Today’s ScreenGenius Tip will be quick yet very handy. How many times have you drawn a Freehand Callout and realized it wasn’t exactly the shape you wanted, so you deleted it and started over?

Well, did you know you can modify the shape of your Freehand Callouts by pressing the Option key?

With a FreeHand Callout selected on your clip, press Option and you’ll see your ‘plus-shaped’ mouse cursor will change to include a little minus sign in the lower right corner. (If you’re using the freehand draw option, you won’t see any change to your cursor.) Now, when you click and drag on your existing Freehand Callout shape, you will subtract from the image, rather than add to it.

This works for both the box and the freehand drawing Freehand Callout options.

We are happy to announce the release of ScreenFlow 3.0.6. We continue to fight the good fight – squashing little bugs and annoyances, and making ScreenFlow the best it can be.

Version 3.0.6  addresses a number of  issues. You can read our release notes for a full list of changes.

This is a free update for existing ScreenFlow 3.x customers and a $29 paid upgrade for ScreenFlow 2.x customers.

If you’re already a 3.x user, the easiest way to update is to “Check for updates” from within the ScreenFlow application. Alternatively, you can go to our website, where there are instructions on how to upgrade.

(The corresponding Mac App Store version will be coming out shortly as well – it is currently in the MAS review process.)

Enjoy!

A few weeks ago, we announced our ScreenFlow Makeover Series, which offered users the opportunity to get free one-on-one consulting with Marty Smith from Combocasting.com to improve their screencasts. Well, several people took Marty up on his offer, and I’m pleased to share with you his first report:

“For our first ScreenFlow Makeover series, I had a long session with Peter Mangiaracina, an ESL Psychologist and instructor working in a Spanish hospital, training medical staff. Peter uses ScreenFlow to create additional training content for his students and sees video as a way to possibly expand and market his reach to other students via YouTube. Peter wanted to add some entertainment value to his screencasts, and was interested in ways to expand his audience on YouTube.

Here is a sample of Peter’s work on YouTube.

So watch the video I made which is a recap of the suggestions I made.

And here is a sample video showing how a makeover could really present his content if a different way.

We’re going to continue this ScreenFlow Makeover series a while longer. So, if you have some ScreenFlow videos that you feel may need some help in production or marketing, then just submit them for review (see form at the end of the post). We’d be happy to get back to you.

Thanks for watching,

Marty Smith
ComboCasting.com

Thanks Marty! And thanks to Peter for offering his hard work up for critique.

I’m pleased to introduce Andreas Zeitler as our next screencaster in the continuing “Meet the ScreenFlow-er” series. Andreas has been using ScreenFlow since version 1, making screencasts, tutorials, ads and motion graphics. In 2010, he made the leap and started a screencasting business. Andreas has some great insight into what it takes to make good screencasts. As he says:  “Screencasting is marketing, teaching, design, editing. It’s all of these things, and that is what makes it so hard, but also so enjoyable.”

Thanks Andreas, for sharing your knowledge and experience.

How long have you been screencasting and approximately how many screencasts have you made?

I made my first screencast about 7 years ago. I didn’t call my first screencast a “screencast”, it was a tutorial. Something I now realize is a subcategory of screencasts.

I don’t know exactly how many screencasts I’ve made. I made a tutorial DVD with about 4 hours of material, over 160 screencasts for MacOSXScreencasts.com (double this number for the second language I produce), 20 for a German audio engineering podcast I do in my spare time. Then there are those I did for clients and those never published. I really don’t know. They are many. I really love this job.

When ScreenFlow was released, it was a game changer. There are a couple of milestones that changed how I make and think of screencasting. ScreenFlow is one of them.

For what purposes do you make your screencasts?

This is an interesting question, I never made screencasts for myself. I always made them for other people, to teach them, to show them apps. I, or better we, only do client work nowadays. Therefore the audience and purpose of our screencasts is for our client.

My role as screencaster is to consult with clients and work out a solution that fits their needs. Whether it’s a tutorial; a product demo; an ad with different voice talents, multilingual, or with subtitles, for a DVD or the web; etc. We combine screencasts with actor recordings, stop-motion, and 3D graphics now. We’re not relying on “traditional” screencasts to communicate a clients’ marketing message anymore. Every client gets a custom solution for their problem.

You always have to ask yourself “is this the right way to show it”? If a screencast works best, make a screencast, if motion graphics demonstrate a technical explanation better, then use motion graphics.

What kind of studio or set up do you have?

All I have is a MacBook Pro 17″ late 2010. Mainly because I want to be as mobile as possible. Having little equipment has a lot of advantages for me. I can be where my client wants me to be. If they have a secret project (with secret hardware that can’t be moved easily), I jump on the train and get there.

When the editing phase starts I work from a coworking space in Stuttgart named Coworking0711. Here’s the picture in case anyone is interested. A cup of tea (Darjeeling) is usually next to my keyboard.

What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of creating your screencasts? Why?

The many wishes clients can have. On the other hand, nothing is a huge problem anymore. What used to cause big problems in the past, is now laughably easy.

