THIS IS A TEST INSTANCE. ALL YOUR CHANGES WILL BE LOST!!!!
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A Tuscany Slide Template (Microsoft PowerPoint format) is available for download.
Capturing Audio
Audio tracks are useful for providing spoken backdrops to slides or desktop demonstrations.
Video or audio can be used to present a topic or educate students. Many people learn in different ways and often visual or audio presentation is a better method than just textual documentation. This section details a number of ways of making audio and video files of people speaking or presenting for use alongside a slide show presentation.
Audio tracks are useful for providing backdrops to slides or desktop demonstrations. Audio can be a single voice track or a fully mixed voice and music extravaganza.
- Microphone or headset
Most desktops and laptops have microphone inputs and speaker or line outputs for audio. You can record audio using a microphone or telephone headset connected to the microphone input. For better quality audio, buy a handheld or desktop microphone. Many podcast microphones are ideal to record voice, and they plug into any USB port. Use a quiet room to ensure the best audio quality. Never record a speaker from across the room, you will pick up too much air conditioning noise and rustling of papers. Instead use a wireless lavalier microphone.
You can use third party audio capture software (e.g. Sony Audio Studio or Sound Forge). This has the advantage for providing tools to edit or improve the sound. You can also use low-end audio capture software (e.g. Microsoft Windows Sound Recorder). You can also capture audio with any webcam that has a microphone such as the Logitech Quickcam.
Use a good microphone and a quiet room to ensure the best audio qualityOne free, open source, digital audio editor is Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net. You can use this software to capture and save audio. And it has several tools for normalizing the volume, removing noise, converting, and rescuing otherwise bad audio.
Common audio file formats are MP3, AAC, AVI WAV or QTOGG. Most any computer or personal audio player understands these file formats. Inside the audio file, the audio may be compressed with various coder-decoder (codec) compressions. Most computers understand MP3 and simple AVI WAV compressions. AAC and QT often require the installation of Apple Quicktime or iTunes software.
Capturing Video
Videos are useful for providing "talking head" newscaster style instructions, capturing a speaker at a conference, or capturing a lecturer in a classroom setting.
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Often a presentation is enhanced when a presenter shows the topic in action. For Tuscany, this might be a hands-on software demonstration where the speaker drives the computer and illustrates the exact computer input and output to acheive the results. Users are better able to retain the material when they see windows open and close, lists scroll, and wizards in action. There are many tools that one can use to provide still screen shots or video screen captures.
- Still Desktop still shots
Most photo editing software includes some method of capturing sreens. Adaobe Photo Shopscreens. Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro and others all provide ability to capture entire desktops, single windows, client areas, or a screen area defined by the user. Other recommended screen capture programs include:- FastStone CaptureAn excellent dedicated still capture program for Windows. Free to try. Inexpensive to buy.
- Motion Desktop motion capture
Presentations with moving mouse pointers, scrolling windows, page turning, animation, and action often engage the user's attention and are an excellent way to illustrate Tuscany in action- Camstudio Camstudio is an open source video product. Free to use. Donations accepted. This software can record your mousing, page turning, and web surfing. Use the Microsfot Video 1 codec to ensure easy transportability.
- Camtasia Studio. Camtasia is excellent for captuing desktop actions
An example Camstudio Motion Capture Demo with computer desktop video and sound is attached.
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Choosing a publishing medium or a hosting site is often the decision that drives all other presentation issues. Does the site offer multiple media? Can I include audio, slides, video, images unaltered? What quality and how much video can be included? How long will my presentation be available? What cost? This section describes various publication techniques and the advantages and disadvantages to each.
- You Tube
You Tube allows users to post videos on a publicly hosted website. They support video files only and submitted videos are resampled to fit the two quality levels offered. Unfortunately the quality levels are poor for slide presentations and computer graphics. Videos can be tagged by subject, and similarly themed videos are easy to search and find. Users can comment on and rate videos. The videos are hosted indefinitely for free.
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