Episode 263

Getting to the Point: Video Best Practices from Techsmith’s Customer Education Manager

We've all been there, clicking on an instructional video only to sit through minutes of backstory when all we wanted was the solution. In a world where attention spans are shrinking, viewers want one thing: get to the point.

For this episode, we're revisiting a fantastic conversation with Doug Brunner, Customer Education Manager at TechSmith. Doug knows firsthand what makes instructional content work (and what makes viewers click away). He shares why leading with the 'how' beats starting with the 'why,' and reveals the secret to keeping audiences engaged from the first second.

You'll hear Doug's biggest pet peeves about instructional videos, his take on the webinar vs. video debate, and some insider tips on using Camtasia and Snagit features that can transform your content.

Learning points from the episode include:

  • 00:00 - 05:06 Introduction
  • 05:06 - 10:01 Maximizing impact and the power of saying "no" to requests
  • 10:01 - 14:03 Webinars vs videos: Pros, cons, and when to use each
  • 14:03 - 17:31 Why defining your goals first changes everything about your content
  • 17:31 - 21:58 Doug's biggest instructional video pet peeve
  • 21:58 - 25:15 The truth about attention spans, how long do you really have?
  • 25:15 - 31:09 Three go-to features in Camtasia you should be using
  • 31:09 - 32:18 Why the viewer is the hero of your story, not the cursor
  • 32:18 - 37:30 Doug's three go-to tools in Snagit for better visuals
  • 37:30 - 42:32 Opinions on human avatars and generated voices in educational content
  • 42:32 - 43:34 How to determine the perfect video length
  • 43:34 - 46:36 What really counts as "bad video" and "bad audio"
  • 46:36 - 48:06 Using rounded corners in Snagit and Camtasia
  • 48:06 - 49:05 Outro and final thoughts

Important links and mentions:

Transcript
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For us, internally, we're like, yeah, this is super important. People need to know why

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this thing is important and why they should care about it and, like, the value

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of it. And then we'll teach them how to use it. And what we noticed

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is that everybody was just like skipping that part. They didn't care. They didn't care

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at all. They were like, just teach me how to do the thing, teach me

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how to use the tool or teach me the workflow. You know, it's that same

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idea of like, the audience is essentially like, yeah, just shut up and show me

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how to do it.

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Hey, everybody. We're here sitting down in the studio with one of our techsmithies, Doug

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Brunner. Doug, welcome. Glad to have this opportunity to talk with you about your role

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as customer education manager, as instructional designer, all those things. So welcome.

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Thanks, Matt. It's good to be here. So, Doug, tell us a little bit about

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your. Just give us a brief overview of your background and what you do at

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TechSmith. Oh, man. How far back do you want me to go? Yeah, not

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too far. Okay. So I started working

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here at TechSmith roughly eight years ago. The majority of that

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time was spent as an instructional designer. The past handful

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of years, I've had the pleasure of managing our customer education team.

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So that team is made up of all of our instructional designers, our

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information developers, our webinar team, and

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strangely enough, also our localization coordinator who does localization for the whole

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company. So we have some keen insight there.

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Yeah, that's awesome. So first, from your perspective, how would you say that

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you use video from a day to day basis? Me

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personally? So I'm gonna take a step

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back for a minute and say, as an instructional designer, I used to live and

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breathe in Camtasia. When we were making tutorial videos, I was in there.

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I swear, it was all day, every day. Now that I've moved into a

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management position, I've really switched at this point. I live

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and breathe Snagit, and I use Snagit pretty much

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all day, every day. It's like, it's. In a lot of ways,

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it's kind of like taking the place of Camtasia for me because I use it

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so much as a communication tool between me and my

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team or between like my team and other teams. And so I'm

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using a lot for like those one off videos where

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it's like, okay, I need to talk through an idea and share

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it, or like, I need to get feedback on this thing, or I need to

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like disseminate a decision that we made and make sure everybody's on the same

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page. I just, I use it a lot as a communication tool, so I don't

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know, I've. I've really switched how I use videos. Like, so much of it used

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to be like, instructional content and now it's more, you know,

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communication. Yeah. So I inherently get right.

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Like, because we work at TechSmith, we use our tools probably more than

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everybody else in the world. Let's say. Let's do hypothetical here, Doug.

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We. Let's say you leave tomorrow, you go take another job. You're gonna be

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a customer education manager for Acme Corp. Right?

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Yeah. How would you continue to use

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TechSmith tools? Oh, man. So

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I would demand Snagit. Or maybe demand's the wrong word.

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I would get snagit somehow. Even if I had to sneak it in, I'd be

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like, I have to have Snagit. And in fact, I would even pair it

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with like, Snagit and Screencast at this

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point, because I use the two of them together. Like, the whole

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ability to record my screen and my webcam and me like, talking

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through something and then do like the share link to Screencast

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and being able to just quick, like send that link to you and be like,

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matt, can you watch this and comment on it like that?

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That whole workflow, I like, I can't

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imagine going back before that. It's like the dark

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times where you're like, right, yeah. You had to like, type out super long email

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and like, I think about. Like video reviews even. Right. Like now in

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Screencast, you can, with the. Be able to have the timestamps on the videos.

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It makes such a difference. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yep, I would. Yep. And. And

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I know people that don't have that

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opportunity and they're still like making a video

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and then like emailing it to someone or getting

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a link to someone somehow. And then that person, that poor

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soul, has to like, watch the video and write out the timestamps,

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like at 1 minute, 12 seconds.

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And then. But to try to explain themself, and then they have to do all

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the timestamps. And I remember doing it. I remember going through those pains. We first

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worked here at TechSmith and we didn't have like the commenting on videos.

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So I don't know if I went to another, you know,

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Acme Corp. Or whatever it was, I would. I would be like, yes,

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I want Snagit and Screencast. Those two together, I feel like, are.

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That's the winner for me. I'd want the whole team to have them, but at

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the very least me. Yeah, yeah. Gotta get, gotta get everybody. Right, right.

