http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Screen-Captures A listing of the most recently indexed works about Screen Captures in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Screen-Captures http://tc.eserver.org/35340.html http://tc.eserver.org/35340.html Checklist of key criteria for selecting a tool to take screen captures (screenshots / screen dumps). Screen captures are used within all forms of software documentation, such as user manuals, online help files, interactive demos and tutorials, but also for web sites and brochures. http://tc.eserver.org/35341.html http://tc.eserver.org/35341.html Checklist of key criteria for selecting a tool to create interactive software demos (so-called screencasts). Software demos are not only used on web sites but increasingly also as standalone tutorials or embedded within online help files and other sorts of software documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35342.html http://tc.eserver.org/35342.html Market overview of recommendable tools for creating screen captures (screenshots, screen dumps). Screen captures are required within all forms of software documentation, such as user manuals, online help files, interactive demos and tutorials, but also for web sites and brochures. http://tc.eserver.org/35345.html http://tc.eserver.org/35345.html Screenshots oder Screencaptures). Benötigt werden Screenshots in allen Formen von Software-Dokumentation, z.B. für Handbücher, Online-Hilfen, interaktive Demos und Tutorials, aber auch für Webseiten oder Broschüren. http://tc.eserver.org/35346.html http://tc.eserver.org/35346.html Checkliste der wichtigsten Kriterien für die Auswahl eines Tools zum Erstellen interaktiver Software-Demos (engl. Screencasts). Verwendet werden Software-Demos oder Screencasts nicht nur auf Webseiten, sondern häufig auch als Ergänzung zur Technischen Dokumentation für Software: z.B. als eigenständiges Tutorial oder auch als integrativer Bestandteil einer Online-Hilfe oder sonstiger Software-Dokumentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35347.html http://tc.eserver.org/35347.html Überblick über empfehlenswerte Tools zum Erstellen von Bildschirmfotos (engl. Screen Captures, Screenshots oder Screen Dumps). Screenshots werden in allen Formen von Software-Dokumentation benötigt, z.B. für Handbücher, Online-Hilfen, interaktive Demos und Tutorials, sowie auf Webseiten und in Broschüren. http://tc.eserver.org/35348.html http://tc.eserver.org/35348.html Marktüberblick über empfehlenswerte Tools zum Erstellen von Software-Demos (engl. Screencasts). Software-Demos werden nicht nur für Marketing-Zwecke auf Webseiten verwendet, sondern häufig auch als Ergänzung zur Technischen Dokumentation von Software: z.B. als eigenständiges Tutorial oder auch als integrativer Bestandteil einer Online-Hilfe oder sonstiger Software-Dokumentation. http://tc.eserver.org/35303.html http://tc.eserver.org/35303.html Just as I would with words, I'll cut out the obvious and whatever does not add value. I prefer an additive approach (put it in only when the words seem inadequate) over a subtractive approach (take it out if it seems superfluous). In other words, I'll be more open to screen shots in the future, but they have to work themselves into the document, not just be their by entitlement until expelled. http://tc.eserver.org/34912.html http://tc.eserver.org/34912.html This article describes the process of capturing screens and reviews some of the leading capture tools available. It is revised annually to take account of new releases, and was last updated in February 2009. http://tc.eserver.org/34794.html http://tc.eserver.org/34794.html TechSmith asked me to create a video on using Audacity to edit narrations. Since the use of Audacity will be useful to many I've uploaded it here too. The screencast covers removing background noise, breathing and lip smacks, dynamic range compression, volume normalisation, fades and de-essing using the volume control. http://tc.eserver.org/34795.html http://tc.eserver.org/34795.html Advice on how to get started giving screencasts, why you might want to do it and how to establish your recording studio. Then we move into planning the capture of your screencast and a few tips on using some presentation tools. http://tc.eserver.org/34796.html http://tc.eserver.org/34796.html Covers how to begin and conclude your cast and a bit about postprocessing. Then we cover your behavior during your talk and how to get your screencast distributed to others. http://tc.eserver.org/34798.html http://tc.eserver.org/34798.html In this series of videos we'll demonstrate some of the basics of making screencasts in Linux. In addition, we'll show how to encode your original video file into another video type and illustrate some basic