I’d like to introduce you to Christine Fish- one of my LearnCamtasia.com course students and a professional Instructional Designer who will be using Camtasia Studio to produce E-learning. She and I started a conversation in our Camtasia Training Private Forum about how inexpensive it can be to use a professional recording studio, as long as you are completely prepared going in, and how much better your sound quality will be. I asked her to share her thoughts and experiences here.

We know that the quality of the audio is at the top of the list of things that make or break a screencast. But what if your home or office studio or the client’s site just can’t be tweaked enough to produce the quality of audio that the customer is expecting and willing to pay for? Enter the professional recording studio. But wait, isn’t that expensive, especially if you need to make changes later? Not necessarily.

First, do your homework. If you know or can connect to people who are professional voice talents in your community, ask them which studios they prefer and why. My voice instructor, an experienced voice talent, referred me to the studio that I use. It’s not the least expensive studio, but the owner is a professional voice talent and sound engineer with many years experience. And the facilities and equipment are superb.

Your homework should also include visiting studios, talking to the owners and sound engineers and asking lots of questions about their services to determine, for example, what is included in the price, how files will be delivered to you, how far in advance you must schedule and the minimum and maximum time allowed, and what discounts may be available.

My strategy for using a professional studio cost-effectively is to record in batches. This works when I have a client that needs a series of screencast tutorials or a few clients that need a simple screencast within the same time frame. To minimize changes that can result in another trip to the studio, I complete the audio scripts with storyboards and get my clients to sign off on both before I schedule studio time. I also record each script at least twice to have more options when I edit the raw audio files.

Do you use professional recording studios? If so, what other tips would you share?

Christine Fish is an experienced technical communicator, instructional designer, screencaster, artist, and President at Fishco Studios, LLC, in Austin, Texas. She can be reached on LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/fishco ) or on Twitter (@Fishco_Studios).

• Kim posted on January 25, 2012
  Thanks for sharing the great info Christine. Never thought of a professional studio as an option.
• Ginny Murphy posted on January 24, 2012
  This is all good information, Christine, and good advice on any project. The more thinking and preparation you do up ...

Here’s to a Happy New Year and to getting everything that you want out of 2012. Today’s post is a little different as I have spent this entire weekend working on my goals for the upcoming year. How about you?

Today you have a clean slate with a brand new year spread out in front of you, filled with endless possibilities.

How will you harness your potential to create the very best you? I recommend using the teachings of Dr. Maxwell Maltz in his legendary book ‘The New Psycho-Cybernetics’.
Dr. Maltz created the original science of self improvement and success, so who better to turn to when you’re ready to take your life to another level. His teachings have stood the test of time.
Take the following and get all that you want out of 2012:

1) Use Your Imagination

If you thought that imaginations were only valued in preschool, think again. One of the key points in ‘The New Psycho-Cybernetics’ is the technique of using your imagination to reprogram and manage your self image. You may have been exposed to self improvement strategies that tell you to ‘act as if’ or to ‘fake it till you make it.’ Those typically don’t work because your self image is still the same.

According to Dr. Maltz, your self image is the key to changing your actions and habits. If you want to be successful in your Internet business, you first have to think of yourself as someone who is successful.

Spend time in your imagination. See yourself earning a great income from home. Experience a day in your life creating video courses and marketing them.. Imagine everything down to the smallest detail.

According to Dr. Maltz, this imagination time will begin to change your self image to that of a person who is already doing what they love, and your actions and habits will fall into place.

2) Reject Negative Thoughts

Negative thoughts will undoubtedly arise as you use your imagination to see your ideal self. "I’m not really going to learn how to create videos." "I’ve creating videos and screencasts before they always come out crappy. I’m always going to terrible at this." "This imagination stuff is bogus. It won’t work for me."

Dr. Maltz says that the instant you receive a negative thought simply dismiss it. Don’t spend any time on it at all.
The quicker that you dismiss negative thoughts, the less impact they will have on your self image. Also you’ll find that fewer and fewer negative thoughts arise once you get into the habit of dismissal.

