This week each business created their first (or in some cases, second or third) screencast and sent us an exmaple. They also shared with us a little about their process, how they prepare and edit their videos, what challenges they faced, etc.

CiesaDesign

www.ciesadesign.com
@CiesaDesign

CiesaDesign consists of 16 staff members with a wide range of skills in print and digital communications. Thomas Ro is a developer at Ciesa and one of their heaviest users when it comes to screencasting. Thomas shared with us more about his process.

Do you like to prepare a script before recording?
We generally make a list of the things that need to be demonstrated or mentioned in the recording.  Since the narrative style tends to be similar between each screencast, an actual script isn't necessary. However, it's important to prepare the software you'll be using so that only the relevant items for the screencast are visible in the recording.

Do you have multiple takes, or just try to nail it one take and edit out errors?
Our screencasts tend to be done in takes. Sometimes that can mean one take or ten.

What's your editing process like?
For our purposes, the most interesting editing aspects of Camtasia are the callouts and the overlay abilities, to further highlight the things being discussed by our narrator.

How much time has it taken you, on average, to complete a screencast from start to finish?
This depends. Even a five-minute piece can take an hour or more, depending on the number of takes that are necessary. We also upload finished videos and share links from screencast.com.

What's your favorite thing about screencasting so far?
Screencasting allows us to communicate with client on detailed training and tech subjects. We've found that this is far more effective than written instructions or one-time live demonstrations. Screencasts create a lasting resource that clients respond well to, and can continue to refer to long after the video has been shared.

What's your least favorite thing about screencasting so far?
Doing multiple takes can be frustrating, especially with longer screencasts. Before using Camtasia, we recorded with Jing, which had a five minute time limit per video. This presented additional challenges for dividing up the subject matter across multiple pieces.

Gravity Works

www.gravityworksdesign.com
@gravityworksdd

David Silva Smith, Business Development Manager at Gravity Works, spoke with us about using Camtasia for Mac to communicate deliverables with stakeholders.

Tell us about your first experiences with screencasting. What was your process like?
Gravity Works launched an intuitive application for MSU researchers to replace programmable watches with an Android application while collecting survey data from research participants. We wanted to create a video showing off this cool project! Sitting down to create the demonstration video for prospective clients I thought of the message I wanted the audience to come away with, “this seemingly simple application serving up surveys has complex code running behind it.” Next, I thought how could I convey those two ideas: the complex code and the end solution.

So you had two different goals for the video. How did each one work?
Demonstrating the code was the hardest part. What does the audience care about? What should I show them? I got away from my original goal of wanting to show code and ended up focusing on the video. Getting away from the original goal of demonstrating complex code ended up hurting the messaging quality of the video, since the code is in there taking up half of the video real estate, but is not communicating effectively.

Demonstrating the software was easy. Launching our survey creation application I created a custom survey for the demo to show a sampling of the breadth of survey response types the application supports. It only took one recording to record the survey application. Camtasia enabled me to trim the beginning and end of the video to highlight the action, as well as extend the first frame so viewers could take in the scene before the survey goes off.

What did you think of the final product?
I was not happy with how the code recording turned out, but was happy with the application demonstration. I focused on the video strengths, using the Window Spotlight feature to highlight the application window and focus viewers on the action, while taking their focus away from the code area of the video. Camtasia’s Window Spotlight feature changes instantly which is jarring to the viewers. Splitting the clip onto a second track and adding a fade transition smoothed out the viewing experience.

What is your favorite thing about screencasting so far?
As a software development company, Gravity Works functions in an abstract world with clients ranging from expert computers to people who hate computers. Screencasts help us replace complex training instructions and technical terminology, with a video that everyone can understand. Instead of telling our users how the Android device goes off at a scheduled time, we show them a video. Can you describe what a word processor does to someone who has never used one? As software creators, we run into that communication issue every day. Instead of explaining our software for five minutes for a general idea of what the end product, we can show clients a short video, and they understand exactly what it does.

What is your least favorite thing about screencasting so far?
My least favorite thing about screencasting are the differences between the Mac and PC versions. When creating a project, I feel like I have to pick my “favorite child.” Some things the Mac version does well, like all the Video FX; some things the PC version does well, like being able to change the video framerate. If I had recorded the MSU Survey project in Camtasia for Windows, I would have adjusted the video speed during the survey demo to speed the clip up. In Camtasia for Mac, adjusting frames would have taken too long to be practical. In the PC version, I miss some of the cool Mac video FX like the Window Spotlight used in the MSU Survey video. I’d like to have all the features in both versions and be able to work on my videos in both versions.

Loudpixel

www.loudpixel.com
@loudpixel

Allie Siarto, Co-Founder and Director of Analytics, told us a little more about her screencasting process.

What's your screencasting process like?
90% of the screencasts I've created so far have been personalized and more "on the fly" to walk my clients through a part of our software that is set up just for them. For these, I use the screencasts in lieu of complex emails--it's so much easier to walk them through visually rather than trying to describe these processes in words.