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So you know, you got a lot of things you're trying to do.

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Obviously looking at your team, you've got a lot of products that are being

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supported. But what's the hard part of your

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job? Do you think if you had to say, like, the hardest part of my

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job is, how would you complete that sentence?

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Geez, I would say the hardest part of my job

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is just deciding where to

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like, spend our efforts, spend our time, like, where to focus.

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I am like totally fortunate where I have a team of

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experienced professionals that are good at what they do

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and they have like a breadth of skills. And so in a lot of ways

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it's like we look at how we could educate our customers and we could

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be doing so many different things. And so it's really just like,

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okay, we're deciding where we can be the

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most impactful or where we can make the biggest impact on our customers and saying

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like, okay, we've got to focus our efforts here. And like, I

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know we've got these other ideas, we have so many ideas, but like, we can't

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do it all. So it's, it's really like prioritizing like what,

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what's most impactful and like, and also for like a customer education

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team like ours, it's also then like, what's, what's most

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scalable? Because like those, those, like, those

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don't always go together. So it's like, yeah, so it's like what's most scalable and

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what's most impactful. And so like really just deciding how to focus in our

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efforts on that and saying no to some things and like

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really making sure if we say yes to something that it is like something that

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we can prove out as like, this is going to make a big impact.

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So if you were to look back over the last year, what would you say

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is a project or particularly maybe it's video related, maybe it's

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not, but a project that you or your team has done that you say this

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is a thing where you think you had the biggest impact.

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Yeah. So I'm going to go back a couple years on this one.

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I'd say the biggest, most impactful thing we've done in the past few years

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is really ramp up our live

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webinar program, which isn't our most scalable

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tactic, but it is still scalable. But ramping up our

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live webinar program has made a huge

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difference. And it's something where it was like an

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idea like, hey, we should do some webinars. And we started doing some

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and we survey our customers after we

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do them. And so what we noticed was like, hey, our customers

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really like these. They like the content, they like our approach.

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But should we spend more time doing them and kind of on like

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from like a kind of like agile kind of like testing method of it's like,

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well, you know what, let's just kind of reach out a little further. Let's do

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a little bit more and let's see what we can learn. Let's see what we

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can learn. Let's try to like iterate and grow. And we've like iterated and

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grown that program. That program has matured so much over the

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past few years that we went from running like a

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handful of webinars a year to like we run a handful of webinars a

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week. And we've involved people from around the company.

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There are people that, people that never thought they would ever be presenting a webinar

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are now like part of our webinar is doing presentations and

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it's very genuine. So like it's not just random people, but it's people who are

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coming on and they're doing things similar to this. They're talking about how they

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use our products or how they get value or like the impact our products

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make. And they're just teaching, they're just very instructional, very authentic.

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But that webinar program draws in a ton of people and those

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numbers are growing and the impact they have is growing.

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To me, I'm really proud

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of my team for not losing

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our focus there because we're like, this looks like something that's impactful. And

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even when we started doing the webinars, we couldn't quite prove it all out yet.

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We're like, hey, we know our customers really like these. They get a lot of

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value out of them. But what's the roi? And we were

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like, we can't quite measure that yet, but we know there's something here, there's

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a lot of value. And so we stuck with it. We kept our focus.

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Eventually we were able to connect all like kind of the back end systems and

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we were able to prove the roi and thankfully it proved right.

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And so we've ramped up even further since then. But like,

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I'm proud that we like, we kept our focus and like we've grown the program

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and it's to, to a point now where it's, it's, it's like

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very mature and we're still, I mean we're still talking about what more we could

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do with it. So it's, it's still like very exciting for us. Well, I do,

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I do love the webinar program and I love that you're involving so many other

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people and perspectives. I think that's really powerful. I want to ask maybe, maybe this

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is a little bit of a question. Maybe you don't want to answer, but I'm

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going to ask it because that's what we're here to do is like, if

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senior leadership came to you and said, hey, Doug, we love what you're doing with

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the webinar program. We think we need to 10x it, but we don't think live

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works. Do you think you could do what you're doing and scale it

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into video? So, for instance, we obviously make a tool that you could record

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something that was from a content standpoint, equivalent to

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a webinar in terms of the delivery of you've got a person, you've got

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screen content. So, so why not? What

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are the barriers there? Yeah, so if they came and they made

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that either the ask or the demand, I would push back hard

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and I would say, yes, we could totally make

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that video content. But based on what we know about

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why people come to the webinars,

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it would really cripple the program if we just offered

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just pre record, pre recorded video. And the reason is a

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couple, actually there's a couple reasons. One of them is that we found that people

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really like scheduled learning. They're like, I'm gonna

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carve out this 30 minutes or this hour on this one

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day and they can schedule it in. And then it's fixed on the calendar.

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You got it? Yep, it's fixed on the calendar. You've got it. And so there's

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like a certain amount of appeal there. And we don't know exactly why that is,

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but. But we just know that it is. And a lot of people really, really

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like that. The other thing is, like, a lot of people really like

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being part of that live conversation. During the webinar. Some people

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ask questions and we have like a support team there that answers questions which people

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love. But even just being part of like the live presentation,

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it like offers different value to people. And it's another thing that,

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like, once again, we're not completely certain, but we believe it has a lot

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to do with just like people want authentic connection with other people. And like

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a webinar is a way to get that, like we're, when we're on, we're

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performing our webinars it's very like we're being very authentic

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selves and we're just talking through, you know, what, what we do and how we

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do it. And so a lot of people like to see that experience live and

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they like to be able to ask questions if they can. So the prerecorded video,

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I mean that, that would have appeal to some people, but I think we would,

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it would really kind of cripple the program in a lot of ways. There's so.

