Earlier this week I did a video over at SkillCasting.com about using video for your job search. It was about creating videos to share your knowledge and to position yourself as an expert while you’re looking for a job. It was part video and part screencast. What’s key is that I used 2 cameras to shoot it and only ScreenFlow to edit it.
When I saw Lynn Elliot’s post over at the ScreenFlow blog, I thought this might make a good tutorial. And if nothing else, perhaps it’ll plant some ideas as we take screencasting to the next level.
I think incorporating two (or more) cameras into a single screencast keeps it interesting. What do you think? Let me know in the comments.
This is GREAT Scott. Thanks for posting this.
I love the picture that you get from your Zi8 camera. It really gives you great quality. What resolution do you use for that (ie. in ScreenFlow, what do you set your resolution at?)
Also, thanks for the ‘clap’ trick. I hadn’t seen that before, but that’s so simple yet ingenious.
Lynn,
The Zi8 is shot at 720p. I resize my ScreenFlow project to be 1280×720 so they match perfectly. I like the way it looks too.
And yes, the “clapboard” trick is great. Old video secret.
I just got the new ZX3 and can’t wait to try it with this setup. Great job here.
Chris, you’ll have to share with us one of your productions. I’ll be curious to see it.
I’m impressed with the Zi8 and have done several posts on over at SkillCasting.com too.
For this type of a setup, really, any type of camera would work. It’s just about bringing in a second shot and syncing the audio tracks together.
Keep us posted on your work.
Nice Scott! I’m a big fan of Screenflow. I have done over 200 casts with it since v1. V2 is a real time saver.
I have posted a link to your page here from my site. Thanks for doing this.
Larry, thanks for stopping by.
You guys do great screencasts over at Supportcasts.com and I highly recommend your site to anyone looking to learn about Rapidweaver.
And yes, ScreenFlow makes all this so much easier.
Scott,
Do you find that your audio on the USB mic is slightly out of sync with your built in camera? Is that one of the reason you use the clap?
Andre, the clap was because I was using two different camera’s for that video. When I bring in the external video & audio, I need a visual indicator to align the separate video tracks. That’s how I can go back and forth between different cameras but still have the audio stay in sync.
Hi Scott,
Thanks for visiting and commenting on my post (about “how to use a digital voice recorder as a ‘walk-around’ mic”). As you know, I use the same clapboard technique for syncing up the audio in the way you showed here. The simplest techniques are often the most elegant, eh? Great video tutorial.
Also, thanks, too, for validating the issue with iMovie.
That was very very helpful, the clap technique alone saved me an hour.
Hi – Thanks for the brilliant video. The quality is amazing. Any chance you could do a video sometime on exactly how to get that quality – with regards lighting – where you place the mic and so on.
I see you are also using amazon S3 for streaming your video. That seems complicated as well – have you any advice on that – how to set up the player etc.
Screenflow is just fantastic – I agree its just so much easier for these types of presentations than imovie.
Anyway – thanks again for the great tutorial
Robin
Robin, thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you like the quality. It’s really a balancing act between quality and speed.
In this particular video, I was using multiple cameras, the second camera was the Kodak Zi8. With all video, the key is good lighting. This was obviously shot in my home office and to get the lighting where I wanted it, I used several compact florescent bulbs placed in those clip-on holders. You can find these at your local Home Depot. This lights the room (albeit not perfectly) and really helps a pocket camcorder. Otherwise they tend to get too grainy. Since I was using ScreenFlow to record this, I used the audio from my desktop microphone, not from the Zi8. As I pointed out in the video, the key is to sync the two separate (really 3 video tracks if you count the Mac screen video) together with the single audio track captured in ScreenFlow. I know it sounds a little complicated but it’s really pretty easy.
As for the S3 streaming, I wanted to move from YouTube (although I still place videos on YouTube for SEO and general promotion) to S3 because it gives me a little more control. I do a lot of client work and sometimes need more than 15 minutes for training videos. It also gives me the option of having them be a little more private. In the end, I believe it’s important to host and control your own digital assets. S3 enables that at a very affordable rate. I also started using Easy Video Player [aff] because it integrates well S3, automatically handles Amazon CloudFront CDN, and gives me some advanced options for players and marketing. I found this to be the easiest solution and well worth the price.
If you have more questions, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll help anyway I can.
Scott I really like your tips, and the player seems to work well with S3.
A little more easy to use solution that provides good control over your contact is Vimeo.com.
We have the Pro option for $ 50 a year and we have several hundred videos posted for our internal work project and we lock the videos down to just our pages with a single click, and they can be quite large as well, some over an hour of instruction. Robin, you might look at both and see which meets your needs.
Hi Ross
I had signed up with Vimeo only to then discover that they don’t like you to upload videos that are used for commercial websites http://vimeo.com/guidelines#uploading_guidelines
Then I tried streamingvideoprovider.co.uk and to be honest I found that the quality of their streaming was much better than vimeo – whatever Vimeo do to the uploaded file always seems to mess it up.
But SVP is more expensive than Amazon S3 – so it depends on how many views you think you will be getting.
Ross, thanks for the input on Vimeo. For a lot of users, it maybe the perfect solution. I really like their quality of HD videos. It’s a great community too.
I want to encourage everyone to carefully read the terms of service for all the free hosting services like Vimeo, Blip, and YouTube to make sure they meet your needs. Some of them explicitly state they don’t support “commercial” type videos. That means a video that is selling something could be removed without notice and your account can be closed. I realize for a lot people that isn’t a big deal but I just want to make sure you’re aware of it.
Great point, Scott. We’re selling access _to_ the videos, not selling anything _in_ them, that might be why we haven’t experienced any takedowns.
Do you ever notice any audio drift (sync issues) when using this strategy with different models of cameras?
I would like to try this with my Cannon HV30 and use my Kodak zi8 and iPhone to get 3 different angles. Or I might just buy 2 additional Zi8′s if it comes out bad.
Dr. Dan,
I haven’t had any drift issues myself. And since I usually make cuts anyway, I can move a track if I need to.
I keep my Canon as primary because the picture is the best. I also use the Canon as the primary audio track too. I’ll use an external mic and capture it to the Canon.
I’ve got 2 Zi8′s myself that I use for secondary cameras. I place the Zi8′s off to the sides. You’ll notice a quality difference but you can compensate by applying some filters, changing brightness, or even adjusting it to black and white for a cool effect.
And since I capture the audio from the Canon with an external mic, I have great primary audio track.
Nice topic. I like the idea of having a multiple screenshots. But could anyone give some some information on how to work on it with the multiple cameras? i would appreciate it. Thanks.
Eric, you may find this post helpful: Building a Multi-Camera Video with ScreenFlow http://blogs.telestream.net/screenflow/2010/12/building-a-multi-camera-video-using-screenflow/