned so far. At first eager to create lots of videos, but then realization sets in that as database products change, search interfaces updated that the need for redoing videos can involve a lot of work. You want to use sparingly and effectively rather than having them for the sake of saying you have videos. Beware of creating videos and putting them throughout your web site without keeping track of where they are. It can be easy to do a video, put it up on web page and then forget it’s there and it becomes outdated. This concern caused me to create single page where any videos we produce will be linked. Adding narration adds a lot of time and effort to creating videos. Easy to get librarians and staff to say having these things is a great idea, but getting people interested to do the work may not be that simple. Fact that I got a few positive responses indicates that the videos can be useful and appreciated. The big question is the relationship between the time and effort to create them and the number of people that use them? This may be cause to have survey or other form of evaluation in future.

Questions??