In these cases, I simply open Camtasia, select my custom region (I'm almost always working in a browser) and start walking through the processes. I spend about ten seconds editing the video (I remove the last few seconds of the mouse moving up to stop recording), then I export the video to screencast.com and send the link to the client via email. I can literally have a screencast created and sent in less than five minutes from start to finish.

What's your editing process like?
I've played with the callout arrows to draw attention to specific actions on the screen, and I've added simple transitions between my title slides and screen actions. I've found everything to be quite intuitive so far.

Are you running into any difficulties/confusing steps?
The only thing that has been tricky is geting my dimensions right for YouTube. I like that Camtasia has a preset for YouTube, but I want to expand the dimensions to fill my entire screen then have the video format accordingly (rather than being tied to a specific screen portion during recording).

How much time has it taken you, on average, to complete a screencast from start to finish?
For my quick client videos, I'll spend less than five minutes. For more formal training videos, I might put 45 minutes to an hour or more into a polished three minute video (including setting up my mic and editing the audio in Pro Tools).

What is your favorite thing about screencasting so far?
I love that I can export my videos to screencast.com with a few clicks and share them with clients within a matter of minutes. Our company works in a fast-paced industry--we're always looking for quick and easy wasy to communicate, so we appreciate that there aren't a lot of barriers to entry. Camtasia is easy to use (no steep learning curve), and it allows us to get our point across quickly and clearly.

What is your least favorite thing about the process so far?
When I do write a script, I have a hard time saying everything I've written in the script while recording the actions, which is why I typically end up recording my audio after the video.

Netvantage

www.netvantagemarketing.com
@netvantage

Jerod Karam, Director of Online Marketing for Netvantage Marketing, gave us an inside look at his process of creating his first and second screencasts.

Tell us about your process as you created your first screencast.
This week I completed my first and second screencasts using Camtasia Studio and became quite familiar with the software in the process. Since the inception of this project, we’ve always thought that Camtasia would be fantastic for creating client tutorials. In our world things get complicated quickly and trying to talk a client through an issue on the phone can be difficult. That’s where this week’s lesson comes into play.

For my first screencast, I demonstrated to a client how to set up a custom desktop background and then resize their browser window. This can be useful when our client is designing their website on a 24” monitor but most of their website visitors are viewing the site on a 19” monitor or perhaps even 13” to 15” laptops.

Watch Jerod's screencast demonstration for a client:

Watch on YouTube

How much time did it take you to complete the screencast from start to finish?
This was the very first screencast I attempted with the software. From the time I began playing with it until the time this 4.5 minute video was up on YouTube was approximately 75 minutes. I already had the custom background prepared but that 75 minutes includes learning time, a “do-over” or two, and the video rendering and upload time. It was a very quick process. All of the videos I have produced thus far have been speaking without a script and recorded all in one take.

(ASIDE: After learning the software and how to use it, I produced and uploaded another video--2.5 minutes--within 30 minutes beginning to end.)

What are your favorite things about the process so far?
The software itself seems pretty intuitive and pretty full-featured at the same time. You can knock out a quick tutorial as I did above and have it online very fast. This ease of use and quickness to produce a solid video is one of the things that makes me really enjoy working with this software. I also love the automatic zoom in feature that helps track and focus on your mouse movements. Those are unedited in this video and they work out very well.

I'm also looking forward to working with some of the advanced editing features. I think splicing together several clips, recording voice-overs, and perhaps adding a sound track will be fun and open a new avenue for more professional-looking video production.

What are some things you found to be lacking?
There are a few points of improvement that I can already see are needed. First, immediately after recording the program opens a viewer window and auto-plays the recently-recorded video. I'd really like to be able to see the entire captured video, even if it's not a maximum resolution. Also, in the same preview window, you can "save and edit" the just-recorded video or you can "save as." In the "save as" option, I'd like to be able to save the mouse pointer movements when I go to save it as an .avi. Finally, I'd love to see additional options for transitions. The only one I'd use for professional videos at this time would be the "fade to black" option.

Having said that, the library effects, backgrounds, and intro sequences I stumbled upon are seriously cool. I will be using those perhaps with green screen in future screencasts.

Andrea Poole is a customer content specialist at TechSmith. She enjoys singing and playing the ukulele, a cappella music, running, and a good game of Euchre. Tweet her up @andiepoole or put her in a Google+ Circle.