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Okay, so off of that and I totally, totally understand. Right. And I think it's,

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you know, it's always weird when we talk about things are like that, like, oh,

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well, Camtasia is not the answer. Right. Because it feels weird because that's what, that's

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what we're about. But so I'm curious. So let's say I come to you

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as, you know, someone from another company. I'm just like, hey, Doug, I want to

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pick your brain about what you do in your program. What

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advice would you give me about when I should be using

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pre recorded, like Camtasia videos? Not necessarily webinar format.

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Could be tutorials, it could be information sharing. Like when do I use, when

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should I be using as an instructional designer? Camtasia? Yeah, it's almost

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like when, when would you use a prerecorded video versus like a live event? Like

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that? That's tough. I'm not exactly certain

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what we've learned. Yeah, but it doesn't have to be a webinar either. Not trying

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to replace those. I'm just saying kind of maybe in general. Yeah. So

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I think like, what we've kind of learned is that a lot of it comes

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down to personal preference, is like there, there are plenty of people that would just

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rather watch a video about something than show up to a live event. And

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that goes both ways. So we feel strongly that

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you need to offer both, like the beauty of

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like tutorial videos or even like long form, short form

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micro videos. The beauty of that approach is it puts

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the viewer in control of what they're seeing and what they're doing. So if they

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want to sit down and watch, you know, a five minute video, or they want

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to sit down and watch an hour long video, like they do that on their

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own time. They could do it on any device, they can do it on any

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platform. Like it's, they're very much in control of that situation. So like they want

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to, they want to engage in learning, they go in, they pick which ones they

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want to watch and like they can just they can get in, they can get

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out, they can learn the thing they wanted and they can move on.

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Where like, with like the live approach. Right. They're very much like

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investing in us. Like, they're like, I want to sit down, I'm going to hear

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what they're saying. Kind of forgot where I was going on that

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answer. That's okay. Yeah. So. Okay, let me maybe reframe it a little bit because

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I want to step away from the kind of the webinar piece of conversation. But

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like, are there things instructional designers

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specifically should be using Camtasia videos for?

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Are there like best practices, best types of videos? Like, if you could, what's.

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What's the top three reasons you would say. Yep, Camtasia. Right answer. Because what I've

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heard from you is like, hey, we love these webinars. I use a lot of

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snagit for information communication. But from if I'm an instructional designer

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and I'm maybe I'm new to the field, I'm like, gosh, when, when should I

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make a video? What, what types of things should I make videos about?

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Right. So I guess my answer for that would be like, if you

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have a specific set

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of content or goals that you need to hit with

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your instructional content, like, I'm thinking, like when we say like, what things,

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like the biggest recommendation for instructional designers using

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Camtasia, like, the first thing I think of is

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like high stakes learning.

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Putting my, Having trouble putting my, you know what, wrap my mind. My mind. That's

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okay, Doug. You know, that's, that's part of the conversation, right? I think so if

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I can add what. Here's something I think about is right, like anytime you, particularly

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if you, anytime you have anything that you want to. Someone to know about

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or to learn that is screen based,

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obviously Camtasia should be the first choice, right? Like, oh yeah. Unless.

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Unless there's like a very heavy, like you've got

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to do. Like, you need them to act in very

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specific ways. Like, simulation might be better for that. But like,

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I, I'm, I'm loving like, so I'm in social media all the time because

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of my job, but I'm loving seeing like, I, I think I just got fed

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something from a Google, like a TikTok about Google Docs or

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Google Sheets and it was like how to do something and I'm like, oh my

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gosh, like, it was so clear that that was the best

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solution to share that information with me. Yeah. Someone could have said,

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oh, did you know you could select this and this and hit this and do

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that. And I'll be like, I don't know, but like seeing it

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as a video man, I was like, I'm going to learn that. Yeah, it's much

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more engaging. So there's. Yeah. And I feel like videos have a lot of different,

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different roles or places for them. Like, I guess

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back to your question of like, when would like those must have situations is when

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like you have for example, software or screen video that are

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like, this is like, I need everybody to know how to do these things.

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Yeah. And in my opinion that's where video comes in and plays

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a really strong role. Whether like you're putting together a short course

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that you need everybody to take or it's a few instructional videos that you need

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them to go through. But it's like, Matt, I need you to know this thing.

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I need you to know it well because this is like part of your job

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or this is part of how you interact with the team. But there's

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like, there's a strong outcome related to that educational content. So it's

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like video to me is like perfect for that because you're like, okay,

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like not only have you seen the video, but you can watch it again if

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you need to. And ideally with like a tutorial video or

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an instructional video, unlike a webinar, instructional video is

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much more planned. It's much more. It's short, it's to the point. I

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guess it doesn't have to be short, but it's like it's controlled. It should be

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controlled. It should be very efficient, very effective. Get right to the point,

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get through the content in a very like relatable and implicable way and

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like cut out all the crop. So it's like ideally it's the most like

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effective delivery of content right there. So it's like if I

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need you to know this, I'm going to make like a well crafted video for

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it and like I can, I can get to you a message in five minutes

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that like Live Doug is going to ramble on for like 20 minutes.

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Yeah, right. Or longer. So like that short, that like very

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effective short, like video I think is like to me that's

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the impact of like video is being able to deliver that. Well, thinking

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about you, the, the rambling on, I'm guilty too. Right, so no judgment there.

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What pet peeves do you have when you watch other people's instructional

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videos? Like what, what just bugs you about what, what do people do that you

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wish they wouldn't? And it

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doesn't have to be from your team. It could be like you're watching something. At

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home or on YouTube. Yeah,

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I think, I think my best. My biggest pet peeve, this one. This probably

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sounds silly, but, like, I think my biggest pet peeve is when, I

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don't know, I see people trying to, like, pretend to be authentic about a

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thing that they're teaching or they're talking about. So it's not so much

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instruction related as it is like, I'm trying to connect with this person. And

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so if I see people kind of going over the top about something or just

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rambling on and telling stories that,

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like, are tangential to what they're trying to teach me, and I'm like, no, no.

