4 June 2021

Camtasia 2021 Adds Powerful Features For Smart Looking Videos

TechSmith has been providing applications that people who prepare documentation or instructional information need since 1990. The screen capture program, SnagIt, is something I use daily. Although SnagIt can capture and edit basic videos, Camtasia is essential for more complex productions.

The just-released 2021 version brings lots of new features that TechSmith instructional designer and master trainer Jason Valade was anxious to share.

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One of the most useful new features is an improved recording window that shows a miniaturized image of the webcam if the recording is using the webcam. That makes it possible for presenters to be sure that they're always centered. It also shows the microphone level to avoid recordings that are too loud or too quiet. The window remains on the screen during a recording session, but Camtasia doesn't record it. Masking keeps the capture window from showing up in the video.

Animation isn't new to Camtasia. It's been easy to move text and images around on the screen for a long time and to resize them during the process. A new feature in the 2021 version is called motion blur. During the time that an asset is moving, Camtasia can blur it to create a more convincing motion effect.

The program is smart enough to know when to apply the blur effect. It can be dropped onto an object that is on the screen for the entire duration of the video, but the blur effect is limited to only those periods when the object is moving.

Picture-in-picture is also not new, but now it's possible to rotate the inset picture on X, Y, and Z axes and to add corner rounding so that the small image is round, an oval, or even a teardrop shape.

An evolutionary change this year allows the user to toggle effects off and on so they can be disabled without being deleted. Previously users had to render the video to see if an effect provided the desired look and feel, so the ability to activate and deactivate effects can save a considerable amount of time.

Until now, all recordings were saved to a default directory. This is still the case, but now saving a project by default creates a "standalone" project that copies all of the assets to a special directory. This is a plus for organization and also makes projects portable so that they can be moved from one location to another or handed off to another user.

Opening old projects in the 2021 version will update them. As is common with most programs, updated documents cannot be opened in old version.

The 2021 version hasn't ignored audio, either. Auto-ducking added. This is a process that can automatically reduce the volume of audio tracks other than the main narration track so that music and sound effects don't overpower the voice.

It's been possible to edit the audio track manually to control volume, but this is something that people who are unfamiliar with audio processing will have a problem with. The automated process has settings for when the volume reduction kicks in, when it tapers off, how quick the "ramps" are, and how much the audio is reduced.

A professional audio engineer would do a better job, of course, but the automated process works well and requires virtually no effort from the user. TechSmith offers Audiate (at left) for those who want more audio processing, such as the ability to reduce sibilants and plosives, level the volume, adjust the equalization, and remove background noises such as that from a fan. Audiate is a subscription add-on for $300 per year, and it can also transcribe the speaker's words for use in subtitles.

Track matting was introduced in Camtasia 2020 and has been enhanced in the 2021 version. This feature can be used to allow a busy background to punch through lettering while otherwise being hidden.

Seventy-five new video transition effects have been added, but beware! It's easy to overuse effects, which makes them distractions in the finished video and can give the presentation an amateurish look.

Today even phones can capture 4K video, and that's a problem for video editing applications — and even more so if the computer doesn't have the most robust video subsystem. Camtasia can create lower-resolution proxy video that will play properly in the editor without dropping frames. This makes editing faster and more accurate. When the project is rendered, Camtasia uses the full-resolution video.

Components can now be grouped so that common features can be changed. Grouping several text objects, for example, makes it possible to change the color or font with a single modification instead of several.

Other useful additions include a quick property editor that can be used to guide co-workers to create consistent projects; basic color grading can be done using look-up tables (LUTs); and the program's main screen has links directly to instructional videos, on-line help, and other useful items.

 Instructional videos and documentation need Camtasia

Although TechSmith's $50 SnagIt application offers the ability to record and edit basic videos, more complex needs are better served by Camtasia. Anyone who creates how-to videos, product demonstrations, video lessons, or presentations should look at Camtasia. A new license for Camtasia costs $250 and users of earlier versions can upgrade for $140.
Additional details are available on the TechSmith website.
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Short Circuits

Avoiding Adware. Malware, And Other Nasties

The 2020 State of Malware report by Malwarebytes says that social engineering, cryptomining, and ransomware are being targeted more at business and government targets than at home users because the crooks get a bigger payout from those larger targets. After all, Colonial Pipeline paid ransomware hackers $5 million so that it could regain its data and resume operations.

This is the second in a series of items that will be the included in Short Circuits over the next few weeks.

Although commercial targets are the preferred victims for tier-one crooks, there are still plenty of less capable crooks who are still trying to trick individuals into divulging login credentials or to install unwanted software on their computers. The unwanted applications can set up cryptomining operations that make the computer run slow, they can encrypt the user's data to initiate a ransom demand, or they can watch for the user to connect to a bank or other financial institution. The possibilities are limited only by the crooks' imaginations.

