As you can see below, I posted a screencast earlier today. I’ve been wanting to get into videoblogging for a while, but video’s a new thing for me and I wasn’t happy with my previous attempts. Screencasting, though, looks like it might be right up my alley. I’m hoping to post more OS X tips, as well as a series on Mac applications and on web-related things.

The whole screencasting process was pretty straightforward; however, I did learn a thing or two along the way that might be useful to others, so I thought I’d get these thoughts down while they’re fresh.

SCREEN CAPTURE SOFTWARE
I started recording using Jing, but abandoned that program because of the limited options available for setting the video size, audio encoding, etc. For down-and-dirty screencasts, I’d definitely give Jing another try, but I just didn’t think it’d work for me for this project.

Instead, I recorded this screencast using Screenflick, which I found to be dead easy to use. Screenflick (formerly Screencast; $29) has all the features I need and a very nice user interface, and even includes Mouseposé-type functionality for showing mouse clicks and screen presses during recording. I recorded at 800×600px, which is a little larger than I might have liked, but ended up as a good balance between file size and viewable screen real estate.

I also have a copy of SnapzProX that I picked up from MacHeist, and I plan to give that a try in the future.

SUPPORTING SOFTWARE
I created my script in Scrivener, but I could have used any other text editor just as well. Scrivener was open on the left side of my screen, just outside the boundaries of my recording area. TextEdit served as my quickie slide display, but I might use Stickies next time for a bit of color and for the simplified window.

After recording, I tried to add titles with iMovie 6, but the new interface has me a flummoxed. The only thing I really wanted to add was my website and email address, so for the sake of getting something posted I figured I’d just roll with the raw video as I shot it and worry about the other bits next time.

VisualHub handled the conversion of the video from .mov to .flv, and WordTube is the plugin I’m using with WordPress to display the flash file.

I used Panic Software’s most excellent Transmit to upload the video to my blog’s uploads directory on Dreamhost.

AUDIO HARDWARE
I used an inexpensive Radio Shack omnidirectional dynamic mic, mounted on a boom mic stand and plugged into a Griffin iMic, which is in turn plugged into my MacBook Pro. I don’t get quite as much gain as I might like out of this setup, but I think the audio is certainly acceptable, and the rig is pretty simple; no mixer or external drives to deal with.

THE PROCESS
I knew I’d want to keep the video as small as possible, but attempts to record at 480×320 just weren’t working. I couldn’t display enough of the preferences panes that people could see what I was talking about. So I settled on 800×600 and 30fps. I’ll probably play with frame rates in the future to keep the file size down, too.

After several failed attempts at recording off the cuff, I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted to say, so I wrote a brief outline of all my talking points in Scrivener. I probably won’t shortcut this process next time as, in essence, my first attempts were research for the final recording. Once that research was done, the final recording was pretty easy.

After I had finished the recording, I set Screenflick’s video compression to H.264 (medium quality, millions of colors, 30fps) and audio settings to AAC (44.100kHz, Mono, 64 kbps). Clicking the Save icon put a Quicktime .mov file on my desktop.

Once I had weighed the different options for hosting, sharing, and displaying the video online (see below), I used VisualHub to convert the mov file to an swf, which I uploaded to WordPress only to find out that that’s not the best format to use with WordTube, as the whole file has to load before it will start playing. I wanted the file to play as it loads, so I re-converted the mov to an flv file, and that worked as I expected.

Note that I also had VisualHub re-size the video to 550×412 to fit the space on my blog. This, I discovered, was actually a little too large when in the single post view, so next time I’m going to shoot for a width of around 500px.

SHARING THE VIDEO
I looked at blip.tv, Vimeo, Viddler, Kyte, and Ooyala (thank you, Deepak). Each of these are essentially video hosting sites; the first four emphasize their directory and community features, while Ooyala is meant more for the serious videoblogger who’s willing to pay a small amount for hosting in return for some advanced analytics and monetization tools.

In the end, I decided that I wanted to host the files myself and keep the videos on my site exclusively. I could see making a different choice for two reasons: 1) if I start blowing through my bandwidth allocation; and 2) if I decide that facilitating conversation around my video is more important to me. For now, especially because I’m still in a learning mode with this, I want to keep things on my own site.

I also want to say that I think there’s a benefit to keeping my video in the context of my own site. Or, I should say, in NOT having my video as part of a larger pool of videos. Hmmm… this is hard to describe as it’s more a feeling I have than a complete thought. I think what I’m trying to say is that you can get a more complete understanding of the screencast through the images and colors on my blog and through the surrounding content than you can if the screencast is part of a general mishmash of competing content.

Or something. Maybe I’ll return to that thought later. Anyway…

CONCERNS
Even though my site gets a pretty low amount of traffic and Dreamhost has a pretty generous hosting plan, I’m concerned about my bandwidth. If I decide later that I still don’t want to post my screencast on one of the hosting services like blip.tv or Viddler, I’ll probably look into getting an Amazon S3 account.

I’ve also got to be careful about the information I display. I realized after the fact that I opened up Keychain Access for the world to see. I don’t think there’s anything incriminating in there, but unintentionally revealing private data is definitely something I have to be more careful about next time.

At just over 14 minutes, I think the screencast is a little long. In future I’ll try to keep them to around 5 minutes. That should make the whole process faster, which will definitely keep me motivated to produce more.

Finally, the video I end up with isn’t really iPhone friendly. I do most of my video viewing on my iPhone these days, so I want to look into ways to make sure other iPhone users can download this content easily. That might mean using a different screen ratio and posting a link to the quicktime file in addition to embedding the flash file.