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I'm really here to, like, learn about this thing. And I really appreciate the person

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taking the time to make the video. But, like, you don't need to tell your

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whole backstory. It's like the cooking blogs, right? Yes. It's like, just jump to the

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recipe. I don't care about your grandmother in Italy. I'm sure she's a wonderful lady,

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but I don't need to know her life story. Right. And, like, to some extent,

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like, I think the content creators that do it best find ways to, like, weave

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their story into the instruction so that you do build a connection with them

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as they're teaching you. And it doesn't. You're not like, okay, where's the fast forward

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where I hit that jump 30 seconds ahead? Instead, you're like,

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they use their story to boost the

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instruction in a relatable way. So that's like the

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opposite side of that pet peeve. It's like, when people do it well, it's like,

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oh, dang, that sounds like a really cool guy. And I learned so much.

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This is great. As opposed to like, ah,

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here he goes again. It reminds me, I was building out content for our TechSmith

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Academy. This is a long time ago. And it was. We're doing a piece on

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lighting, and I had this whole really great section. I wrote about, like,

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certain things, why they were called certain things in lighting. And

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I remember one of our video producers at the time

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just came to me and said, no one cares.

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No one cares about that. And I'm like, but it's so cool because

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I was excited about it. But he was right. It did not matter to

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the content that we were trying to teach. And I think that's kind of that

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thing, right? It's so easy to get caught up in the. Especially when you're an

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expert, right? Yeah, It's So it feels like it's so easy to get caught up

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in that information that you're like, oh, gosh, yeah, everyone should know about

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how the barn doors, where that came from, actual barn doors that Thomas

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Edison had. See, I needed to work it in someplace, but. Right, but,

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like, yeah, so I totally understand that. Anything else that really bugs you

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about tutorial videos? No, but I can touch a little bit more on that topic

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that you were just kind of getting at, like, adding extraneous information.

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One kind of interesting story from back when I was much more focused on

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instructional design is our tutorial videos are usually around,

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like, three to five minutes. And at one point

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here at TechSmith, we migrated all of our

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tutorials into Wistia, which allowed us to see, like, engagement

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trends on our tutorials. And one thing

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that we noticed right out the gate is we had this really weird engagement trend

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where, like, people were skipping, like, the first 30 seconds to a minute of

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our video, like, all of them. And we're like,

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what's going on here? And what we quickly realize is that

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when we would do our little tutorial videos, we would

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start by talking about, like, the value

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of this feature. And it was very much like TechSmith speak of,

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like, here's this thing and why you should care,

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essentially, instead of, like, getting right to the instruction.

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And for us, internally, we're like, yeah, this is super important. People

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need to know why this thing is important and why they should care about it

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and, like, the value of it. And then we'll teach them how to use it.

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And what we noticed is that everybody was just, like, skipping that part. They didn't

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care. They didn't care at all. They're like, just teach me how to do the

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thing, teach me how to use the tool, or teach me the workflow.

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And so we then worked through all of our tutorial videos, and we, like, remove

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that chunk, or actually we just, like, shortened it to, like, a sentence. Like, we

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give them one sentence of a value statement and then jump right into the

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instruction. And we saw the general engagement of our

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videos go up quite a bit. And so it's just like,

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you know, it's that same idea of, like, the audience is essentially like, yeah, just

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shut up and show me how to do it kind of thing. We're like, okay,

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sorry, that was. That's what's relevant to them. The other stuff, maybe

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somebody, someplace, sometime. Yeah. So I'm sure there are plenty of people that liked it,

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but the majority of the people, they were like, just. Just get to it. Man,

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get to the instructions. We're like, we can do that. Yeah, I love that. So,

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okay, so how long do you think you have to grab someone's attention

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and make sure that they're pulled in, given what you just told us? Right, right,

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right. To make sure that they're going to actually watch that whatever piece of content

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you're making. Yeah. So for, for, for videos that are like

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public facing, like people are choosing to be there, like they're not forced to watch

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these. Yeah, not compliance. Yeah, not compliance. Because it's different. Right. But for, for

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those type, for these types of videos, I, I say you have seconds.

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I don't know the exact amount, but within that first handful of

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seconds, maybe they'll give you more. Like, if a person's like really interested in the

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topic, they'll suffer through more. Right, they'll suffer through

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more to get there. But like, if you haven't captured

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them in the first handful of seconds, I think you should really be taking a

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hard look at, like, how am I opening my videos? Like what, like

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what's my strategy here at the beginning of the video? To really hook people,

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make sure they, you know, make sure they have a solid sense of what you're

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going to be talking about and like your effectiveness as a, as a,

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as a presenter or as an instructional designer. But I would say give

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them the first handful of seconds. Ideally you should have them by then. If not,

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you've got issues. So I want taking that

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idea because we just both said, oh, you know, for the public facing, you're

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choosing to be there. Right, right. Why is it that we

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treat people who are in a compliant situation or locked

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into the seat that has to watch it? Why do we treat that different?

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Why do we assume that they're willing to suffer for 30

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seconds a minute when what we just said is that when people choose to watch

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it, it's like five seconds. I'll say, right. But why do

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we do that? Why do we think it's different for, why shouldn't we treat the

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compliance situation similarly? Like grab their attention, try to get them to want

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to watch this thing. I think that'd be great. Yeah, I think

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that'd be great. I think when we

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make particularly we'll say like internal compliance

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training videos.

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I think there's two things at play there. One, I think we know we don't

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have to because it's harder. They're gonna have to sit down and watch

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this. But I think the other thing is

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that like a lot of internal training teams, they

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are up against super tight deadlines. Not that

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like a customer ed team like mine is not like we have our deadlines as

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well, but the amount of people I know that

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work in internal training and they're like, hey, they get a request like,

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Matt, we need you to make this video. Could you have this done

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tomorrow? And when you have that tight

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deadline, it really like squeezes you, I don't know,

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it like squeezes your video production down to like the bare bones where you're like,

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listen, I can't make this fancy or interesting or whatever. I

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just, I need to get this specific content out the door

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by tomorrow. If I can make it engaging, great. If I

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can't, apparently it doesn't matter because it's due tomorrow. And so like

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that like tight deadline, I feel like really

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cramps people's ability to like invest more time and make them

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engaging. No, I totally get it. Right. Like,

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I think it's, it's always making trade offs in the internal training team. What

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I, I remember working for an organization, the backlog of courses was

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like three to 400. Yeah. And there was always more coming in.