3) I’m The Kind Of Person That…

What kind of person are you?

• I’m the kind of person that loves to procrastinate.
• I’m the kind of person that hates learning technical things.
• I’m the kind of person that can’t be successful in my business.

OR

• I’m the kind of person that disciplines myself to learn new techniques.
• I’m the kind of person that implements the things I’ve learned right away.
• I’m the kind of person that runs a home based video service or info product business.

Your self image will fulfill any label that you put on yourself. The power is all in your hands.

What kind of a person do you want to be in 2012? Is using more video and screencasting part of your new years resolutions?

Video files, as I’m sure you know, can be HUGE. Although virtually all video is compressed in some way or another there’s continual effort to find ways to make the files smaller without losing too much quality. Read on and I’ll share my favorites…..

Our goal is always to create videos that effectively balance the need for a small file size, with acceptable output quality, and acceptable compression/decompression speed.  (You know the old saying: “You can choose only 2″.) Your optimal export settings will depend on the source video, the desired output quality, available storage space, and of course the devices on which you’ll be watching the content. There are hundreds of settings and options you can select from – it’s a science unto itself!

So, let’s explore some of the way we can reduce the size.

1) First, try some different Export Presets

In Camtasia Studio, you have many preset options.

Try exporting your video using some of the different options and see if your file size decreases without sacrificing too much quality.

Each preset is optimized for a certain purpose. Some, you will find, will render INCREASED file sizes. The DVD preset, for example, uses a very high quality compression technique that preserves the original image quality. Depending the video source you’re encoding, this preset might give you the best quality output. But if your goal is to decrease your file size, the DVD preset is probably not going to do it for you. If you’re planning on uploading your video to the web, you’ll want to choose the “Web” preset then choose one of the Flash options.  Experiment with MP4, SWF and FLV to see which gives you the smallest size.

2) Reduce the dimensions of your video (width / height)

If your video will be viewed in a player optimized to 640 x 480, for example, you will save a lot of space by exporting your full screen video file scaled down to the actual player size.  You don’t need to change your source video to do this. Simply produce your movie at a smaller size using the “Edit Dimensions” settings in the Preview Window.

3) Reduce the frame rate (frames per second)

A graphic on the side of a truck is a real ‘moving picture’.  Video, on the other hand, is essentially a series of separate still images displayed quickly enough to fool our brain into thinking it’s seeing moving objects. “Frame rate” is the term used to specify how quickly these individual images are displayed per second (i.e. frames per second (fps)). So if you export at 20fps, that means your eyes are processing one still frame every 1/20th of a second. The higher the frame rate, the more data there is in the outputted file, the higher the file size will be.

There a lot of factors to consider when choosing the optimal frame rate, including your source video(s) and the content of your video. But the goal is to create a smooth, high quality-looking video output.

If your frame rate is too low, the video will seem to stutter or jerk – because your eye is perceiving the frames individually, rather than seeing them as continuous. But as you raise your fps, there’s a point at which your eye will not perceive any visible difference. Also, it is possible that if the frame rate is too high it could blur the details of the animation and take so much computer processing power to view that it results in the overall deterioration of your video. In this case the effect would be similar to having a frame rate that is too slow – it would appear to stop and start.

Camtasia’s default frame rate is 15 fps, while motion pictures (cinema) use 30 fps.  Often 5 fps can produce good results for the web, (again, depending on your source content) but you’ll want to try some tests with your own content.

To change your Frame Rate, select Produce then choose Flash (if it’s going on teh Web) then choose Flash Options and you will see the choice of framerate on the video tab.

Once you’ve done some testing, let me know your results. What settings work for you for your particular application? “Comment” below so we can all share in the knowledge!

I get a lot of e-mails from women interested in working from home and wondering if they can use some of their existing skills to become a VA. It’s weird because I almost forget what it was like to NOT know what an autoresponder is or NOT understand the Internet sales funnel. But it seems to me that no matter what you may have done in your working life nothing REALLY prepares you for working on the Internet.  It is like an entirely different world.

