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Re: Re: Camtasia, Captivate, and other commercial or freebies
Subject:Re: Re: Camtasia, Captivate, and other commercial or freebies From:"Bob Doyle" <bobdoyle -at- skybuilders -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 6 Sep 2007 11:52:27 -0400
Hi Abby,
This is very helpful. We would like to have "chapter" headings in a table of
contents.
But our problem is that our original material consists of live
presentations. They are typically meetings of one of our DITA User Groups.
The last meeting of the Texas group made a camcorder video recording, then
compressed it to a windows media file. It was a big file, but the
presentation slide text was unreadable. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=310315252619117256
Next week we will record Boston and Silicon Valley DITA meetings. The
meetings will be attended remotely using a conferencing tool that is
optimized for online learning called Elluminate (http://www.elluminate.com).
The speaker will do application sharing with Elluminate. So we will see not
only a Powerpoint presentation, but also a demo of editing DITA files with
the PTC Arbortext editor.
Our current plan is to record with Camtasia.
Where a segment is just a Powerpoint slide, we hope to replace the Camtasia
video recording with a single slide image (to reduce the file size).
Where a segment is a demo of editing in Arbortext, we will need the video to
capture the mouse moves, etc.
Does this make sense?
If any tech writers are in the Boston area and would like to attend the demo
at PTC in Needham, I attach the meeting notice below.
Cheers,
Bob.
_______________________________
Our first Fall meeting will be Monday, September 10, at PTC in Needham at
6:30.
*Speakers: Jay Dupont, Product Manager, and Paula Ploetz, Senior Technical
Writer, PTC*
*Topic: Content Migration to DITA at PTC.*
PTC will tell us how they migrated corporate documentation to DITA
following the acquisition last year of Arbortext. This presentation
will present a case study of how and why PTC's technical writers
changed their process and learned new skills leveraging XML, DITA, and
Content Management.
The meeting starts with light snacks and networking at 6:30PM.
The presentation starts at 7PM.
We meet at PTC Headquarters in Needham, MA
140 Kendrick St
Needham, MA 02494
(781) 370-5000
I found it hard to get to PTC, so I include a map.
Coming from the North on 128/95, take exit 19B to Highland Ave, go
right (west), turn left on Hunting Road, then turn left over 128 on Kendrick
Street.
Turn right into the PTC campus,
go straight through to the parking garage entrance on the right at the end.
Coming from the South on 128, take exit 19A, turn left on Highland, go over
128 to Hunting Road as above.
Please RSVP to me (editor -at- cmsreview -dot- com) so we can inform our hosts.
*Attend the meeting remotely?*
If you would like to test attending our meetings virtually, I will send you
details on how to log in.
______________________
*Future meetings:*
October Meeting
We will meet Thursday, October 18 at the DocTrain East Conference in Lowell,
Mass, at the DoubleTree Inn.
*Speaker* Amber Swope
Principal Consultant Justsystems na.justsystems.com
*Topic* *Bookmap Tutorial: *
*Designing, creating and using DITA 1.1bookmaps*
If you are publishing DITA content to pdf, the bookmap specialization in
DITA 1.1 may be a good choice for you. Come learn about what the
specialization supports, see a demo on how to design and create a bookmap,
and discuss best practices for using bookmaps to generate output.
*Place* Doubletree Hotel 50 Warren Street Lowell, MA 01852 http://www.doctrain.com/east/venue
*Time* October 18, 2007, 5 - 8PM
Reception 5 - 6PM
Networking 6 - 6:30
Presentation 6:30 - 8PM
Dinner (dutch) 8PM at a restaurant in Lowell.
Come to the general DocTrain reception at 5PM.
We will gather for networking and Amber's presentation at 6:00
Join us for a dinner after the presentation. Please RSVP and mention
specifically if you would like to join us at
dinner.
_______________________________________
On 9/6/07, Abby Klemmer <aklemmer -at- factset -dot- com> wrote:
>
>
> Bob -
>
> Have you tried using Camtasia to record long pieces in several segments
> (chapters)? That's been our strategy, and it's worked very well for us. We
> then stitch all the chapters together using Camtasia Theater (included in
> Camtasia Studio), and all the chapters play automatically in sequence. This
> eliminates the "one huge file" problem. It also has two added benefits:
>
> (a) Camtasia Theater creates a clickable table of contents so that users
> can navigate between chapters at will if they wish. This wasn't even in our
> original specs, but it's been a huge hit, and I suspect there would be riots
> if the feature were removed now.
> (b) Working with smaller AVI files makes things simpler in the Camtasia
> Studio authoring environment -- for example, you can tweak one part and
> republish the SWF without having to re-publish everything.
>
> Hope this is helpful!
>
> Abby Klemmer
> Knowledge Specialist
> FactSet Research Systems Inc.
>
> *www.factset.com* <http://www.factset.com/>
>
>
>
> Bob Doyle wrote:
>
> > With Camtasia we have recorded presentations longer than an hour. Last
> > night David recorded a SecondLife meeting of DITA Users on the virtual
> DITA
> > Island.
> >
> > But then the files are huge. (80MB for an hour) So we are now trying to
> get
> > the visuals track to just be a succession of Powerpoint slides. The
> trick is
> > to get the timing of each slide change at the correct point in the
> audio.
>
>
>
>
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