Some other unwanted applications are adware, programs that don't carry malware, but are designed to trick people into downloading malware or to collect as much personal information as possible to enable identity theft. Cryptomining is a growth area. Malware allows criminals to use some of your computer's processing power to mine Bitcoin and other digital currency.

Do you need a third-party protective application? Microsoft Security, part of Windows Defender, is far more robust than it once was, and the Windows firewall now is able to provide two-way monitoring, but it's still a bit substandard. Previously, the Windows firewall monitored only traffic from the internet to your computer, but not connections that initiated on your computer. This has been resolved, but a third-party firewall can help.

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The free Comodo Personal Firewall is a good choice, but take care during the installation. The installer (1) and (2) will add the Comodo Dragon Web Browser and Internet Security Essentials unless you open the Options dialog, select Components and de-select the two optional items. Later in the setup process, you can decide (3) whether you want Comodo to provide DNS services and whether you want Yahoo to be your browser's home page. I declined both offers.

The Comodo firewall does offer a (4) detailed view of what the firewall is doing.

Reliving 1960 Thanks To The Library

DVDs, online streaming services, and even some television stations make it possible to view old motion pictures and television programs. One of my favorite TV programs was Rocky and Bullwinkle. Recently all episodes from the five seasons that the program was on network television have been released on a single set of DVDs.

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends, the Complete Series is available on DVDs from the library. The five seasons are on 18 discs. The 18-disc set includes 4 double-sided discs, so it's the equivalent of 22 standard DVDs. The 163 episodes run for nearly 62 hours. After waiting for a few months, I was able to obtain the full series from the library.

And ... wow! A couple of decades ago a set of VHS tapes was released, but they included only a small subset of the programs. The DVDs have everything.

How does technology apply here? Well, I used the internet to reserve the set of DVDs online at the library? That's a tenuous link at best, so maybe I should just be honest here and say that this segment is simply a celebration of a low-rated television program that somehow still resonates with some people more than 60 years later.

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Rocky and Bullwinkle ran for five years starting in 1959 and is still remembered. Fondly. The audio was bad and the Foley work was even worse. The animation was low budget at best. Sometimes the characters had three fingers and a thumb, sometimes four.

But the voice work, writing, satire, irony, and intelligence were superb. Both the scripts and the animated sequences were designed to amuse children, but they contained an endless stream of word games, puns, and the occasional double entendre comment or image that appealed to teens and some components that appealed to adults. Some people have called it "a well-written radio program with pictures."

The premiere broadcast was on ABC in November 1959, Rocky and His Friends ran on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, followed by American Bandstand. The show moved to the NBC in 1961 and ran on Sundays at 7pm as a lead-in to Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, but it was opposite Lassie and that hurt ratings.

NBC moved the show to late Sunday afternoons in 1963 and then to early Saturday afternoons in its final season. The show was canceled in 1964. ABC wasn't interested in new episodes, but ran old episodes on Sunday mornings until 1973. After that, Rocky and Bullwinkle, went into syndication running on Nickelodeon from 1992 until 1996, then on the Cartoon Network until 2005.

Jay Ward and Bill Scott created the series and ten voice artists brought it to life:

• June Foray was Rocky, but she also voiced Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, various witches, princesses, and hags in Fractured Fairy Tales, and just about every other female character in the show. She was 99 years old when she died in 2017. Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!
  
• Paul Frees voiced Boris Badenov, Captain Peter "Wrong-way" Peachfuzz, moon man Cloyd, Inspector Fenwick, various historical figures in Peabody's Improbable History, and was sometimes the narrator for Dudley Do-Right. He died in 1986 at age 66.
• Bill Scott was Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Fearless Leader, Mr. Peabody, moon man Gidney, Mr. Big, and others. He was only 65 when he died in 1985. Yankee go home!
  
• Edward Everett Horton was the narrator for Fractured Fairy Tales. He died in 1970 at the age of 84. Introducing the painter who wanted to make shoes.
  
• Hans Conried voiced Snidely Whiplash and died in 1982 at the age of 64.
• William Conrad was the narrator for Rocky and Bullwinkle episodes and sometimes for Dudley Do-Right episodes. Conrad was 73 when he died in 1994. The opening scene for a Dudley Do-Right episode.
  