That is why I believe that most EVERYONE starts from scratch when they decide to pursue a career that is mainly based on the Internet. No matter which niche you choose you will still need to learn a ton of new things. I think you have to just decide how quickly you need to make money and if you can afford to take training to add to your limited skills.

Below is an e-mail I got this week from a reader with limited Internet skills who is interested in becoming A VA with a niche in Video creation. I though I would share it.

Dear Michelle,

Thank you for your email and congratulations on your achievements as a specialized VA. I have been thinking about becoming a VA for quite a while, but wondering if I have the skills to do so and each time I research the field, I felt overwhelmed with all the skills some of the VAs have, specially their administrative & internet experience.I had a successful 25 year career in the Cruise Industry as a Sales Representative, but I am now ready to have a home-based job and stay away from the Corporate World.I also want to be able to work anywhere. Through my  previous job, I have learned Word, Excel & specially PowerPoint as I had to create my presentations for Customer & Travel agent functions.Do you feel with my limited skills in the administrative & internet world that I could have a successful career as a VA? How long does your Camtasia course take? I am from Montreal, Canada are you aware of many other Canadians doing what you do? Would you recommend any other classes or certifications? i.e. on VA classroom.com

And below are my answers….

Do you feel with my limited skills in the administrative & internet world that I could have a successful career as a VA?

It depends on what you consider "successful", how long you can give it before you HAVE to make good money, and how good you are at marketing yourself. Lots of women get into this field with limited skills and earn about $15/hr and work 20 hours a week for a multiVA firm like the advertisement I sent you the other day and are perfectly content.  You can get lots of VA jobs quickly by going onto a site like Odesk.com and doing a job search for Virtual Assistant.

Others think $50/hr is the least they need to replace their corporate salary and will take the training necessary to obtain the skills to get them this rate and will then market themselves well to be sure they have a steady flow of clients. When I was primarily doing VA work I charged $50/hr and stayed pretty busy doing webinar recording and video creation.  Now I teach those skills to other VAs because I have found I like training and coaching even more. I earn about $60,000 year, but I only work about 25 hours a week. I have two kids and I home school one of them so I can only work part time right now.

How long does your LearnCamtasia.com course take?

If you are interested in learning how to get into video creation and webinar recording I highly recommend you take my Camtasia training course. As far as how long it takes to go through, well, you can do it all in a weekend if you have absolutely nothing else going on and then you can attend the live Q and A calls over the next 6 weeks. OR, you can do the six Modules more slowly and attend the calls asking questions as you go through each Module. I recommend the slow route so you will give your self lots of time to practice. if you are not sure you are ready to go full on into Camtasia you can start out with the course that teaches how to create video tutorials which runs about four hours.

I am from Montreal, Canada are you aware of many other Canadians doing what you do?

Tons- I think 75% of the VAs I know are living in Canada and work for American clients. It’s kind of strange. Why are you all hanging out up there?

Would you recommend any other classes or certifications? i.e. on VA classroom.com

I love the courses at VAclassroom and I teach a course at there called "Become a Virtual Event Specialist."  It teaches you how to help clients with their on-line events such as multispeaker webinars and Internet radio. I get a lot of great feedback on that course.   The benefit of starting out recording webinars is that you get all the training you need for free just by offering to record it at a cheaper price. That is how I started out 3 years ago.

Finally, I want to say that working from home and being a VA was by far the best career choice I ever made. Sure, you will have crappy clients once in a while but, overall, I just love the freedom and the idea that I work for myself and can say “no” to anything I don’t feel like doing. So, no matter what skills you come to the table with the field of Virtual Assistance is really open to anyone.

• Michelle Schoen posted on July 3, 2011
  Vivian- thank you so much for your input and I hope to see you around here with more comments.
• Vivien Ahlf posted on June 19, 2011
  Its like you read my mind! You seem to know so much about this, like you wrote the book in ...
• Susan Fleming posted on May 14, 2011
  Great advice for Michelle and all the others who are thinking about becoming a VA. I got my Internet Marketing ...