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Right, right. So total. Totally understand. So with that said and

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that kind of as a, a backdrop, what are two or three

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features in Camtasia that you think

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could help? I'm not gonna say it's gonna solve that problem.

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It won't. But what could maybe help alleviate or that you

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are your go to tools that you're like, hey, this makes for a better

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video.

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Hmm. I get two or three. No, I want.

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If you don't have two or three, you can do one or two. No, no,

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I do, I'm just.

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This is the point where I have to open up Camtasias. Like, okay, what do

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I do all the time? Well, okay. So I think in a lot of ways

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what makes,

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I think a lot of times when we say engaging, we think like,

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woo. Like, hey, like fireworks and shiny

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things which they have their place. I feel like those are more

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like maybe drawing attention to things where

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in a lot of ways if you cover content well, it's kind of engaging

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in itself. Especially if you tell like a nice narrative

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around it. Like you're telling a good story. Like a story that

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connects. So if you have the content side down,

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like if you're telling a story that connects, that's going through the

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instruction you need to get across, that already

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helps a lot. Once you get that into Camtasia,

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I think the features that help empower that

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storytelling in a lot of ways. For me it's

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probably just the custom animation. I use custom

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animation all the time because with the custom animation,

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you can control the viewer's attention where they focus.

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So you can zoom in on, say, a part of the screen

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that is like, I want them to focus right here and only here.

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They don't need all the rest of the stuff I've recorded or the rest of

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the stuff that's in this frame. You can zoom in to focus their attention.

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You can pan to whatever it is the next thing you're going to show

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them. So you can guide them through the complexity of

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whatever UI you're teaching them or whatever sort

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of software you're training them on. You can guide their attention throughout that

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story and really make sure that they're not being distracted by

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extraneous details and stuff like that. So

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just the simple, like, zooming and panning, to me, is, like, an absolutely

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excellent place to start. If everybody

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could. I don't know if we could just make sure everybody could learn and, like,

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master just the zoom and pan already. I think it would improve

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so many people's videos. But. So that's custom animation. I think

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the second one. General. Yeah, Call auths and annotations.

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Yeah. Okay, so I think for the. I think for the second one,

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actually, I'm gonna. Yeah, I think for the second one, I'm gonna go

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with just general annotations. Being able to, like,

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point at something on the screen to express, like, this is

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important, or, like, to be able to, like, point out more information

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pointed specifically at that object on the screen. So you could be

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anything from adding arrows to, like, a title

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or adding, like, a circle or a box or like, a sketch

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motion. Like, hey, this. You know, like a circling object there. This

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is what I'm talking about. This is what's important. So

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using callouts to be able to even focus the customer's

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attention even more, or even adding in information. So

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just simple annotations. And then you can

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actually use one and two together. You can animate the annotations in and

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add a little bit more engagement to it. So right there,

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there's a ton of value in that and being able to

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capture their attention and focus their attention there. The third one,

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I would say, is the cursor. So, like, one thing that

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Camtasia does better than any tool out there is it allows you to

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have control over the cursor in your screen recordings,

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which, like, I can't emphasize that much. I can't

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emphasize that enough, because in a lot of ways, the cursor

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really is, like, the Hero of the story. If you think about the amount of

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times people are recording their screen and they're trying to show somebody something and they're

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like taking their cursor and they're like, it's this. This is the important thing right

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here. Or they're just trying to get, like, really smooth cursor motions.

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But no matter what you do with the cursor, there's one guaranteed truth

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about it, which is that your customers or your viewers are

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following the cursor with their eyes. It's like the most direct

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path to, like, this is what they're looking at. They are watching the cursor and

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they want to be able to follow what it is you're doing. And so Camtasia

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makes it super easy to take the cursor. You can actually put in

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a custom cursor. So it's like super high quality. You can make it as

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big or small as you want. So it's like super easy to focus their

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attention on that cursor. You can control the path of where the cursor

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goes. So even if you recorded your screen and you're doing like, crazy stuff,

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you can be like, no, no, no. I want it to just very smoothly glide

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from here to there. And then with some of, like, the new features coming

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out, you can even add like little wiggles to the cursor. You can add like

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some cool physics to it that it's. In a lot of ways, it's kind of

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like adding a little bit of like, delight or like engagement to it, just to

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make it a little bit more fun, but having like, complete control over the

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cursor in a lot of ways, like, it's.

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It makes the videos more interesting. It makes them

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easier to follow, it makes them look more professional. So, like, if

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you have a super small cursor, you've got like a nice big, fat, like really

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high quality cursor that's super easy to follow. Like, it just looks real

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slick. So it just allows you to like, pretty

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easily make your video, like, look more professional,

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easier to follow. It just kind of like you can like up your instructional design

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game with like, minimal investment, which is super nice. Well,

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I love all those and I love that Camtasia makes it so easy compared to,

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like, other tools that I've used where you have to hand, like, start going, like,

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we'll call it After Effects, right? Like, oh, my gosh. To make something move or

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appear in After Effects is so much work. But I do want to push back

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on one thing, and I hear this A lot. I hear this a lot at

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tech. That's just maybe it's my pet peeve. We often say the cursor

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is the hero of our story, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna disagree with you.

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Let me have it. I don't think it's the hero. I think it's the

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Yoda to the Luke. It is the guy. The guy. It is. It is.