The keyword decltype is new in Visual Studio 2010 and is available as well in GCC C++.  It is pretty simple you can get a type out of an expression.  I see it used most in cases where you don't want to supply a typedef but would like to use the type of an existing variable; hopefully this example will help illustrate:

struct A
{
   int m_n;
};

int main()
{
   A a = {4};
   decltype(a.m_n) n = 6;   //n in the same as A::m_n which in an int
   a.m_n = n;
   return 0;
}

So with the example if the member variable m_n changes type from an int to anything else the variable n in the main function will be of the same type.  Using a typedef we could have supplied both m_n and n to be a type from the typedef.  Though if we made n an auto (on line 9) then n would be dependent on what got assigned to it (in this case 6 is an int so it would be an int type) instead of what it is assigning to (on line 10).

A large use of this keyword by professionals has to do with return types!  Take a look at the following:

template auto Add(const T& t, const U& u) -> decltype(t+u) { return t+u;}

This templated function can take any type T and U as input and will return the result of a type that makes sense which might not be either type T or type U.  Since the return-type specification comes before the function name and the function arguments; we do not know the names of the variables passed in (the lowercase t & u) in the return-type specification.  So we used the auto keyword and specify the return-type as a late-specified return type which may use the variable names (lowercase t & u).  This is not to say it couldn't have been written without a late-specified return type which is shown in the example below:

template decltype((*(T*)0)+(*(U*)0)) Add(const T& t, const U& u) { return t+u;}

It appears to be a matter of preference whether you think using the decltype as a late-specified return type with auto is cleaner than specifying the return type without the auto keyword.  What do you think?  Do you see a use for the decltype keyword?  Are you understanding late-specified return type?

Andrew "A.J." Orians is a developer on the Windows version of Camtasia Studio. Though he enjoys programming he also likes puzzles, running, games, and a whole slew of other activities. He has been at TechSmith for something like five years and looks forward to being here for many more!

We're hoping to learn a lot about how our software fits in to the small business setting and in turn, share with you valuable lessons learned and tips for successful ways to visually communicate within your organization.

For our first week, we asked each business to give us some insight into who they are, what they do, and how screencasting might fit in with some of their goals for the year. Visual Loungers, meet Ciesa Design, Gravity Works, Loudpixel, and Netvantage!

CiesaDesign

www.ciesadesign.com
@CiesaDesign

CiesaDesign consists of 16 staff members with a wide range of skills in print and digital communications. Meet Chris VanWyck, Vice President of Creative Strategy at CiesaDesign, who shared with us the inside scoop on Ciesa:

Tell us a litte bit about CiesaDesign.
We are a full-service agency with a core focus on brand and corporate identity development. We provide every step of the branding process from marketing strategy through tactical design execution for both the print and digital realms.

What's Ciesa's mission?
To provide national quality expertise, process and creative output to solve our clients' marketing communication needs.

What are your big goals for the upcoming year?
Continued growth as a firm both in quality of work we produce and the range of service we provide to our clients.

What's an average day like at your office?
We work within a process that is largely deadline-driven. An average day covers a range of things like client communications, creative brainstorming, team collaboration, design and production. We operate as a team on our client engagements. A typical client team would include an account manager, strategic lead, design lead, and production staff.

Describe Ciesa's company culture in three words or less.
Creative problem solving.

What problems do you solve for your clients?
We strategically and tactically connect our clients with their intended audiences with award-winning visual communications. Communication with clients is open and collaborative. We believe that we should be partners in our client's success, not just another vendor. We go to great lengths to foster transparency and trust with our clients.

What challenges do you face as a business?
Probably the biggest challenge is that of education. The digital revolution has created a perception that anyone with a camera/computer can do what we do. It is our challenge to showcase the true value that a strategic marketing team provides.

Where is Ciesa at with screencasting?
I think we can certainly improve on how we use currently use screencasting. The goal will be to use it for not only training, but for many other forms of communication. I could see using this technology for things like web content development and community outreach. We've used Jing many times to produce CMS training tutorials for our clients. They have proven very useful both as reference for clients to use after one-on-one training and for remote virtual training.

What are some potential barriers/concerns you feel about screencasting at Ciesa?
We provide multi-lingual marketing communications to our clients. This type of communication can amplify cultural and language barriers at times.

Watch a sample screencast from CiesaDesign on how to use FTP:


Watch on Screencast.com

Gravity Works

www.gravityworksdesign.com
@gravityworksdd

Lauren Colton, Information Architect and Editor at Gravity Works Design & Development, gave us an inside look at what Gravity Works is all about.

Tell us a little about Gravity Works.
Gravity Works Design & Development serves clients from the heart of historic Old Town, Lansing: we turn "I have an idea" into "you should see this app" for local businesses, state government agencies, national franchises, and international non-profit organizations. For us, technology is more than ones, zeroes, and screen resolutions; our team strengthens brands and bottom lines by improving the lives of people using technology. Gravity Works creates custom solutions--graphic design, websites, and mobile applications--with detail-focused designs and leading-edge development practices.

Where are you at with screencasting?
Our first use of Camtasia for Mac was by developers, recording mobile application features as they appeared in development emulators. With a simple-to-share video, clients quickly see their application in action, and focus on improving mobile user experiences.