editing techniques. http://tc.eserver.org/34788.html http://tc.eserver.org/34788.html Writing more simply helps keep content more manageable and can increase its usability. So why do we continue to litter content with screen captures, which can be difficult to manage and often duplicate what users already see in application interfaces? http://tc.eserver.org/34671.html http://tc.eserver.org/34671.html The inclusion of audio in online learning courses not only greatly enhances learners' experiences, it also ensures that your courses are accessible to a wide audience. In this article I explore the various ways you can add audio to your Captivate projects. I also provide a number of tips on adding a narration to product demonstrations and presentations. http://tc.eserver.org/34652.html http://tc.eserver.org/34652.html Screencasting, or sharing your virtual desktop via video presentation, has exploded in popularity with the advent of podcasting, and gives you the ability to bring the classroom feel to a media presentation that can be delivered over the Internet. The medium of screencasting is readily available to everyone and with a few tools of the trade you can be ready to produce your own. http://tc.eserver.org/34653.html http://tc.eserver.org/34653.html If you provide end-user technical support, people likely ask you about the same software tasks over and over again. What's more, you've probably discovered that not everyone responds well to text or verbal instructions. What if you could send those people a brief video showing the procedure, accompanied by your voice walking through the important concepts? http://tc.eserver.org/34654.html http://tc.eserver.org/34654.html This primer is an introduction to screencasting. It covers the what, why, and how to get started. You will also find examples of screencasts and additional how-to resources. http://tc.eserver.org/34655.html http://tc.eserver.org/34655.html A screencast is a digital movie in which the setting is partly or wholly a computer screen, and in which audio narration describes the on-screen action. It's not a new idea. The screencaster's tools—for video capture, editing, and production of compressed files—have long been used to market software products, and to train people in the use of those products. What's new is the emergence of a genre of documentary filmmaking that tells stories about software-based cultures like Wikipedia, del.icio.us, and content remixing. These uses of the medium, along with a new breed of lightweight software demonstrations, inspired the collaborative coining of a new term, screencast. http://tc.eserver.org/34656.html http://tc.eserver.org/34656.html In general, screencasting is a three-step process: capture of audio and video, editing, and production of a compressed deliverable. Camtasia combines all three functions in a single, integrated application, but in principle they're separable. I can imagine using Camtasia (or an equivalent) for capture, Premiere (or an equivalent) for editing, and Camtasia (or an equivalent) to produce a compressed .SWF file. http://tc.eserver.org/34657.html http://tc.eserver.org/34657.html This is our renewed screencast resource. We discuss software, techniques and technologies and offer suggestions and tutorials to create the best onscreen demonstrations. We also have a useful resource directory that hopefully may direct you towards the best screencast stuff online. http://tc.eserver.org/34658.html http://tc.eserver.org/34658.html While putting together a good tutorial movie for your blog or for an article you’re writing requires some thought and preparation, and would benefit from extra time spent on post-processing, the good news is that capturing screen shots and screen movies can be done inexpensively on a Mac. Although I take a glance at the wider context of preparing an entire tutorial and give you some tips along the way, my focus here is on the low-cost software you can use. http://tc.eserver.org/34659.html http://tc.eserver.org/34659.html Screencasting -- the not-so-ancient art of recording the computer screen for the entertainment and enrichment of others -- has evolved into quite a Hydra of options. How do the myriad gladiators in this arena stack up? I've tried everything I could find that could record a little movement on the screen, and selected 8 contenders for the matchup. http://tc.eserver.org/34551.html http://tc.eserver.org/34551.html A discussion of how to plan for the use of time in video documentation projects. http://tc.eserver.org/34019.html http://tc.eserver.org/34019.html Most technical writers would include at least a few images to illustrate a point, or screen shots that accompany the description of a certain step-by-step procedure, etc. Organizing such images can really become a