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March 27, 2015

Adobe Captivate: Six Ways to Use Voiceover Scripts

by Jennie Ruby

I often point out in my classes on writing eLearning voiceover scripts that a script is necessary so that when you record the audio you don't skip anything, don't stumble, and don't say "um." However, using a voiceover script for eLearning is way more useful than just that.

Let's say for example that your eLearning project will be developed in Adobe Captivate. Captivate allows you to type–or copy and paste–the script into Slide Notes, similar to the slide notes you might be familiar with in PowerPoint. From there, you can use the notes in several different ways.

Adobe Captivate: Slide Notes

First, just as in PowerPoint, you can create handouts that print the Slide Notes along with an image of each slide, like this:

PowerPoint notes.

Second, if you are going to record the voiceover yourself, you can display the notes in the recording dialog box, like a miniature teleprompter, for your ease in recording the audio. At the bottom of the recording window, click the Captions & Slide Notes button to display the notes.

The slide notes.

Third, if you are hiring voiceover talent to record the audio, you can provide the script to that professional, slide by slide, so that he or she can record the audio for each slide separately.

Voiceover scripts

Then, fourth, once you either record the audio yourself or import the recordings from your voiceover talent, you may need closed captioning. Once you have pasted the voiceover script phrase by phrase into the Slide Notes pane, you can create the closed captioning just by clicking a check box.

Adobe Captivate CC's.

And if you have accurately divided the script into phrases as shown above, it will automatically be synchronized with the audio. Below, you can see the yellow markers indicating the closed caption that goes with each audio segment.

Closed captions synchronized

Fifth, suppose instead of hiring voiceover talent and instead of recording the audio yourself, you decide to go with Text to Speech. Since Captivate comes with several high-quality computerized voices from NeoSpeech, this is a viable option. Just as with the closed captioning, creating the Text to Speech from the Slide Notes is very easy. In the Slide Notes pane, you click the TTS check box.

Text to Speech

Then you open the Speech Management dialog box, where the Slide Notes are automatically imported, click the Generate Text button at the bottom, and you've got your voiceover audio.

Speech Management dialog box

And as before, to get closed captions with that, you just click the Audio CC check box.

Sixth, and finally, if you are creating accessible eLearning that is 508 compliant, then the final thing you can do from that one voiceover script is automatically import the Slide Notes to the Slide Accessibility dialog box. This contains the text to be read by screen readers, for those accessing the training through audio only.

Slide Accessibility

So, let me count them up–yep, that would be six (6) ways to use a voiceover script to help in the development of eLearning with Adobe Captivate. By starting with a good voiceover script, you not only create a clear and well-planned audio, but you also save tons of work by using the script to automatically generate any or all of these aspects of your eLearning project.

Are your scripts up to the task? Join me for my afternoon mini course on how to write a good voiceover script.

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Need more help with your script? Look for our hourly consulting service. We'll help you evaluate, substantively edit, or rewrite your voiceover script to make sure it is up to par.

March 23, 2015

Adobe Presenter: Get Control of Slide Titles and the TOC

by Jennie Ruby

When you add a sidebar to your project in Adobe Presenter, you have the option of displaying a table of contents (TOC), which in Presenter is called the Outline. The Outline automatically lists the title of each slide, and viewers can click any title to navigate to that slide. Sweet! But let's say you preview your project, and one or more slides turns up in the Outline as "Slide x," where x = the slide number. Not quite as sweet. A slide title like "Slide 5" tells your viewer nothing, making navigation using the Outline a matter of guesswork.

The solution to this problem is not difficult, but it does require visiting a number of places in your presentation and in Presenter. First, you need to know how Presenter got the titles for the slides that are listed correctly in your Outline. If your slide has a Title placeholder in PowerPoint, Adobe Presenter picks up that title automatically. So one solution is simply to give every slide in your presentation a title.

However, you may not want a title to appear on every slide. Some slides might be images or graphics only. No problem. You can still assign the slide a title in Presenter that will only be displayed in the Outline.

On the Adobe Presenter tab of the Ribbon, from the Tools group, click Slide Manager.

The Slide Manager dialog box lists all of the slides in your project. Notice in my example below that slides 1 and 2 have titles (in quotes after the slide numbers), but slides 3 and 4 do not.