The pixels captured on a screen are important because we can track receipts, pass on funny cat pictures, explain ideas, and understand the people we work with every day. Gravity Works is excited to participate in the Camtasia Test Drive because we are focused on the user: from local hockey mom to German-speaking concert attendee, we are harnessing the power of technology to connect people.

Can you share with us some examples of what you do for your clients?
Mobile applications can build powerful communities, connecting people with the resources they want using the functionality they need. Gravity Works developed a custom iPad solution for the ONE Campaign to collect supporter information with engaging features, while providing a strong aesthetic connection to ONE branding.We developed localized keyboards, predictively-populating fields, and a reporting function within the secured administrative system. The application has been used on an international concert tour.

More first impressions are made on mobile devices, and frustrating menus and hard-to-reach content can lose leads. Gravity Works launched a mobile website for Molly Maid. Mobile users are now automatically detected and redirected to an action-driven, informative mobile website designed for on-the-go people with touch-screen devices. But even when clients decide on a mobile website instead of a mobile application, screen capture software can help our design team work more closely with stakeholders.

Watch a sample screencast from Gravity Works on Signing Savvy:


Watch on Screencast.com

Signing Savvy is a video dictionary for American Sign Language (ASL) for real-time ASL learning on iPhone and Android devices created anddesigned by Gravity Works.

Loudpixel

www.loudpixel.com
@loudpixel

Allie Siarto, Co-Founder and Director of Analytics, told us a little more about Loudpixel:

What's your elevator pitch?
Loudpixel is a small company that helps companies make sense out of what's being said about them online. Our core business is based around monitoring social conversations for issues or opportunities and drawing actionable insights based around conversation trends. Watch an overview video.

What are your big goals for the upcoming year?
This is a really exciting year for us. Companies are really starting to catch on to the importance of social media listening and analysis, so we see a huge opportunity to grow our team this year.

How big is your team? How do you operate?
Our company has three founding partners (two in East Lansing, Michigan and one in Palo Alto, California). We also have analysts who are now literally around the world. One lives in Chicago, one just moved from East Lansing to Senegal, Africa, and others work from our office or freelance from home. When we find good people, we don't want to let them go. We can make it work from anywhere, as long as there's a solid Internet connection. Since we're so spread out, we have to get creative about how we communicate with each other.

What's an average day like at your office?
Our clients are all over the country--from East to West. We spend a lot of time on the phone, Skype or email since we can't always meet in person. Our days are typically some combination of coordinating the monitoring and reporting that we do, catching up as a team (almost always virtually) and meeting with current or potential clients (usually virtually).

Describe your company culture in three words.
Decentralized, lean, creative

What challenges do you face as a business?
When we decided to move the business from Chicago to Michigan, we knew we would have to work a little harder on client communications, since we no longer have the option of going a mile down the street to meet with clients and talk them through concepts in person. We deal with complex concepts that require a fair amount of explanation and visual communication.

Where are you at with screencasting?
We've already used Camtasia on a few fronts. We work with some fairly complicated software, and often it's much easier to walk our clients through specific questions visually rather than try to explain with words alone. Since we all run busy schedules and work in different time zones, we've been able to create quick videos in a matter of minutes to walk them through step-by-step directions rather than having to set up a conference call or webinar. It's definitely starting to save us some time.

We're also in the testing stage for a huge upgrade to our software. Since our lead developer is in Palo Alto, we've used Camtasia to walk him through areas in the software where we find bugs or have trouble. That way, he has the reference later when he goes to make the fixes.

Watch a sample screencast from Loudpixel on how they solve problems for clients:

Watch on Screencast.com

Netvantage

www.netvantagemarketing.com
@netvantage

Adam Henige, Co-Founder of Netvantage Marketing, gave us insight into who they are and what they do:

What is your mission?
At Netvantage Marketing our goals are simple, to provide our clients with search engine marketing and social media solutions that provide them a positive ROI.

What problems do you solve for your clients?
Problem statements clients come to us with are typically, "We need more traffic to our website" or "Our rankings have really fallen on Google." I'd say those issues are what bring 80 percent of clients to us.

What's an average day like at your office?
While there's no such thing as a "typical" day at Netvantage, there are some noticeable similarities between everyone's tasks. Our office operates largely independently. People get trained for their position and then are largely given the room to manage their clients. We're less collaborative than most tech companies seem to be, largely because of the task based nature of most of our work. Actually, our office is pretty quiet as most of our internal communication comes via instant messages and the majority of our client communication is through email. So the internet is vital to our day to day activities.

What are some of the ideas you have for ways you might use screencasting in your business?
Camtasia is an exciting product in my eyes as I think there are an enormous number of ways we can use this both internally and externally. Off the top of my head, three uses spring to mind:

• The first and most obvious one is as a supplement to our blog. We do a lot of tutorial type stuff on the blog and being able to quickly make a screencast to add into it makes a lot of sense.
• We're launching a new Google Chrome extension and we've put together a walkthrough of it to help explain how it works. That can be found at www.domainhunterplus.com.
• We're looking to partner with another online service and we may be able to create subscription based SEO tutorials leveraging screencasts.