problem, especially when you have dozens and hundreds of them. Finding, editing, and importing them can quickly become a logistical nightmare, especially when a technical writer is working under a deadline pressure. Here are four ideas to organize and name your images for higher productivity. http://tc.eserver.org/33849.html http://tc.eserver.org/33849.html Here's a quick tutorial about screen captures, thus the title. If you're not sure what a screen capture is, then think about the pages you've seen lately. Maybe some of them have had specific sections of the desktop or a program made into an image. It was almost as if they captured part of the screen as an image. http://tc.eserver.org/33699.html http://tc.eserver.org/33699.html The quickest video solution for uploading Jing videos to a SharePoint directory. This process requires a few minutes of setup, but once you set it up, it literally takes just five clicks to initiate, capture, and publish a video to SharePoint. http://tc.eserver.org/32537.html http://tc.eserver.org/32537.html CamStudio is a free and open-source software package for Microsoft Windows that is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs). http://tc.eserver.org/32262.html http://tc.eserver.org/32262.html In a continuation of a previous introductory article about screencasting, Archee continues the discussion by delving deeper into the history, benefits, usefulness, and future of this powerful technical communication tool. http://tc.eserver.org/32045.html http://tc.eserver.org/32045.html I have spent the last two weeks switching between Captivate and Camtasia Studio. Talk about schizophrenic. I spent a lot of time trying to remember which command I had to use in which program, but overall it’s been an interesting experience. http://tc.eserver.org/31845.html http://tc.eserver.org/31845.html How do you best assist users whose learning styles are more visual than verbal? Tietjen discusses the benefits and the how-to of screencasting, a mixture of visuals, audio, and complementary text. http://tc.eserver.org/31768.html http://tc.eserver.org/31768.html Have you ever pressed the PrtScn (print screen) key on your Windows keyboard and wondered why it was there since it never seemed to do anything? Well, it does do something! It copies an image of your screen onto the "clipboard," ready to paste into any graphics program. These steps show you how to use it along with Windows' standard image editor, Microsoft Paint, to save an image of your screen. http://tc.eserver.org/31082.html http://tc.eserver.org/31082.html Screencasting has numerous advantages for software training: the added realism of the screen versus paper-based or static online screens, ease of use, and low cost. Archee reviews two popular programs. http://tc.eserver.org/29885.html http://tc.eserver.org/29885.html An introduction to generating screen captures from Microsoft Windows computers. Consider your deliverables; where is the screen capture going to be used and seen by the customer? This helps you determine how you need to create your screen capture. http://tc.eserver.org/27644.html http://tc.eserver.org/27644.html Describes the important attributes of a capture tool and examines and compares the features of five popular products. http://tc.eserver.org/24160.html http://tc.eserver.org/24160.html None of the previous studies on screen captures addressed the functions in the framework. There was no empirical research on any of the four functions of screen captures. This article presents our research on these functions. Each section starts with a brief explanation of the function. Next, we illustrate the screen capture designs used to test the function. The remainder of each section explains the setup and results of the empirical study. The article ends with some general conclusions about the functions of screen captures. http://tc.eserver.org/23492.html http://tc.eserver.org/23492.html How to produce screenshots which include the mouse-pointer. http://tc.eserver.org/21854.html http://tc.eserver.org/21854.html The elusive screen, captured at last. http://tc.eserver.org/19670.html http://tc.eserver.org/19670.html Everyone knows that detailed pictures are a necessary supplement for technical documentation. For those who create software manuals, this means screen captures—images of what users see as they look at the monitor. http://tc.eserver.org/18648.html http://tc.eserver.org/18648.html I spent a little time exploring two screen-capture software packages and found out that on the surface, they're a lot alike. Both programs offer the garden variety of formats for saving screen captures (BMP, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and TGA), and in both cases special tools for optimizing output are available. For example, when