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You know, in the. In the classic arc of the story where you've got the

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hero's journey. Yeah. You know, because I think. And this

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is gonna sound very pandering, and I don't mean it to sound that way. The

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viewer is the hero. Is the hero we want them to be. The one

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who goes through the journey comes out on the other side

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as the winner versus the curse. It's not the cursor. Right.

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Yeah, you're right. You are right. You changed my mind on that. Yeah, I think

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I was just. Yeah, no, we say it all the time. Yeah, I think I've

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heard it so much, but yeah, I like the way you frame that the viewer

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is the hero, or at least the main character, and then the

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cursor is the guide. Yeah. We're just leading you through that

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information. Well, Doug, we've talked a lot about video, but

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it's interesting. As a manager, you talk that you use Snagit all the time. And

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I'm sure it's images. I'm sure it's the video. It's kind of the whole bag

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of tricks there. Same question we asked about

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Camtasia. What are your two or three go to

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tools inside of Snagit? Okay, I'm gonna

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split that into kind of like two parts. Cause with image, if we're taking just

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image capture. So my. Go to scroll and capture. Oh, my

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God. I don't. I couldn't leave. I couldn't leave. Do you auto scroll, or do

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you do the one where you scroll it yourself? I do the one where I

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scroll it myself. I don't know why. I just. For some reason, like. Me too.

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Yeah. So anyways. But I love it. I don't know how I'd live without

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scrolling capture. I was using it this morning. I use it all the time.

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It's just anything that scrolls through that window. Oh, it's

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beautiful. So I'd say scrolling capture, and then along with that, I use

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the cutout tool a lot. So, like, for example, just this morning,

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Our team uses WordPress as our content hosting platform, and we're making

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some changes to the backend. And I Had to take a scrolling capture of the

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big long editor page and I was like, okay. I

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wanted to provide some feedback on some changes. And so it's like, oh, cut out

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this part. Don't need to talk about that. Cut out this part, don't need to

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talk about that. And so you can just quickly like shorten up that long

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capture. Can I ask you though, are you. Do you leave in

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like the cut. Marks or you're straight? No, no. The only reason I would ever

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leave in the cut marks is if I need the person

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to know that I remove something. If that's not.

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That's not usually the case for me. So I just cut it out. I don't

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care. Whatever. I know some people find them really fun. Yeah. But yeah, it's interesting.

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I don't think they're. Yeah, personally I don't think they're fun. I just, I think

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they're great for showing like, hey, Matt, I sent you this thing

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and you can then very clearly see I removed something from it.

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I've removed content. Yeah. So you can say. So then you can see like, okay,

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there's something here. And if you want to know more, you could ask me about

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it. That's great. But I very rarely need people to know that. So I'm just

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like chop stuff out. Awesome. So

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another, another tool there for. Okay, so I'm jumping to the video recording side because

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that's like. Honestly I almost use that as much these days.

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So just recording video. Honestly in

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Snagit, being able to do like the Pip and then also

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coming up soon, I think it's already released on the Mac side. Coming out

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on Windows soon. But the background noise removal is

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so good, which is so nice. So it's like a favorite feature. But it's really

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just like, I don't know, some built in goodness. It's just on. It's just on.

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But it works so well. I was demoing it at a

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conference not long ago. We were there. I was demoing it at Dev Learn

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and man, you could record video like at a conference, tons of people

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around and it cut out like all of the background noise. It was absolutely amazing.

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So the background noise removal to me like game changer. But yeah,

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recording video. And then I sometimes use a screen draw. I don't use it a

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ton, so I don't know if it makes like favorite status. But being able to

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like draw little arrows or be able to like circle things as I'm, as I'm

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like talking, that was, that's pretty nice. But really Like, I guess my other go

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to is just being able to like cut out little mistakes in the Snagit editor

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after I've done recording. Just trimming out the front

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or the beginning and the end of a video is great. It's not a

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great experience. It's hard to do in Snagit, but it's

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great to be able to do it. Have you ever made the mistake where you

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recorded something and then you're like, oh, gosh, I really should have just done this

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in Camtasia because of the amount of edits I need to make? Oh, I've done

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that plenty of times. Yeah. And then you're like, I'll just send the video to

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Camtasia and they're like, oh. But then I can't edit the cursor. Oh. Because then

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like once I'm in Camtasia, I want to do all the normal Camtasia things and

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then. Yeah, it's. It's a whole like cyclical thing. I don't know.

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Yeah. But I. But I'm with you. Like scrolling capture is great. I love

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Snagit video recording for just simplicity sakes. Because then,

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then I feel like I don't have to do the work that's in Camtasia

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as much as I know I can use Camtasia, but it just saves me like

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the feeling. Maybe it's that just internal feeling. And also when you're, when you do

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video recording in in Snagit, like when you hit stop,

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the video is already rendered. So you don't have to re render it. So

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there's no rendering time. It doesn't really matter how long you record. When you hit

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stop and snag it, the video's done, it's ready to go. So like you

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hit the share link button, it just uploads it to Screencast and you're like,

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here's the link. All done. So like that workflow is great.

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I'll just add one of my favorites is where you do

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selection of an area and then you can do the auto replace background.

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Oh yeah, in the image. Yeah, in the images on the image side it's just

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so. So most of the time it works really, really, really well if

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gradients are a little tough. But I just love that it's just so simple. Yeah.

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And like, just makes my life that much easier when I just want to take

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something out. Yeah. You know, another, another really simple favorite

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of mine that I think a lot of people look past is just the fact

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that you can just crop like an

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image capture after You've done taking it by just, like, dragging the handles on the

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canvas. Like, I feel like I look past that a lot. Not everybody

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really knows that you can do it, but just, like, you take your screen capture

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and you're like, ooh, there's like, a little extra stuff over here. And just being

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able to, like, click the handle on the canvas and drag it in, it's like,

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there you go. That's done. Just so

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some little simplicities like that are great. Yeah. Well, as we wrap up,

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let's do some hot takes here. So let's make these fast and quick.