In the past we've done some video for our website as I have my own video equipment, a degree in film and video production and 4 years of experience in that industry. However, it was limited to standard talking head and graphic-type content because we didn't have any real screencasting software, so that limited our ability to make internal tutorials for staff or leverage it properly for educational pieces on our blog. That is all about to change, however. Truthfully, I'm looking forward to having this available as we continue to grow and find more creative ways to leverage Camtasia both internally and externally.

Watch a sample screencast from Netvantage on their new Google Chrome extension:


Watch on YouTube

Andrea Poole is a customer content specialist at TechSmith. She enjoys singing and playing the ukulele, a cappella music, running, and a good game of Euchre. Tweet her up @andiepoole or put her in a Google+ Circle.

Who are you, and what do you do?
Paul Middlin, Lead Developer on Camtasia:mac

How did you find out about TechSmith?
Mike Malinak had found the company in 2002, while we were in grad school. Said it was a fantastic place. There were about 40 people here at the time. At first I took his ravings with a grain of salt, but when Tony Lambert was equally impressed, I sought out an interview!

What do you like most about working at TechSmith?
We really do have an entire company focused on building and creating useful things. Everything is pushing towards that goal, so as a developer, I feel fully supported and given the tools needed to make that happen.

What setup (hardware + software) are you using?
Mac Pro, working hard with 8 cores, 12gig ram, and an SSD, displayed on an 27" LED Cinema display. Ready to compile.

What was the most interesting thing you've seen and/or done while at TechSmith?
It's not every day that you write a musical about pair programming.

What is a trick that you do all the time that you think not very many people know about?
Get a hotkey for reformatting your code. It'll save your sanity!

Explain how a feature goes from conception to completion on your team
We rely pretty heavily on Dan Latterner's impressive design and workflow skills, and get a pretty good idea where it needs to end up. But, iteration is your friend, especially after some user testing. Most the team watches these and we brainstorm solutions and tweaks together. We've been using task cards and trying to share each feature as much as we can to spread code knowledge.

Explain how your role as a lead developer differs from a regular developer
More meetings ;) Really though I try to represent the technical side of the product in the business team, or core team. I try to help identify areas of growth for fellow devs and do what I can to open doors. I keep an eye on the whole product in order to connect people and look for patterns in what we're working on, to keep us moving forward as fast and as well as possible!

Is there anything else you think people should know about being a developer at TechSmith?
Read that core traits thing on the wiki. We really mean those things. That really is how you rock it as a developer here.

Be sure to watch the full episode of The Forge for in-depth comments from the judges on what they thought worked well and could be improved across each category. There was also some good conversation in the chat room. And you can still view all 15 finalist videos if you haven't seen them yet.

Entertainment Category Winner
Backyard FX FINALE Sword Stab Tutorial

Creator
Garrett Fallin, Grand Island, NY

Audience
Film, TV, and Video editors, creators, and enthusiasts.

Purpose
Teach viewers how to recreate popular digital effects from their favorite movies, TV shows, and videogames.

Tools Used
Quicktime 10 screen capture, Youtube, canon T2i, Rhode Shotgun Mic, After Effects CS5, and Final Cut Pro 7.

Watch on Vimeo

Judges' Comments

• So gross; I loved it.
• Clear audio.
• Mix of live action and screencast content helped me engage with the people and content.
• The how-to showed me exactly what they did.
• The pacing was good for people who know the tools; too fast for those who don't.
• Now I'm gonna go kill people...on video!
• Category advice: consider what's entertaining to the audience

Education Category Winner
Apple Distinguished Educator Application

Creator
Reg Nakoneshny, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

Audience
Educators

Purpose
Application to Apple computers Distinguished Educator program

Watch on Vimeo

Judges' Comments

• Something that other teachers should try to aspire to.
• Really liked technique of framing content within devices
• I want to know how he did some of those effects!
• Category advice: chunk information, title and transcribe for SEO

Industry Category Winner
The new Facebook module on your Jimdo page

Creator
Kerstin Ebert, Hamburg, Germany

Audience
People who use the website building tool "Jimdo"

Purpose
Show users how to integrate and set up the Facebook module on their "Jimdo" website.

Tool used
Camtasia for Mac

Watch on Vimeo

Judges' Comments

• Kept it short, picked great music
• Fun approach made the tool seem accessible
• Worked well as a teaser, which could lead to a more in-depth tutorial
• Category advice: choose & mix music carefully, cut out fluff, use natural-sounding voice

Best in Show Winner
Aussie Football ScreenCast Presentation

Creator
Richard T.Whybrow, Essendon, Victoria, Australia

Audience
Anyone, sport enthusiasts, families

Purpose
Inform people about some of the key skills used to play Australia Football (AFL) and have a bit of fun along the way.