saving an image as a bitmap (BMP) using either program you can select a bit depth anywhere between one and 32. http://tc.eserver.org/15104.html http://tc.eserver.org/15104.html Advocates using screen shots, text balloons, arrows, and scannable text to create picture-like documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/15201.html http://tc.eserver.org/15201.html Asserts that screen captures aren't as necessary and helpful as many writers of documentation might think. http://tc.eserver.org/14416.html http://tc.eserver.org/14416.html Screen recordings are a valuable tool for enhancing training, tutorials, manuals and websites. Companies use this technique to produce streaming and downloadable content. The recording tools are readily available and affordable. In this article, we explore some techniques, tips and tricks for recording sound, mouse movement and happenings from your screen to an AVI file. We will talk in both general terms and use specific examples. The examples pertain to HyperCam, a downloadable screen recording application from Hyperionics Technology. Like most screen recording applications, HyperCam captures the action from your Windows screen -- including cursor movements and sound -- and saves it to an AVI movie file. http://tc.eserver.org/14144.html http://tc.eserver.org/14144.html This document is about making screen captures for technical writers working primarily in a Microsoft Windows environment. The tools targeted include Adobe FrameMaker, Microsoft Word, Adobe Acrobat, along with Techsmith’s SnagIt, Adobe Photoshop, and Ulead’s PhotoImpact 4.2. Certainly, the thoughts and techniques mentioned herein can be applied to other professions, other operating systems, and other tools. http://tc.eserver.org/13759.html http://tc.eserver.org/13759.html This study set out to validate the supportive role of screen captures for switching attention. Forty-two participants learned how to work with Microsoft Excel with a paper manual. There were three types of manuals: a textual manual, a visual manual with full-screen captures, and a visual manual with a mixture of partial- and full-screen captures. The findings show that participants in all conditions looked up from the manual to the screen on about 97% of the cases in which such a switch was called for. Rank order analyses showed that users of the visual manuals switched attention significantly more often than did users of the textual manual. No differences were found between conditions on learning effects and training time. http://tc.eserver.org/13566.html http://tc.eserver.org/13566.html Software user guides use up an awful lot of space with screen shots. But I know what the screen looks like -- it's right in front of me. Any decent GUI design is self-documenting to some extent, at least. No matter how much we complain about them, GUIs have gotten pretty good. Children have them figured out in minutes. And then they start asking questions like, 'How do I make my stick man move around?' Computers are toasters or drawing pads to them. That's another reason user guides don't work: the average user doesn't need one anymore. http://tc.eserver.org/10869.html http://tc.eserver.org/10869.html Most tech writers have their favorite software for capturing and processing static screen shots. I won’t compare these applications or try to tell you how to use them. Instead, I’ll give you techniques that help you produce the best possible screen shots, no matter what application you choose. This article assumes that you’ve taken screen shots before. It uses terms like “hot keys” and “time delay” and “capture cursor.” If you don’t know what these terms mean, look them up in the help for your screen capture software. They represent standard features that are found in most screen capture applications. http://tc.eserver.org/10363.html http://tc.eserver.org/10363.html While screen captures are the most widely used illustrations in manuals, there is almost no literature on their role and design. In this paper we draw together practice, theory and empirical research to advance a taxonomy that identifies these roles and designs. We suggest that screen captures in software documentation can help the user to switch attention, develop a mental model of the program, verify screen states, and identify and locate window elements and objects. Four important design areas (coverage, positioning, size, and cueing) are distinguished and empirical findings discussed. Research has substantiated the claim that screen captures speed up task completion, but others have yet to be proven. We believe that a more refined approach, afforded by the taxonomy, is likely to improve practice and research, and yield strong evidence supporting the use of screen captures in software documentation.