{"id":12272,"date":"2012-03-24T10:28:24","date_gmt":"2012-03-24T10:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=12272"},"modified":"2012-03-24T10:28:24","modified_gmt":"2012-03-24T10:28:24","slug":"if-the-mountain-wont-come-to-the-use-techsmith-camtasia-for-your-demos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aidanfinn.com\/?p=12272","title":{"rendered":"If The Mountain Won\u2019t Come To \u2026 Then Use TechSmith Camtasia For Your Demos"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you read this blog or follow me on Twitter<\/a> then you know I do a lot of demos.  You might also know that my work laptop, aka \u201cThe Beast\u201d, is pretty powerful and I\u2019ve been using it to demo stuff like Windows Intune, Windows 8 Hyper-V, and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.  But sometimes you need more \u2026. like a couple of servers so you can demo NIC teaming, clustering, Hyper-V Replica, Live Migration, and so forth.  It\u2019s one thing to lug around The Beast, but it\u2019s a whole other deal to ship around servers and their networking!<\/p>\n

So how am I going to demo this stuff on the road?  The answer should<\/em> be be The RDS Gateway to remotely log into the environment and show it off.  Regular followers know that I couldn\u2019t even get reliable Internet access in hotels when I was trying to log into the Windows Intune portal on a recent Intune roadshow for partners.  1 of the 3 hotels worked OK, 1 I had to use y 3G \u201cMi-fi\u201d (barely got a signal), and 1 required me distracting with 1 hand while tricking with the other.  Hotel internet on this island (Belfast is actually worse than The Republic, which is surprising to me) is awful and cannot be depended on for a live demo.<\/p>\n

So if I can\u2019t carry servers about, and I can\u2019t reliably RDP into them (like I should be able to), then what do I do?  Unfortunately, the answer is canned demos.  I don\u2019t like doing this; the audience appreciates it less and I don\u2019t get the same buzz when pressing CTRL + P to pause and un-pause a recorded video.  Though there was a lot of fun during the W2008 launch in Dublin \u2026. but that\u2019s a whole other Oscar-esque story.<\/p>\n

So what tool do I use for this?  I\u2019ve acquired a copy of TechSmith Camtasia<\/a> to record videos (can do sound as well) of my demos.  Instead of doing the usual demo, I\u2019ll play the resulting videos and pause where required to speak over them.<\/p>\n

I needed some Hyper-V demos for a road show next week so I started recording as soon as I got Camtasia yesterday.  It was so easy to use.  It wouldn\u2019t work on Windows Server 8 but I wasn\u2019t surprised \u2026 it\u2019s a whole new OS still in Beta.  I\u2019m sure that support will come in time.  Instead, I installed it on my Windows 7 installation on my laptop, RDPd into my server and recorded.  Recording and editing was such a breeze.  I wish everything was this intuitive and easy.  Pick your screen selection (full screen or area), sound or not, hit record.  Stop the recording, save the raw data, and then edit to clip out bits where required.  I\u2019ve used this to clean up the start\/ends and to trim out the progress bar stuff that kills precious time in a presentation.  You then can \u201cproduce\u201d a final video in a size\/quality of your choosing depending on purpose (presentation, web, etc).  I recorded (set the laptop resolution) in a projector friendly resolution of 1200 * 768; the natural 1900 * whatever would have produce a few dots on the screen for viewers of the presentation.  The resulting MP4 files were actually only a few MB which is great.<\/p>\n

I tweeted that I was recording with it and almost immediately I was asked if I\u2019d be sharing videos.  Yeah, I will \u2013 after I\u2019ve done the partner road show next week \u2013 there\u2019s no audio so you won\u2019t learn much but you will see a few Windows Server 8 things in action I suppose.<\/p>\n

Anyway, based on my experience so far, Camtasia has been a nice acquisition.  I haven\u2019t even learned what it can actually do beyond the basics that I\u2019ve used it for.  I expect there\u2019s much more!<\/p>\n

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If you read this blog or follow me on Twitter then you know I do a lot of demos.  You might also know that my work laptop, aka \u201cThe Beast\u201d, is pretty powerful and I\u2019ve been using it to demo stuff like Windows Intune, Windows 8 Hyper-V, and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager.  But sometimes … Continue reading “If The Mountain Won\u2019t Come To \u2026 Then Use TechSmith Camtasia For Your Demos”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t