Tools used
Jing, ScreenChomp, Snagit, ScreenCast, iMovie11, Quicktime, PC & Mac

Watch on Vimeo

Congratulations to our four winners, 15 finalists, and a huge thank you to all who submitted videos and voted. This has been a ton of fun for us at TechSmith and, we hope, for screencasters everywhere.

People have asked whether we'll do the ScreenChamp Awards again next year. We'd like to hear your thoughts on that question. Please fill out this 3-question survey with your thoughts, and be entered to win a copy of Camtasia! (Already have Camtasia? You can gift it to someone who might become the next ScreenChamp!)

Daniel Foster is the "social media guy" for TechSmith. He enjoys iceboating, ice cream socials, and isosceles triangles. Tweet him up @fosteronomo or put him in a Google+ Circle.

While I've been traveling the English countryside, meeting some great customers and users... several popular sites went dark and my friends back in Michigan started to hear from some of you about TechSmith's stance on the SOPA PIPA issue.

TechSmith wants to thank our customers who have been in touch with us about SOPA or PIPA. There have been some assumptions regarding our position and while we normally don't engage in political conversations we do want to make our position clear. TechSmith is against piracy of intellectual property for profit-driven purposes, but we don't believe SOPA and PIPA are the solution.

UPDATE: Recording of the ScreenChamp episode is below and posted to YouTube. A more detailed post will follow soon...

Pull back the curtains and roll out the red carpet...we're going live with the ScreenChamp Awards show at 2pm ET, Thursday, January 19!

Like the Oscars or Golden Globes, a celebrity cast will unveil the winners in each category.

Unlike those big name awards shows, we'll try to deliver some thoughtful analysis of the entries to help you improve your own screencast technique. And we probably won't need to bleep Streep!

This is the first year of the ScreenChamps and we're thrilled with the response from the screencasting community! You sent in 100 entries, 15 finalist videos from 7 different countries, and 3,000 votes from 43 countries for Best in Show. Now it's time to celebrate the champion screencasters!

As with every episode of The Forge...if you can't make the live show, we'll miss you! But you can watch the recording later. Just subscribe to our YouTube channel so you know when we post it.

Our panel of expert judges

Joining us live or via the magic that is Skype are...

Entertainment Judge

Steve Garfield, author of Get Seen, on Twitter @stevegarfield, is a very early and well known vlogger and knows more ways to get video online - more easily - than anyone. He is a stickler for ease of use and loves to experiment. Steve works with traditional media companies as well as other types of companies looking to bring video into their content mix. He's also Jimmy Fallon's new BFF.

Industry Judge

Since 2006, @DemoGirl (a.k.a. Molly McDonald) has been creating custom screencasts that drive website traffic, teach people how to use apps, and help them visualize how a product will be useful to them. Molly is adept at gleaning just the right information from a site or application and packaging it for consumption by the general public.

Education Judge

Karl Gude (@karlgude) has been creating news graphics since the late 70s and is one of the few visual journalists who has worked for newspapers, news magazines and wire services. Up until recently, Karl spent nearly a decade as the Director of Information Graphics at Newsweek magazine and also held that position at the The Associated Press and United Press International wire services. Karl left Newsweek in 2006 after accepting a position at Michigan State University's School of Journalism to create an information graphics program.

Daniel Foster is the "social media guy" for TechSmith. He enjoys iceboating, ice cream socials, and isosceles triangles. Tweet him up @fosteronomo or put him in a Google+ Circle.

It's the red carpet event of screencasting! You can tell by all the tuxedo (shirt)-wearing celebrities who will be on hand.

Join us Thursday, January 19, at 2pm (ET) for our monthly live web show, The Forge, where we will announce the winners of the 2011 ScreenChamp Awards. (Add to your calendar )

UPDATE: Click here to watch the live show at 2pm ET or view the recording later.

The ScreenChamp Awards recognize screencasting excellence in three categories: industry, education, and entertainment. On the show, our expert judges will announce the winner they chose in each category, and offer some erudite commentary on what they liked best and what could be improved across the submissions.

Plus we'll reveal the Best in Show winner, as selected by YOUR votes during the end of last year!

Will there be drumrolls? We can only hope!

Ridiculously cool trophies? Certainly!

Aforementioned tuxedo shirts? Being screenprinted this week!

See you Thursday right here on the blog...(no need to don your formal wear, though you certainly can if you're looking for an excuse)!

PS - As with every episode of The Forge...if you can't make the live show, we'll miss you! But you can watch the recording later. Just subscribe to the blog or our YouTube channel so you know when we post it.

Prizes for three category winners! Best in Show gets a trophy & MacBook Pro!

If you're like me, you probably leave your holiday shopping until just about the very last minute. I never intend to but that is what always happens.