Among the options for each slide is Navigation Name. Click the word None, replace it with the title you want to have displayed in the sidebar Outline, click the OK button, and you are done.

However, in my case, since these slides are just images, I decided not to give each a unique name. Instead, I want it to be clear from the sidebar Outline that these are merely continuations of the previous titled topic. For each, I want the navigation name to be (Continued). Now, I could give each one that navigation name right here in the Slide Manager, but there is a way to cover all unnamed slides at once.

After closing the Slide Manager, click the Theme tool on the Ribbon.

At the bottom of the Adobe Presenter Theme Editor, click the Modify Text Labels button.

Scroll to the bottom of the list of labels, and the second to last one is Unnamed slide title.

Double-click the text Slide %n and replace it with (Continued).

Click the OK button to save your change. Click the OK button on the Theme Editor to close it.

Now, when you preview your project, all of the unnamed slides show up as (Continued) in the Outline. As a bonus, this word also appears in the list of Thumbnails.

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Check out my mini courses on Adobe Presenter. To attend my class, all you need is access to the Internet, Microsoft PowerPoint, and a trial version of Presenter. Find out how easy it is to transform your existing PowerPoint decks into fully functioning eLearning.

March 19, 2015

Adobe Captivate: Slow Down Your Speech Agent

by Kevin Siegel

Using Captivate's Text to Speech feature allows you to quickly convert written text to voiceover audio. It's an awesome feature. However, we recently had a client who felt that Paul (that was the Speech Agent we used for the project) spoke too fast. The client wanted to know if we cloud slow him down a bit.

While you might think that controlling the cadence used by the Speech Agent was beyond your control, it's actually really easy. Prior to converting a slide note to speech, just add a bit of code (known as Voice Text Markup Language or VTML) to the text.

For example, if you want a Speech Agent to say I am an awesome person, all that you would normally have to do is write the text in the Notes window, click the TTS check box and then click Text to Speech.

In the Speech Management dialog box, select a Speech Agent and then click Generate Audio.

If you feel like the resulting voiceover audio is too fast or too slow, you can change the speed. In the slide Note, add the following code in front of the text: <vtml_speed value="50">. At the end of the text, type </vtml_speed>.

Click the Text to Speech button and regenerate the audio (the existing audio will be replaced with the new audio file). You'll find that the agent's speed has been cut in half (thanks to the 50 you added as part of the VTML code). You can experiment with the speed values until you find a speed that works best for you and/or your client.

If you'd like to learn more about VTML or see more tags, review the users guide for the VTML Tag Set by clicking here.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn more Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

March 13, 2015

Adobe Presenter: Synchronizing Voiceover Audio with Slide Builds

by Jennie Ruby

Suppose you have hired voiceover talent to record the audio for your Adobe Presenter project. You give the voiceover artist the script. The script is organized by which slide in your PowerPoint presentation each audio segment belongs to. When you get the voiceover recordings back, you just import each segment to the slide it belongs to. When you preview your presentation, everything plays smooth as silk until–there is a click-activated animation on slide 12. Now, as the pre-recorded audio plays, the slide just sits there, and the animation is never activated. Uh-oh.

That's where synchronization comes in. In Adobe Presenter, you can synchronize slide animation with the imported audio in just a few mouse clicks.

Start with the animated slide active in PowerPoint's Normal view. The animation in my example slide is a simple text build, with each bullet point appearing on mouse click.

From the Presenter tab on the Ribbon, go to the Audio group and click the Sync button.

Adobe Presenter: Sync

The presentation opens in Slideshow view, and the Synchronize dialog box opens. At the left, click the green Sync-change timings button.

Adobe Presenter: Sync button.

The audio begins to play, and the Next animation tool becomes available.

Adobe Presenter: Next Animation tool

When the audio mentions the next bullet point, click the Next animation tool to cue the animation.

Click through the remaining animations on the slide, then click the square Stop button.

Now that you have synchronized the audio with the animations, click the Play button to review your work. The slide audio plays, and the animations occur at the points where you clicked. If you are satisfied with the results, click Save. Otherwise, click Discard and try again.

Close the Synchronize dialog box and you'll find that your project now sports perfectly synchronized audio and animations.

Note: You could synchronize a longer audio clip across multiple slides. However, for ease of corrections and updates, the best practice is to have a separate audio clip for each slide.

