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THE PINAKES PRESENTS: ARTStor

Today, your bibliophylax is going to take a look at ARTStor, the beautifully designed repository of art images available through many academic institutions. This screencast can also be viewed at YouTube. Feedback is appreciated!

I thought I would add a few of my personal thoughts on creating this screencast. I used a free trial of Camtasia Studio, a professional application for screencasting. I found the bulk of features to be user friendly, but I encountered substantial roadblocks when it would not allow me to record or re-record separate audio. The features for adding audio were simply grayed out and unavailable for selection. This required me to perform “live narration” while “recording” my screen for the screencast; this led to a less professional narration than I would have preferred (a few stops and stutters; uh, um, etc.). The other catch was the lack of a Flash option; I had to produce the file as an MP4. Fortunately, that was compatible with the PodPress plug-in I use for media files here on The Pinakes.

I liked the automatic zoom-and-pan features, though I had to edit them in a number of places as it zoomed in on the wrong part of the screen. More practice with the software would eliminate that step as I would learn how to manipulate the automatic system with my mouse moves. Overall, I found Camtasia to be a very simple program to use, my only quibbles probably down to deficiencies in my hardware.

 

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