I've got some good news for other late shoppers like myself - bypass the long lines at the stores and win a copy of Coach's Eye for that geeky sports fan in your life!

The Coach's Eye team has come up with a list of their top ten gifts for Geeky Sports Fans. To win a copy of Coach's Eye, share your suggestion of a geeky presents for sports fans on the Coach's Eye blog here.

Who are you, and what do you do?
Jim Dusseau. I'm a lead developer currently working on Camtasia Relay. I spent the last few months helping out the Coach's Eye team.

How did you find out about TechSmith?
My manager at my previous company knew I really wanted to develop for the Mac platform. He was a Camtasia Studio user, found out about a mac development position with TechSmith, and let me know about it.

What do you like most about working at TechSmith?
I think great companies are made up of great people. This is true of TechSmith. I'm lucky to work with so many people who are dedicated to making quality products.

What setup (hardware + software) are you using?
I have a hi-res 15" MacBook (2.66Ghz, 8 GB ram). I have a cinema display on my desk, and a half terabyte portable hard drive in my bag. I use a lot of software, but here's the main stuff:

• Xcode, TextMate for Mac development, iOS development, and scripting.
• Parallels, Visual Studio, and NotePad++ when I need to do Windows development.
• Campfire, iChat, Communicator, and Mail for communication.
• DropBox, Evernote, iWork, Alfred, and JumpCut help me stay productive and sane.

What was the most interesting thing you've seen and/or done while at TechSmith?
It's hard to pick out a single thing that was most interesting. If I have to choose just one, I think the Jing 2.0 release was most interesting for me. I was still figuring out how to be a mac developer, we had a tight deadline, and we really struggled with getting MP4 recording working the way we wanted to. It was a release that really opened up the capabilities of Jing, and I'll always be proud of it. Additionally, we were targeting releasing by MacWorld, which happened to be early in January. I have fond memories of developing against a holiday deadline, and the feeling of taking a vacation after being part of a team coming off of a great success.

What is a trick that you do all the time that you think not very many people know about?
Using a clipboard manager has really sped up how I develop. If you're on the mac, I recommend JumpCut. I haven't picked one up for when I'm in Windows yet. If you have ever copied something only to paste it in a text document so that you could copy something else, you could be saving time.

Explain how a feature goes from conception to completion on your team
For Camtasia Relay, everything starts with a problem. It might come from customers at a conference or in from support. It might come from a developer, or someone else within the company. From there, the team investigates a root cause. We then have conversations with our Product Manager, who prioritizes it along with the rest of the work we're undertaking. Once it becomes our top priority, we brainstorm solutions, start with something small, run it by customers, and iterate on the feature until we're satisfied that it solves the root problem in a way that meets our personal standards of quality.

I'm not sure that any feature is ever complete for us. We're always looking for a way that our existing features can be better for our customers.

Explain how your role as a lead developer differs from a regular developer
The primary focus of lead developers is the growth of developers. They're also expected to own the long term health of their product. This means ensuring current development fits in with a vision for the software architecture and being aware of how decisions today will affect our ability to implement the things we want to do in the future. Lead developers also have to have a rough idea of what the other teams are doing to look out for when we can leverage each other's work. This also helps us to share the things the different product teams have learned.

Is there anything else you think people should know about being a developer at TechSmith?
Lead Developer? For me, it's really highlighted how important communication skills are for developers. Being able to express yourself clearly, and having an understanding of where other people are coming from are among the most crucial skills when working on a team.

Voting is now closed! Please join us January 19 on The Forge to find out who wins the category prizes and best in show! Click here to watch live at 2pm ET or view the recording later.

We have an important job for you: determine which screencaster deserves a brand new MacBook Pro (and a bunch of other goodies).

Voting for our ScreenChamp Awards ends Friday, December 16 at 4:00pm ET (21:00 UTC). You can vote once per day, so depending on when you read this you still have 2-3 votes left!

Right now, the leading videos show how to use social media features of a website creation tool, how to operate a library app, and how to play Aussie football. We've got more than 2,300 votes from 42 different countries...but the top two vote-getters are separated by less than 200 votes...so your vote does matter!

Watch videos & vote for ScreenChamp Best in Show

Your votes will determine the Best in Show winner...and we'll also be announcing three category winners on The Forge January 19. (Save the date )

We've assembled a panel of expert judges to choose the winners in each of the three categories: education, industry, and entertainment. They are...

Our panel of expert judges

Entertainment Judge

Steve Garfield, author of Get Seen, on Twitter @stevegarfield, is a very early and well known vlogger and knows more ways to get video online - more easily - than anyone. He is a stickler for ease of use and loves to experiment. Steve works with traditional media companies as well as other types of companies looking to bring video into their content mix. He's also Jimmy Fallon's new BFF.

