Screenshot videos for the Internet

Good ideas hit when a person may be least expecting them. So it is with the thought of using simple screenshot videos to add to the impact of pages that writers like to produce. The other day a man who lives in Perth, Australia, sent an eMail to me that contained one of his frequent advertisements. He intended for me to purchase one of his services – he is in the “multi-level marketing business.” The eMail he sent contained a URL link to his Website on which he had placed the advertising video for me to download to my computer so that I might view it there. I clicked on the link, and in came his video presentation – all 60+ minutes of it.

What the video described, at least for the most part, was what it called a simple screenshot video, how it was produced, including where to obtain the software used to produce it, and some of the things such videos could do for me - like help me sell my products and services. So that I might better understand what all of this was about, he gave me a good example of a very professional video presentation that was much like his, and which was much like mine would be if I followed his various instructions. He said that this type of video was a “Ken Burns” variety video. That rang a bell, all right. Ken Burns is the famous videographer who makes those wonderful history videos with all of the historic photos, old writings, and even some really old voice recordings in them.

Indeed I did immediately connect a few dots and understood that this simple screenshot video thing would certainly be a useful tool, provided that I could learn how to produce the things. Also, because I have a large number of friends here on HubPages, it was easy to believe that many of my buddies would also be good dot-connectors who would see the light, so to speak, and be able to make good use of the man's idea.

What was even more intriguing was his not trying to sell me any computer software with which to make videos. He sells other things. As a very nice and friendly part of his cajoling as to video-making, he provided video production source information – all free of cost.

There were some requirements I was to meet regarding my computer system. The “biggy” was that I would need to have Adobe's “Flash Player” software installed. I ate up the better part of a day trying to install the software, but to no avail. It is now sitting on the system's hard drive, all right, but it is just sitting there – very non-functional on this system. I did download his suggested video production software, however, and it worked OK. It had the rather strange name of “Jing” - but, kindly, don't ask me why that name. (Computer folks are, by and large, rather strange about such things.) That “Jing” was free for the introductory version, complete as to its contents and performance, but it could produce videos of only short-run type (5 minutes max). Also, the videos that were made by this software were all of SWF (“Flash”) format. If I produced them, thought I, I could not see them played on my computer system in that I did not have the “Flash” software installed and operating here.

I went to the search engines and located another set of free software with which to produce simple screenshot videos. It's name is “Cam Studio” and was downloadable from our good friend, SourceForge.net. It had the attribute of producing SWF (“Flash”) format videos directly and, also, making AVI (“Mpeg”) videos that I could review here. Then, if those were useful, I could convert those to the SWF format. Well, that was plenty nice, but in the conversion process, the original AVI format video was eliminated. Then I found a free downloadable program on the Internet that could transform the AVI video into an SWF video. Problem solved. My wallet sighed in relief, for all of the software was free of cost.

Why not simply use AVI type videos? There are at least two reasons to defer to the use of SWF formatted files. The first is that AVI video files are many times larger than are SWF files - in my system thay turn out to be 4 or 5 times larger. Furthermore, they do not "stream" into my system (and likely not into any systems) but must be downloaded entirely before they can be viewed. That takes "forever." whereas SWF files "stream" in and are buffered for viewing in smaller sections at a time. That permits you to view them "on the fly," so to speak. You don't download them all together.

Once I more or less figured that stuff out, I got busy trying out all of those fine downloads.

For the original images to be input into the videos I could have used any photograph or clipart image file on hand here, any text screen image, and any slide show pages (Microsoft Power Point or Open Office Presentation) that I had or could make. For the audio (sound) track I could use any recording that would play over my system's speaker or any noise I could make using my regular PC microphone. So, now I had assembled everything needed – the video production and format conversion programs and the raw material which the video frames would later exhibit to viewers like you and me.

Just for the exercise and learning of it, I produced two “Ken Burns” specials – my initial videos, complete with sound and pretty images that were in graphics files on my hard drive. Without further yakking about them, here are the URLs for both. If you click on them, you will be able to understand why Ken Burns should now take notice. Here comes Gus The Redneck, Ken's latest rival.

First video

Second video

When you get to the end of each video, click on the “Back Arrow” or the “Return” atop your computer screen.

If your system is like mine here, and you don't have “Adobe Flash Player” installed and operating, you can copy those URLs and plug them into either “Google Chrome” browser or “Mozilla Firefox” browser for viewing on your system. Both have “Flash” facility built in.

Both browsers, "Google Chrome" and "Mozilla Firefox" can certainly be used to view this article on your computer. If you do that, clicking on those two URL links will work to get the videos onto your computer screen directly.

I tried to load the videos (or at least one video) onto this hub article, but HubPages displayed the message that video was not allowed (even though there is a video capsule you can call down when constructing your hubs).

No matter, have fun – and if you come upon Ken Burns in your travels, tell him I am coming up behind him mighty fast for an old Redneck.