For example I had a client that had a “beta” banner in the startup screen of his app. It was my first professional project. I played with the screencast, and tried different things to find a way to remove that banner. But long before the deadline, I asked the client if they could remove that little banner. (At that time, I didn’t know how to fix that in post-production.) I had all the material produced and was waiting for a response from the client. Then, two days before the deadline, they gave me the final release. I ended up dumping all of my work and starting over again.

I think what is so challenging is that we need to be good at so many things. For fancy product demos we need to be good at storytelling, for a tutorial we need to be good at teaching, and overall we need to know how to structure information verbally and visually.

Screencasting is marketing, teaching, design, editing. It’s all of these things, and that is what makes it so hard, but also so enjoyable.

We occasionally get support calls from people that are experiencing strange lagging, stuttering, or freezing of ScreenFlow when they are trying to edit their projects. One of the first questions we ask (after “did you spill a cold beverage on your keyboard?”) is:

Do you have imported video in your projects; and if so what format/codecs are those imported videos?

Editing formats vs. delivery formats:

In the world of digital video there are formats that are designed for editing, and then there are formats that are designed for delivery (or distribution).

If you use a “delivery” format in an editing program (such as ScreenFlow), it can behave distinctly BADLY, causing all sorts of problems that, if you don’t know what’s going on, can appear to be caused by your editing program.

When editing digital video, non-linear editing programs work by accessing and changing the individual frames of that digital file. So, ideally, all the data or information for each frame should be easily accessible to the editing program. This can result in large, uncompressed files with lots of video data.

Alternatively, when delivering a digital video, you want your file to be compressed and as easy as possible for your video player to access, read and display.

To handle these two scenarios, there are two distinct codec types: Intra-frame codecs (best for editing) and Inter-frame codecs (best for delivery).

Intra-frame codecs store all the video information for each frame on every individual frame. As the name suggests, you are basically encoding each separate frame as its own picture. Inter-frame codecs, on the other hand, rely on information in preceding and occasionally upcoming frames. Inter-frame codecs take advantage of redundant information on neighboring frames, and save space by storing the changes between frames.

Look at me getting technical:

To get a little technical, here’s how it works:

Have you ever wanted some advice on how to improve your screencasts from a proven professional?

Now’s your chance!

I am excited and honored to announce a great new opportunity: The “ScreenFlow Makeover” series with Marty Smith from ComboCasting.com, one of our most experienced and creative users of ScreenFlow. He has generously offered to provide some free personal coaching and consulting to anyone who wants advice on how to improve their screencasts.

Maybe you want ideas for better ways to present your content, or how to make your videos more engaging. Or perhaps you want feedback on your content itself or even how to market your video…

Now is your chance. If you submit your video, along with the 3 areas you want to focus on improving, Marty will arrange a one-on-one session with you to assess your video and recommend ways of improving it. Free!

What WE get from this is some interesting, constructive blog posts :) We’ll pick the best of these sessions (which will be recorded and edited) and post them on our blog, so everyone can learn some general tips for improving their screencasts.

Here’s how to get your video assessed:

1. Submit a link to your screencast video from the form below. Your video should be uploaded somewhere (YouTube, Vimeo, your own server) and be visible. It can be unlisted… just make sure it’s not private.
2. In the submission form, specify up to 3 areas you’d like advice or guidance on.

Depending on how many submissions we get, Marty will set up a Skype interview with you to review your video, and go over some recommendations for improvement.

Marty has made over 600 videos for his own online marketing, YouTube channels, and paying clients. He has nearly 4 MILLION views across his various video channels and continues to offer free ScreenFlow tips on his blog at ComboCasting.com. By submitting your video to the “ScreenFlow Makeover” series, Marty says “It will be really fun to meet and help new ScreenFlow-ers, and I hope to give them at least ONE spankin’ cool idea to improve their videos.”

Thanks and we look forward to your submissions. Stay tuned!

Please submit your screencasts into the ScreenFlow Makeover series through the form below:

“Two ScreenGenius Tips in a row?” you ask? Yes.

This week, a handy little menu item that I fear may be neglected or unknown by many of even our most avid users: The Track Selection feature.

If you have ever found yourself editing merrily away, and you realize you want to add some space onto a single track, this tip will come in handy. The ‘scubber handle’ (or golf club, as it is affectionately called here) is great for adding space across all the tracks of your timeline. But how do you add space to a single track?

Essentially, you want to select all the clips to the right of your playhead and move them all to the right. One easy way to do that is to click the gear menu on your first clip that you want to move right. From the gear menu click “Track Selection”, and then “All Clips after current Clip.” This will select the clip you’re on, and all the rest of the clips to the right of that on that track. Then, simply drag those selected clips right to create space on your track.

And remember: When you’re done adding another clip to that newly created space, if you have a gap in your timeline, use the Close Gap feature by right-clicking on the open space, and selecting “Close Gap.” This will shift all those clips that are to the right of the gap back over to the left, until they butt up against your new clip.