Industry Judge

Since 2006, @DemoGirl (a.k.a. Molly McDonald) has been creating custom screencasts that drive website traffic, teach people how to use apps, and help them visualize how a product will be useful to them. Molly is adept at gleaning just the right information from a site or application and packaging it for consumption by the general public.

Education Judge

Karl Gude (@karlgude) has been creating news graphics since the late 70s and is one of the few visual journalists who has worked for newspapers, news magazines and wire services. Up until recently, Karl spent nearly a decade as the Director of Information Graphics at Newsweek magazine and also held that position at the The Associated Press and United Press International wire services. Karl left Newsweek in 2006 after accepting a position at Michigan State University's School of Journalism to create an information graphics program.

Let there be TROPHIES!

Bearded screencaster and renaissance man Dan Nunez (@ListenChump) is hard at work building trophies for the four lucky ScreenChamp Award winners. They're gonna be mantlepiece worthy!

Daniel Foster is the "social media guy" for TechSmith. He enjoys iceboating, ice cream socials, and isosceles triangles. Tweet him up @fosteronomo or put him in a Google+ Circle.

I met Dan Nunez when he attended ScreencastCamp earlier this year. One of the sessions he led was called the '10 Commandments of Screencasting'. It was a big hit. Not only was it funny, but it was also informative. I promise, you will laugh and learn some useful tips! Plus, Dan rocks a really cool beard.

Here's a list of Dan's Commandments:

1. Hide the Goods
2. What to put behind you when using camera video
3. Choose the right desktop background
4. Honor your resolution
5. Don't stay thirsty my friends
6. Plainly state your intentions
7. Give your video an appropriate name
8. Shameless plug yourself
9. Get some rest

Do you have any Screencasting Commandments that you'd add to the list? Can you top Dan's beard?!?

Today is the day! Join us right here on the blog (you might have to refresh your browser at 2pm) for a live episode of The Forge! There will be prizes. Oh, yes! You heard me right! Tune in to win some!

Our lineup includes:

• Tips and tricks for Camtasia for Mac and Camtasia Relay
• Daniel Park, a screencast expert, will share with us about what really matters in screencasting.
• Screencast of the Month
• ScreenChamp preview

Tell us what you think of this episode by leaving a comment below or tweeting with the hashtag #tscforge

You can see past episodes of The Forge here. Thanks for tuning in!

One of the best parts of being an evangelist is that I get to share the good news with you. Today is one of those days! Camtasia for Mac 2 is here! You spoke up. We listened. We've redesigned and rebuilt Camtasia for Mac to help you create engaging, high-quality videos...faster, easier, and with more consistency.

What's new in Camtasia for Mac 2?

• Editor tweaks - The editor interface has been redesigned so it's easier and faster to find what you need.
• Extend Frame - this makes it easier to lengthen individual frames of a video to give yourself more time to highlight specific points of interest, or add more time for narration.
• Custom annotations - you can easily copy and paste them into your timeline and reuse the effects throughout your video, or for a future project.
• Annotations - you can point out specific features throughout your video. Easily add speech bubbles, arrows, shapes, lines and more. Additionally, callouts can easily be animated, including the tails of the callouts, to follow certain points of emphasis in the video.
• Tilt and restore animations - these make it easy for users to manipulate video into a more effective display.
• Mobile device frames - now you have a simple and effective way to demonstrate your mobile device apps! Record video of your app in a simulator and showcase the device your app runs on by adding a frame around your videos!
• Cursor FX - Draw attention to mouse clicks by highlighting, magnifying or spotlighting the point of emphasis.
• Blur Effect - now you can easily hide private information on the screen.
• Production tweaks - Produce your videos 40-60% faster with higher quality output. Export an HD-quality file with a flash wrapper and HTML 5 fallback, so no matter where your viewers watch your video, even from a browser that is not Flash-enabled, your content will work.

Download a free, 30-day trial of Camtasia for Mac 2. New users can purchase the software for $99. Already have Camtasia for Mac version 1? Current users can upgrade to version 2 for $49. Camtasia for Mac 2 will also be available in the Mac App Store soon.

And, as always, we want to know what you think about the new release. Feel free to share your thoughts here on the blog or on our new community site. We need to hear what you'd like to see in the next version!

Mini demos of new features

Prizes! Who doesn't like prizes? Tune in on the Visual Lounge Blog (latest post) on Thursday, December 8th at 2:00pm EST to watch this month's episode of The Forge live! You might win some fun swag from TechSmith.

This month's line-up includes:

Tips and tricks for Camtasia for Mac and Camtasia Relay

Daniel Park, a screencast expert, will share with us about what really matters in screencasting.

Screencast of the Month

ScreenChamp preview

New to The Forge? Wonder what it's all about? It's TechSmith's monthly webshow where we talk about screencapture, screencasting, visual communication and more. We share our tips and tricks and chat with interesting guests about a variety of topics to help and inspire you. You never know what will happen on a live show. You can view the archives and past recordings here.