WORKFLOW
Even with a lot of starting and stopping and lots of time spent on research and troubleshooting, I started recording at about 7:30 last night and posted the video just after noon today. So the whole process took between 7 and 8 hours… not bad for a first attempt, actually. My goal is to get that down to an hour or so, which I think is definitely possible if I keep the screencasts shorter and refine my technique. Next time, I’ll try the following workflow and let you know how it goes.

• Research
• Outline
• Prepare the environment (hide icons, change background, etc.)
• Record (800×600px)
• Save as H.264 video (try 15-20 fps), AAC audio (mono)
• Transcode from mov to flv using VisualHub (resize to 500×375px)
• Upload flv to wp-content/uploads folder and add the file to the WordTube plugin database
• Post
• Pour a glass of wine and watch an episode of the Thunder Show

I’d love to hear from you: is this useful information? Do you have any ideas or tips for me? Comment here, or email me.

I’m really not particular about a lot of things, you know? I’m not generally brand-driven or anything, but I do occasionally settle on some things I like. Apple computers, Levi’s jeans, Hershey’s chocolate syrup… these I’m partial to.

And pens. I love my Zebra Jimnie Gel Antique ink pens. I love that instead of blue, black and green, the Jimnie Gel Antiques come in colors like cobalt, earth, and forest. I like writing with these pens because my scrawls looks different than the scrawls of 99% of the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, the Jimnie Gel Antique line has been discontinued, and I’ve been nursing the last of my stock and ordering replacements from the one place online that has any left: Board Room Products. As I placed my order last week, I wondered what I’d do when Board Room’s stock ran out.

So, imagine how pleased I was Friday when my pens arrived and the following message appeared on my invoice:

Because these pens have been discontinued for some time, in some of the pens the ink has evaporated. On the pens which this has happened, we charged you $1.00 for those pens. You might want to try the Sarasa pen in those colors.

How awesome is that? I probably wouldn’t have noticed that some of the ink was missing in these pens, but Board Room Products did me a solid anyway. AND they noticed that I liked these particular colors, and offered me an alternative that I didn’t even know existed.

So, these guys get my business from now on because, as Seth Godin says, they did something remarkable: they personalized an otherwise impersonal experience. It took someone probably three extra minutes out of their day to enter the order and write that note, and it made a loyal customer out of me. Good job, Board Room… and thanks!

I’ve been privileged to help organize Seattle Mind Camp over the past couple of years. One of the main reasons that project started was to bring the Seattle tech community together, to create more opportunities for interaction among local entrepreneurs and other passionate technologists. Events like Ignite Seattle, Biznik, and Lunch 2.0, have helped strengthen this sense of community over the past few years.

But in addition to these well-publicized events, there are dozens of other meetups, workshops, and gatherings going on in our fair city. Despite the appearance of services such as Eventful and Upcoming, there is still no single place on the web where you can discover all these smaller gatherings. That’s why I’m pleased to announce a new blog:

Meet at the Pig, a Seattle events blog for geeks, techies, hackers, and makers.

Meet at the Pig is the brainchild and passion of Justin Martenstein, and I’m happy that he asked me to help work on the site. Each week, we’ll track meetups, workshops, lunches, conferences, and other events of interest to the local geek community. We’ll add as many events as we can to Upcoming, and then highlight some of the more interesting events on the main page of Meet at the Pig.

The title of the blog comes from the brass pig at Pike Market, a popular landmark that’s often used as a gathering point for groups heading out to some downtown restaurant, bar, or event. Eventually, we hope that Meet at the Pig will be the one place on the web where Seattle-area geeks gather to find out what’s happening. Hope you’ll join us there.

This is my brother, Scott. My brother rocks.

My brother has been a loyal, enthusiastic, and productive employee of Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena for years. He built important chunks of the software that lets the robots exploring our solar system and scientists here on earth talk to each other. He’s currently the lead driver of the Mars rovers.

However, Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 says that my brother has to let “any investigator” at “any federal agency” have access to “any information” about him that they deem the slightest bit interesting. If he doesn’t consent to this egregious violation of his civil liberties, he’ll lose his job.

So, he’s organized HSPD12JPL.org in order to fight back.

I don’t have the words to express how infuriating this situation is. Suffice it to say that I’m as pissed off at this stupid directive as I am proud of my little brother. And that’s saying something.

Do me a favor, would you? Just click to watch this short video, and maybe read a little bit at HSPD12JPL.org, just so you know what’s going on. And then ask yourself: do you want NASA and other publicly funded institutions to lose some of the top engineers and scientists in the world on account of some tinpot dictator with delusions of grandeur? If not, then you know what to do.

I don’t know about you, but for me this summer has flown by. Seems like I’ve been busier than all get-out, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what with. Between visiting friends, attending events, working, and just general life maintenance, it’s been a full and enjoyable few months.

I thought this might be a good time for little project update. Here’s what we’ve been up to at The New Big:

Seattle Mind Camp

Andru, Justin, and I met briefly last week to lay the groundwork for Seattle Mind Camp 3.0 in November. Watch the Mind Camp blog and mailing list for announcments about upcoming planning meetings. We don’t have a firm date yet, but we’re looking at the first two weekends in November.

Seattle Podcasting Network

SPN continues to roll along with monthly meetups. Blog posting has been light for the summer, but that doesn’t mean we’ve been entirely inactive. We kicked off the Passionate Podcasters Contest, offering a Rane MP 4 mixer to the most creative podcaster.

Continue reading “The New Big update … Summer ’06” »