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March 11, 2015

TechSmith Camtasia: Recording Effects

by Kevin Siegel

When Camtasia developers need to add attention-grabbing visual affects to a software demonstration created using the Camtasia Recorder, the work is typically accomplished by editing the recording in Camtasia Studio. However, using Camtasia's Effects Toolbar, you can add several attention-grabbing visuals while you are recording your video.

Start the Camtasia Recorder. Enable the Effects toolbar by choosing Tools > Recording toolbars and selecting Effects (click the OK button to close the Recording toolbars dialog box).

Create a video by clicking the Rec button on the Camtasia Recorder.
After the 3-2-1 countdown, the Effects tools appear on the Recording toolbar.

Select the ScreenDraw tool to display different Drawing tools. You can select from among frames, lines, highlights, ellipses and even a pen.

At this point, you can use the tools to draw all kinds of shapes on the screen (at the same time that you're creating the video).

Camtasia: Images drawn on the screen while creating a video.

Note: You can erase all of the screen drawings by once again clicking the ScreenDraw tool.

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March 4, 2015

Adobe Presenter Video Express: Identify Yourself

by Jennie Ruby

I watched a documentary the other day featuring a number of interviews with different speakers. When each speaker appeared for the first time, text displayed near the bottom of the screen to identify the person being interviewed. In fact, when that person appeared again later in the film, the text appeared again briefly to remind the audience who was talking. When you create a self-video with Adobe Presenter Video Express, you can do the exact same thing to identify yourself.

Here's how to add descriptive text to any section of a video:

After you've recorded a video, open it in the Adobe Presenter Video Express editor.

Place the playhead at the point in the video where you want the identifying text to appear. Since this is going to be identifying text, you'll want to place it at the first point where you appear in the video.

At the lower left, click the Branding tool to open the branding pane.

Adobe Presenter Video Express, Branding Pane.

At the bottom of the branding pane, under Lower Third Text, enter your name and job title.

Adobe Presenter Video Express, Lower Third Text.

At the lower right, you can also set how many seconds you want the text to stay onscreen.

When you play the video, the identifying text appears, just like in a documentary. Here I am in my starring role as Human Resources Director, in my upcoming video, A Tour of Headquarters.

Adobe Presenter Video Express, text added.

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Looking for training on Adobe Presenter? You can't go wrong with our $79 mini courses. Get up to speed in three hours on Adobe Presenter or on Video Express, or sign up for both. Learn more.

March 3, 2015

Camtasia Studio: Animations Made Easy

by Kevin Siegel

When I teach Camtasia, one of the activities that garners the largest "that's cool" factor is how easy it is to animate any object. During class, we not only animate an object, we get it to grow and rotate while it's flying around the screen. Sound awesome? Here's how to do it:

Insert an object onto the Camtasia stage (you can animate anything… in the image below I've added a rectangle callout, added a bit of text and positioned it in the middle of the stage).

Camtasia Studio: A callout added to the stage.

Extend the playtime for the object so it sticks around for a bit (right-click the object on the Timeline and choose Duration). In the image below, I have extended the duration for my callout to 20 seconds.

Camtasia Studio: Duration extension.

Now for the fun part, to animate the object, position the playhead as far left on the Timeline as it will go.

Ensure the object you want to animate is selected and choose Tools > Visual Properties. On the Visual Properties panel, click the Add animation button.

Camtasia Studio: Add Animation button

On the Timeline, the selected object now sports a blue circle. The blue circle is an animation's starting point.

On the Stage, drag the object left to remove it temporarily from the stage.

Camtasia Studio: Object off of the stage.

On the Timeline, position the Playhead 5 or 10 seconds to the right of the first blue circle.

Camtasia Studio: Playhead positioned right.

On the Stage, ensure that the object is still selected and click the Add animation button on the Visual Properties panel to add a second blue circle to the Timeline.

Camtasia Studio: Second animation added.

On the Stage, drag the object to the middle of the Stage.

In the images below, I've added a third animation (and then, on the Stage, I dragged my object to a third position… and I resized and rotated it to boot… if you're following along, you can add as many or few animations to the Timeline as you like).

Camtasia Studio: Final animation added.

To test the animation, rewind the video and then click the Play button on the Video Preview playbar.

