Author: Karen Turpin

TechSmith Relay: YouTube Video Captioning Alert

It has come to our attention that videos that were captioned with TechSmith Relay and published through the profile ‘Caption and Publish to YouTube.com – MCC’ do not publish to YouTube with the captions attached.  TechSmith is working to resolve this issue. We will update you again in January with further information as it becomes available.

If you captioned a video with TechSmith Relay between September 1, 2015 and today, and do not see your captions attached to your video in YouTube, contact me.  I may be able to extract the captions from the Camtasia Studio file that gets stored on the Relay server for your presentation in the .SRT format.  This file then can be attached manually within YouTube to your video.

Workaround Options

If you are creating a presentation with TechSmith Relay and plan to publish to YouTube you can use the following workarounds.

  1. Record your presentation as normal, and then caption it within TechSmith Relay.  Publish to YouTube.  If the captions do not appear, contact me with the name of your presentation and date of your presentation.  I will be able to retrieve the .SRT caption file for you to upload manually to YouTube.
    (Note: I will return from winter break on January 4, 2016 and will complete your request upon my return).
  2. Record your presentation as normal, and then log on to TechSmith Relay.  Click on your presentation and then click on the Preview and Submit tab.  Your captions will appear.  Click the Publish button without editing the captions.  You presentation will publish to YouTube.   Now you can add and create your captions directly in YouTube.
    1. Edit Captions in YouTube
    2. Creating Closed Captions in YouTube

Contact me if you have any questions.

Karen Korstad
Faculty Technology Specialist
kkorstad@miracosta.edu

Silverlight is required on the Mac for Techsmith Relay – Self Hosted

Microsoft Silverlight LogoThe browser plugin Silverlight is required for Mac users of Techsmith Relay-Self Hosted. Without the Silverlight plugin you will be able to record however you will not be able to edit your captions and your presentation will fail to publish to YouTube.

The Silverlight plug is free and available at:
https://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx

After installation be sure to restart your browser. It may also be a good idea to reboot your computer for a fresh start to all of your software applications.

Searching for Images in Google that are free to use

Google has an extensive collection of images available.  Many of them are free to use.  Start by navigating to the following website in your browser.

https://images.google.com

Type in your subject and click the search button. Google Search

On the results page

  1. Click on the Search tools button
  2. Now you can click Size, Color, Type, Time, Usage Rights, or More Tools to search by those characteristics of the image.  More Tools currently allows you to display the image sizes on the results page.

Google Search

For example, if you were looking for a free to use image of a cat in the orange color you could narrow your results in Color and Usage rights as follows.

Google Cats Search

When you want to restart your search:

  1.  Select Clear
  2. Then click the Search Tools button and start your search again.

 

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How to be a Google Power User

If you are using Jing, it is time to upgrade to Snagit.

I had a faculty member this week who has been using the free screencasting tool Jing for some time and uploading the resulting videos to Screencast.com.  He found the tool very easy to use and over time he has built up a collection of videos for his students.   However now that he has been using the tool for awhile and his students have been viewing his videos Screencast.com wants to charge him either $9.95 a month, or $99.95 a year for hosting.  The free account from Screencast.com comes with 2 GB of storage which is plenty for the flash videos that Jing produces, however the 2 GB monthly bandwidth limit is not.  If you pass the monthly bandwidth limit (which you will fairy quickly if you use the tool often) your videos will stop working and you either pay money to Screencast.com or you move your videos off to another hosting location.    Most faculty will pay the $9.95 a month to get the videos streaming again however would prefer a no cost long term solution.

Snagit Logo My current favorite tool for screencasting is Snagit.  You can create videos just as quickly as you did with Jing, but now you can create videos longer than 5 minutes and you can output to a variety of locations for hosting or storage.   You are no longer locked in to producing to Screencast.com.  Although I still use Screencast.com in circumstances where the video is a 1 time use video, anything I plan to keep and that will be watched many times over I either produce to YouTube (which is currently still free) or I save the file as a .mp4 and upload it to 3C Media Solutons (a free media hosting and streaming  service for California Community College Faculty and Staff).

Snagit Output options for PC
Snagit Output option for MAC

The Snagit software is a very inexpensive tool that you will use often.   If you buy the software on Techsmith’s website it retails for $49.  However if you are associated with a school you can get academic pricing for $29.95 at Journey Ed or Academic Superstore. Well worth it. I have not gone an entire day at work without using this tool!

Aside from creating videos, Snagit also creates screenshots that you can decorate with callouts, arrows, and more.  You can produce those to a variety of locations.  My favorite is the output directly to my e-mail. Can’t get any simpler than that when doing tech support.

So I have convinced you to move over to Snagit.  What about your Jing videos you already produced on screencast.com? You want to still use those but don’t want to pay screencast.com $9.95 a month or $99.95 a year for hosting.

Step 1: Log on to screencast.com and download the videos.   I recommend switching yourself over to the Library Beta version of Screencast.com (this is in the right corner after you log on).  When you are in that version you can select all of your videos and then click download.  You will be able to download all your videos as a batch.

Step 2:  The videos you have downloaded in step 1 will be in the  Flash (.swf) format. YouTube and 3C Media solutions will not upload .swf flash files  You have to convert them first.  Many tools exist to convert the videos, however I use  Camtasia Studio.  You can download a trial version that will work for the conversions.  Open the .swf files you downloaded in Camtasia studio.  It will convert the files to .avi files.  Save the file to your computer and then you can upload those to YouTube or 3C Media.  Camtasia Studio even has a utility within it you can upload directly to YouTube.

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