We’re about to have a bank holiday weekend and that Friday feeling started this morning with this little experiment. I simply loaded a custom hand of a person blowing a straw, tried to record some blowing sounds and this is the result… What can you create that looks completely different to anything else you’ve seen produced in VideoScribe?
So I’ve been playing with morphing tonight – this is a few weeks away from being in VideoScribe, but I thought I would tease you with this short video of one of the very many features that are coming to VideoScribe…
Have you found or had comissioned a great image but only have it as a JPG or a PNG and want to bring it in to VideoScribe but find that the automatic import routine doesn’t do the clean lines of your illustration justice? Then this it the tutorial for you… We look at how you can quickly use InkScape to bring in a bitmap and add the line paths you want to the image so it’s drawn correctly… go on it will only take 5 mins.
If you want to create your own images, or simply use a font that isn’t in VideoScribe – or maybe you want to use characters that aren’t supported or something else…. Well why not use InkScape? It’s free and pretty easy to use (once you have worked out how to install it) and this tutorial shows how easy it is to integrate with VideoScribe.
Want to know more about how to use InkScape – why not search YouTube – there are hundreds of great tutorials.
You can use the new FLV output format (in VideoScribe PRO 1.2.7) to bring in scribes with sound and hand options into Sparkol Presentations. The benefit of working this way is that any complications or differences between Sparkol Presentations and VideoScribe are taken way, sound is supported and you can play your scribes full screen in Sparkol.
Take a look at this quick video to see how easy it is
We have just introduced a new video file format for FLV output that seems to get better results from YouTube than MOV – especially for large Scribes (particularly long scribes – over 5 mins) Watch this video to see how it works and to learn more…
When you click ‘Export for use on other devices’ in your VideoScribe project screen (see image 1), it will ‘share’ your scibe to your account so that you can import it if you sign in on another machine or, if you want to import the scribe into a Sparkol presentation.
Image 1: Project screen
It will ask you to save your scribe before sharing. If you haven’t saved yet, it will give you a field to type in your file name. Then you’ll need to click on the icon again so it shows you the message…
To import your shared scribe into your presentation, under the ‘create’ tab where you edit your slides, click on the VideoScribe icon (see image 3) and select from the list of Scribes it gives.
Image 3: Sparkol
You can only have one VideoScribe per slide but having your scribes in Sparkol means that you can put in scribe after scribe on consecutive slides allowing you to present at the speed you want.
Unfortunately, at the moment Sparkol doesn’t support sound so your scribes but that feature should be coming soon so watch out.
1. If I’m doing text inside an object then I’ll make sure that I set the same camera angle for the image as the text so that there’s not too much zooming in and out.
Do this by clicking on the little camera in the editing box of the picture click ‘set’ when you have it where you want it then select the text and click ‘set’ in the same position.
2. I like to have depth of field.
If I have one picture then I’ll often then zoom out and put my next image in front of it so it over laps a little but a bit bigger and lower down the screen. That way, when it’s running, it looks like there’s a bit more depth to the filming. Love it.
3. Don’t put too much text in one place, gradually bring it in so that the audience isn’t doing too much reading at one time.
I’ll often put my message on the held signs and then move across the canvas to it an image to carry on my message to help it become an unfolding story. In the Sparkol barn here, we all very much think less is more when it comes to text – a visual metaphor will always be better than loads of text on a screen – people dont want to be reading all the time when an image can say it quicker and with more meaning a lot of the time.
4. Always change the timings so it’s a bit snappier.
The default timings are long so I always change the images to be less seconds in the editing box. When your object is selected, the editing box will appear along the bottom next to your selected element. Just click on the numbers (seconds) type in a new time or click on the minus button so it’s a lot less. The length of your whole scribe is at the end of the running order strip at the bottom.
NB. If you put ‘0’ in the timings, it’ll just appear.
You’ll need to save this file locally, then run the latest version of VideoScribe, click on settings, then Hands, then Import Hands. You can then select this file and 10 new hands will be added to your VideoScribe install.
When you download the file you will need to make sure it saves as handpack1.vshand. Some computers will want to save it as handpack1.zip, if this is the case simply change the file name to handpack1.vshand and this will now save correctly.
Please note that you may need to ‘show hidden file extensions’ in the file options if it doesn’t say ‘zip’ or any other file extension on the end, to access the new save options.
As always, any problems, just get in touch support@sparkol.com