Go ahead, say it… that's pretty cool! If you'd like to see a video demonstration of adding animations to a Camtasia project, check out the IconLogic YouTube channel.

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If you'd like to learn more about eLearning, come hang out in my next eLearning basics mini course. And if you'd like to learn about Camtasia, Captivate, Presenter, or Storyline, we've got a great collection of live, online classes for you.

March 2, 2015

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February 27, 2015

eLearning: Creating a Self-Video with Adobe Video Express

by Jennie Ruby

Adobe Presenter Video Express is a new version of the video software that comes with Adobe Presenter 10. With it you can record a video of both you and your computer screen at the same time. When you open it from the Presenter ribbon within PowerPoint, you can create a video of yourself and your PowerPoint slides. Once you have recorded your video, you can then edit the project to show either your face, the computer screen, or both. Its intent is to allow you to record yourself presenting your slides just as you would to a live audience.

Tips for Improving Your Videos

Set up your camera so that you can look into it as you give the presentation. On a laptop with a built-in camera, this is easy, because as you look at the screen, the camera typically faces you from the top center of the screen.

However, even this placement means that often your eyes will be looking down at the screen instead of up into the camera. If you have to read every word of the script, or if you look at your slides while talking, your eyes will be down the entire time.

Try printing your script landscape, in large print, and tacking it up behind the camera so that you can glance at it and then back to the camera very easily. (Think: teleprompter.)

Better yet, memorize the script, or become very familiar with it, and then just have note cards posted in back of the camera.

If you can purchase professional photography lights, that's a great way to go. With a lower budget, daylight is your best bet–but not direct sunlight. Set yourself up so that you face a window, with curtains or blinds at least partially drawn to even out the light. You may need to supplement the light with some lamps. Make sure there are no shadows or patterns on the wall behind you. The camera's back should be to the window as it faces you.

What is behind you? Some of it will show in the video. A blank wall is best. If there are bookshelves, make sure the books are neat and organized. A potted plant might be a good thing. For specialized topics, you might want a backdrop that relates to the topic. If your office is messy, consider getting a curtain to hang behind you.

Check out my video showing how you can inexpensively set up your office for creating videos.

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Looking for training on Adobe Presenter? You can't go wrong with our $79 mini courses. There's a three hours on Adobe Presenter and another on Video Express.

February 25, 2015

Social Media: Creating a LinkedIn Summary That Gets You Noticed

by Sally Cox

There is an art to creating a strong LinkedIn profile. One of the most powerful assets in your LinkedIn profile is the Summary. Most people put minimal thought into it, but honestly, it's a golden opportunity to make yourself shine.

Tips to Creating a Stronger Profile

Be clear on your objective before you begin. What do you want recruiters and prospective employers to gain from reading your summary? How do you want them to feel?

Gather your content. Put everything in place so you can begin to write the summation. List your greatest accomplishments, and a sentence about each one. Try to capture not only what YOU got out of the experience but more importantly, how the company benefited. If the team cut costs by 70% under your management, that needs to be part of the sentence.

List your values and passions. If saving African wildlife is high on your priority list, make sure you notate that in some way. Aside from your professional accomplishments, people like to see snippets of the real you.

List things you can do better than anyone, things that make you stand out. If Project Management is a strength of yours, or you're a competitive swimmer, these traits can both accurately portray your dedication and look good on a profile.

Awards, accolades, achievements–gather them and include both personal and business accomplishments.

List things that make you unique. Find out what they are and include the strongest ones. For example, I worked for "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" in the 1980s, as designer. It was long ago, but that one event on my resume or LinkedIn profile is a conversation starter, more than any other. It may not even pertain to my current work, but it's a great way to start a conversation that gets me noticed–and remembered.

Writing Your Summary

Begin with a strong statement, a "bang," if you will. You could ask a question, make a statement, or just list a few of your skills for a dramatic opener. Make it memorable.

Weave your story, including snippets from the information you gathered in earlier steps. Mix up your content to make it more interesting, so it doesn't read like a list, and use correct grammar and punctuation.

End with a call-to-action, remembering your summary needs to be 2,000 characters or less. Tell your readers where they go to learn more about you, or how they can contact you. (This may not be necessary if you've listed it elsewhere on your profile, but make sure they know how to find you.)

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Check out Sally's 3-hour mini class on Building a Strong LinkedIn Profile.