• Walter Tetley provided the voice for Sherman, Mr Peabody's boy. He was just 60 years old when he died in 1975.
• Charlie Ruggles was the voice of Aesop. When he died in 1970, he was 84 years old.
• Daws Butler played the part Aesop Junior, and also voiced several other characters in the Fractured Fairy Tales and Aesop and Son segments. He died at age 71 in 1988.
• Hal Smith played a variety of characters and was 77 when he died in 1994.
• Show co-creator Jay Ward was 69 when at his death in 1989, and that eliminated any chance of the series being reanimated (so to speak).

Several years before the BBC introduced the time-traveling Doctor Who, Mister Peabody and his boy, Sherman, were traveling through history in the wayback machine. They met Alfred Nobel when he was inventing TNT. Mr Peabody and Sherman meet Alfred Nobel.

Does the mid-1960s radio series Chickenman owe a debt to Rocky and Bullwinkle? I think so. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, Futurama, Disenchantment, and Life in Hell says that he was inspired by the moose and squirrel. So was I. Mister Peabody introduced himself: "My name is Peabody. I suppose you know yours." I stole that line in 1960 and have used it repeatedly since then. Bullwinkle's "I may be patriotic, but I'm not crazy," struck a chord for some of us.

The Washington Post wrote about 15 favorite lines from the show. These included Bullwinkle's "Well, if you can't believe what you read in a comic book, what can you believe?" Also, the announcer's "Well, you're just in time for what might be a very unhappy ending." Rocky's "And now, here's something we hope you'll really like!" And Inspector Fenwick's comment to Snidely Whiplash when he accidentally married Dudley Do-Right's horse, which everyone had mistaken as the inspector's daughter, Nell, "I shall hate to call you 'son', Whiplash, but perhaps I can elongate it a bit and make it come out all right." A line like that would fly right over the heads of most children, but teens and adults knew exactly what Fenwick had in mind.

Spare Parts

Consumers Won't Easily Surrender Covid-Era Conveniences

Covid changed just about everything. You probably consume more take-out food than ever before. Maybe you've come to expect online grocery ordering with pick-up or delivery. What about curb-side pickup for pet food, paint from the hardware store, and office supplies? Retailers will drop these new services at their peril according to research by January Digital and Coresight Research.

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The company says the research shows about half of consumers consider fast and free deliveries to be essential. The same is true for easy returns and the ability to buy products online for in-store pickup. In other words, it appears that Covid seems to have permanently changed the way people want to deal with stores.

As the world comes out of the pandemic, 50% of US consumers expect fast, free delivery to remain when choosing a retailer or brand to shop, while nearly 50% say the same of easy, free product returns for online orders. The ability to view and purchase the same products in-store and online was the other feature that was considered "very important" by more than one-third of consumers. When broken down further by age demographic, over 34% of US consumers under the age of 45 ranked buy online pick up in-store (BOPIS) and curbside options as "very important" over the ability to view and purchase the same products in-store and online.

You can view the full report, Year of Agility—What Post-ish Covid-19 Consumer Behavior Looks Like Right Now, online.

Suddenly, Budgeting Is In

Another effect of the pandemic is an increase in budgeting by individuals and households. Before the pandemic, 68% of people said that they budgeted. Now it's 80%, and nearly 90% said that everyone should budget.

The survey by Debt.com shows that more people are now budgeting. “Something as simple as picking up some pen and paper and writing down your expenses can get you out of debt,” according to Debt.com chairman and CPA Howard Dvorkin. “It can’t hurt you to budget, but it can definitely hurt you if you don’t.”

Some of the other findings of the 2021 survey include:

• 88% said everyone should budget.
• Over 60% said they prefer pen and paper while only 9% use apps for budgeting.
• Nearly twice as many people, 62% said they will save throughout the year for holidays compared to 33% in 2019 who said the same.

The full report is on the Debt.com website.

Twenty Years Ago: IncrediMail Had Just Launched

It was going to be a new kind of email. I wrote "I used to watch movies and, when one of the actors was using e-mail, I'd mutter, "C'mon! There aren't any e-mail programs like that!" Well, I can't do that any more. Now there is an e-mail program just like what you see in the movies."

It was a fun program to use and included background images, animations, and more. Sent messages folded up and disappeared into the screen. When mail arrives, it was announced by one of several available avatars. The most amusing part of the program, I wrote, is the variety of 3D effects available. Besides being able to choose the effects you want, you can create your own and plug them in.

It caught on and eventually attracted 4 million users, but IncrediMail posted this message last year: As of March 20, 2020, we will shut down our servers and the IncrediMail desktop application will no longer be available. "All of our IncrediMail graphics, letters, eCards, animations, emoticons, sounds, notifiers, skins and any other IncrediMail assets as well as any additional services such as Gold Gallery, IncrediMail Plus and the Protection Center, will no longer be available."

Well, it was fun while it lasted.