How To Post Sketchcasts On Wordpress.com in 10 Easy Steps
As you know if you’ve tried, you can’t directly embed the sketchcasts you create at sketchcast.com in your Wordpress.com blog. Fortunately, there’s an easy workaround that also gives you better quality, more versatile sketchcasts.
1. First of all, forget using sketchcast.com. It’s got decent tools for creating primitive sketchcasts but nothing by way of help and tech support, plus you can’t embed them on Wordpress.com with the native embedding code.
2. Creative thinking helps. What can you embed on Wordpress.com easily? Youtube and Google video. Therefore a great solution is to create sketchcasts that can be uploaded to Youtube.
3. There is great resource for creating sketchcasts as .avi files right here. Rich Ziade provides a lot more information about how to create sketchcasts, and gives you a way to contact him. View the video.
4. Using that website’s advice, download Artrage to use as your drawing tool. Also download Cam Studio to record your drawing sessions and save as .avi files. You could use any of the others suggested but I use these two and they work fine. They are both free but I popped $25 for the full version of Artrage.
5. You need to use a graphics pad as your input device. Period. Mice won’t cut it. Mine cost $100 at Best Buy.
6. Artrage is pretty easy to learn. Poke around with it for a while and learn all the different types of drawing instruments you can use - pen, chalk, brush, roller, paint tube, etc. Also learn how to size your canvas. Size it so that the various ‘toolbars’ sit outside the edges of the canvas. The canvas area will be what people see in the final sketchcast so keep it clear of clutter. Make sure that it’s sized at a 4:3 aspect ratio.
7. Learn how to record stuff with Cam Studio. Select ‘fixed region’ and drag across the diagonal corners of your canvas. This tells Cam Studio to record only what appears on the canvas and leave everything else on the screen out. Also learn the hotkeys for RECORD and STOP so you can start and stop recording without disrupting the viewable region.
8. Make a sample sketchcast. Hit RECORD hot key, start doodling on the canvas, hit STOP when you are done. Cam Studio will prompt you to save. It will also playback the video you’ve just made on its native movie viewer. When you think you’ve learned the procedure well enough, storyboard a real sketchcast on post-its or whatever, then record it.
9. Upload the .avi file to Youtube.
10. Embed in Wordpress.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BVAVS7b1ds]
That’s it. Using a program like Artrage you can make your sketchcasts a great deal more complex and interesting than the ones you create at sketchcast.com.
You can sketchcast with whatever application you want using this technique. Experiment with ways of integrating Excel, Word, Powerpoint, graphics programs, pictures, videos, games, or whatever else you can imagine into your sketchcasts.
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