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Okay. We don't need a lot of detail necessarily, but I'm gonna ask

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you about a couple different topics here. Let me bring it up. So I've got

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those ready. Okay, we're gonna. Fast and furious. Yeah. Yeah.

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Avatars. Hot take. Like, the realistic looking

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AI avatars. Human avatars. AI.

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That's my hot take. I hate them. I hate them, everybody. Yes.

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That's my hot take. I hate them. I cannot stand them. One reason why

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I hate things that are trying to be authentic but are clearly not.

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Like, the faux authenticity drives me nuts. Like, I would rather

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look at a cartoon avatar because that's not pretending to be anything. It's not. I'm

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like, it's a cartoon. I get it, it's great. But show me a. An AI

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generated person. They're like, they're trying to make look like a real person. I'm like,

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no, don't. Just. I would rather be. I'd rather

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be a robot talking to me. Because it's. Then it's not trying to, like, trick

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me. Yeah. Like, I feel like AI avatars are trying to trick me.

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I'm like, just don't. Please just. I would rather just do something

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else. Please, just, you know, I don't know. Yes,

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anything. Okay, well, let's go to the other side, though. AI

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generated voices. Okay, so AI generated

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voices. I think. I think they're. There's good and good and bad to them.

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I'm not nearly as averse to them because it's. I mean, it's.

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I don't know, something about them is. It doesn't. It doesn't feel like they're trying

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to, like, trick me or anything like that. It just feels like it's like, okay,

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so a person didn't like the sound of their voice. They use an AI generated

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voice. That, to me is, like, fine, as long as, like, their lips aren't moving

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and the narration is completely different. Like, you know, if you use it in

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Camtasia with, let's say, like, a still image of your face with, like, maybe an

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audio visualizer around it. And you've got an AI generated voice.

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@ some point, you know, we'll. We'll be able to, like, clone our own voices

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and be able to do that. To me, that's. That's fine.

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Yeah. It doesn't really bother me. Okay, Doug, we're going to put the.

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You on the hot seat. Yes. If you're an instructional designer or you're managing your

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team, how or when should they be

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using those tools, AI avatars and AI generated

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voices? As an instructional designer, like, I.

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I can't say when you should use an AI avatar. I honestly don't know.

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Like, we haven't. I haven't seen a

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situation yet where I'm like, wow, that's. That's great. I can speak to, like,

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the business side of it. If you're like, hey, we need to make

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videos that include a person in them for some reason. Like, we

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need to have a person in them, and we're gonna be localizing that video

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into 50 other languages. Okay. An AI avatar

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is a perfect, like, business reason to do that.

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But what you're saying you don't know why you need a person in a video

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though, right? Why is that? Yeah. Cause, like, as in from an instructional designer, the

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reason you include a person in the video is often to, like, build connection

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with the viewer, which I think is why I'm so adverse to, like,

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AI avatars. Because that's not building connection. That's building. It's. It's.

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It's not real. Like, so if I watch a video with you, Matt, in it,

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I know, like, Matt made that video. If I have questions about that video, I

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can talk to Matt. Matt, maybe you maybe even shared a story or two that

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you. That you like. Like, we talked about crafting your narrative or your

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story. So I learned more about you, and, like, I build a connection with you,

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and I can associate what I learned with you. When you

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put an AI avatar in there, it breaks

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all of that. It really does. And so from an

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instructional design standpoint, I don't know how I'd recommend using AI

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avatars when it's just AI voice or just AI narration.

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It's a little different because you could be just teaching something, just

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some very straight instructional

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video, and you're just like, I need to teach people how to use this thing,

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or, I need to teach some very straight compliance training

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using AI generated narration, I think would be Fine. I just

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need people to know this. And this AI

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narrated voice sounds real enough or sounds close enough to my voice

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that people will look past it because the importance is on the instruction

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there. That's what the focus is on. I think you can get away with it

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and I think people could do that, especially if they're like us and they have

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to localize their videos into a bunch of different languages. It makes it easier

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for them. A lot easier, much more scalable. So yeah, I

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think they have a place there. So yeah. So I think, I guess my take

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is it's going to be a balance, right, between the business need and the kind

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of. That whatever else you're trying to achieve with whatever instruction you're creating and

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that's always good, there's always going to be trade offs. Right. Somebody might

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say no, we want to face because whatever reason, okay, fine, but

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it's not going to be for you. It's definitely not going to be your go

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to. We're not going to see Doug, the Doug AI avatar

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presenting anything anytime soon. And I think it actually touches back on the question you

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were talking about, the difference between like internal videos you have to

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watch and external videos that you want to be engaging. I think you're

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going to see a lot more avatars used in those internal videos that people have

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to watch as opposed to like external

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facing, public facing videos where you're really trying to capture

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attention. I don't think you're going to see AI avatars

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in them nearly as much. Yeah, well, we'll see.

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Okay, couple more hot takes. So quick, fast answers.

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Preference on video length. I actually don't, I don't have

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a. I don't. I think the content and like the purpose should set the

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length. So like if I need you to learn some little quick bits of things

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or like little inspirational content, like sweet 30 second

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little vertical video, like engage me, get me drooling over something.

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Matt, hook me, bring me in. But if it's like, hey, I want to

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learn how to become an instructional designer, like I don't know, 30 second short

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form video just doesn't feel like the length. So it's like

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give me a full on course. Like I don't at that point maybe

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you have shorter videos and you got a whole bunch of them strung together. Maybe

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it's a long form video. To me it doesn't like let, let the content

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determine how long the video should be. I sure hope becoming an

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instructional designer takes more than 30 seconds because I, I paid

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a lot for a master's degree. Yeah, yeah, same. So it's like. Yeah,

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yeah. It's either that or you're watching like a thousand 30 second videos

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and like at that point, like that just wasn't the right

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length for those videos. Yeah. Bad video.

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How do you feel about it? Bad.

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Yeah, yeah, bad video. Do you mean like poor

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quality video? I'm not defining it boring. You get to define that.

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Oh, God, it's. I mean, I guess it depends. If

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it's like a bad video on YouTube, that's fine. You just hit next and don't

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watch it. But if it's a bad video that I have to watch, it's

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like in some internal training. Oh,

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that's the worst. Because then you have to suffer through it and you know, and

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you can watch the little time countdown, you know,

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and if it's like a 30 minute bad video, it's just, don't worry, we'll. Put

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a quiz at the end. Yeah. And it's, it's a drag and drop or throughout.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. A little pop up that sees if you're paying attention,

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you know, like click list to get 1,000 points. You're like, oh, points

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for what? Yeah, yeah, I know, right? Points. So you can brag to your

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friends. I'm gonna print the certificate today. Yeah.

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Bad audio. Bad audio is.

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That's a non starter. Yeah. You can't start with bad

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audio. We have our own internal Techsmith research showing that. It's like

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if there's anything, if you're gonna invest money in

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any new hardware, you start with a great microphone, you

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start with a great audio setup. Whatever you can do to get high quality

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audio. And like our new background noise removal in both

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like Snagit and Camtasia helps with that. But there's no,

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there's no replacement for just good quality audio.

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And like. Yeah. So we know it like, if you start watching a video and

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the audio is all garbly and hard to understand, people are out of there,

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man. They're not, they're, they're not going to watch it. They're not going to be

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engaged. Yeah. All right, Doug, as we wrap up here, are there

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anything, is there anything that we did not talk about?

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Any topics, questions you wish we would have asked that we can

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end on that. We'd end on today. Like, what's anything pressing in your mind?

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Based on the conversation we had.

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It'S hard to look past the AI avatars that was kind of the big pressing

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one because I have some strong opinions about them,

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which is good. I Think it's good? Yeah, it's good to have a strong opinion

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about something like that. Yeah. And it'll be interesting. It'll

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be interesting in a year or two to have that same conversation, see if

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anything has changed or not. Yeah, because like the technology is going to

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improve and I am interested to see if the responses I just gave you changed

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because like, what if you get to a place where you can't distinguish the difference

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between an AI avatar and like a real person? That's

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kind of scary. What does that mean? That's scary to me. Yeah, but what's that

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mean? And what are you. Is it going to be the death of

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video in some ways? Because we're all going to just be everywhere. Like you

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can make as many videos as you want really quickly with you in them. We'll

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make a bunch of doug videos. There's 10,000 matt videos. Yeah. There might be

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already 10,000 mat videos that no one has watched. Right, right. So

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our AI avatars going to get more people to watch them or is

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there just going to be more videos out there? More videos,

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More videos. It's gonna be the depth of video. Yeah. Okay. Hot

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take topic. How often do you use rounding corners in

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Snagit or Camtasia when you're making content?

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Not really that much. I'll

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sometimes use it in Snagit, particularly if I've taken like a

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screenshot of something on like the Mac side where they often round the corners anyway.

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So it's nice to be able to like round the corners of the canvas to

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fit it so that when I like copy and paste or put that somewhere else,

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it doesn't have like the extra stuff around the corners.

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In Camtasia, the only time I use rounded corners is when

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I'm, you know, if I'm doing like a rev style recording, like using the

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Camtasia rev workflow. But that's really. I mean it rounds the corners for me.

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So I'm not actually doing it, it's just auto. You're choosing it? Yeah, I'm choosing

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it. But yeah, so I'll do that sometimes.

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Really more for just looks. It doesn't. It's not like there's no like

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instructional value to it. Yeah, it doesn't change the learning.

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No, it looks. No, no. Yeah, it can look. It looks good now because that's

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kind of like the in look for now. But you know, who

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knows, few years later it will change. Yeah. A few years later it might be

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like, no, no, give me those like real hard edged corners. How dare you round

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those corners. Yeah, exactly. So we're. See. Well, now we'll just set the trend into

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the future. We just got to. Yeah. Bring it back. But it's nice to. I

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mean, it's. It's nice to be able to have that option which is like. That's

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how I look at it. Like, it's definitely. I. Like there are tons of people

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I know that do use them a lot. So it's like, it's nice to have

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that option, but, yeah, sometimes I do it. Yeah.

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Sounds good. All right, Doug, Well, I appreciate you sitting down with me and having

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this conversation and going through all these answers. I know it's always hard to be

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put on the spot when you don't know what's gonna be asked, but so grateful

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for that. You took the time, and we'll have to talk again in another year

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or so. Talk about avatars more. Cool. All right. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it.

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I want to thank Doug again for sitting down and talking with me in studio.

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What a great opportunity to hear from him, to learn from him. Obviously, he's got

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a lot of great ideas about video and video usage, particularly as a

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customer engagement manager. Well, that wraps up the show for today. We hope that you

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like it. We hope you like hearing from these different voices. I thought this was

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a great opportunity. As we were interviewing Doug for these other things, I thought, you

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know what? This is a great episode. So I'd love to hear from

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you. If you got ideas, suggestions, things you'd like to need to talk about or

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people you'd like me to talk to, reach out at the visual

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loungexmish.com and what we hope is that every time you hear the

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episodes, you listen to the show, it inspires you, it helps

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you, and you desire to get a little bit better every

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single day. Thanks, everybody, and I'll see you next time.

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About the Podcast

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The Visual Lounge
Discussions about the power of visuals and videos and how to make them even better.

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About your host

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Matthew Pierce

Matthew Pierce, Learning & Video Ambassador from TechSmith Corporation, has created videos for learning and marketing for over a decade. He is the lead behind TechSmith Academy, a free platform teaching video and image creation for business, which has been used by tens of thousands of users. He is the host of The Visual Lounge Podcast from TechSmith, which streams live on Youtube and LinkedIn weekly. Matthew is a regular speaker at multiple learning and development-focused conferences and is a regular contributor to various training publications. Connect with him on LinkedIn.