It’s done, done. “Done!” I say.

I’ve finished my screencast for my presentation for Five Weeks to a Social Library. It’s called “A puppy with a new ball: engaging library staff in social networking tools during the MULTA project“. It’s due on 12 January for use early March, so I’ll upload it next week.

Now I’ve migrated my blog and done this, I’m taking a week away from the ‘net. More or less. You may not hear from me for a while.

The screencast is now with Dennis who’s doing the background music. He’s a musician and librarian from Rhode Island. We met in Second Life and he offered to do it. I’d heard his music, liked it and felt rather 2.0 when I said “yes please”. I’m feeling a bit nervous about it, but I guess risk taking is part of this new way of working. We’re using all sorts of ‘net places. We were in SL and skype-ing last night. I’ve published my file on my webspace, shared a gmail spreadsheet and used email. I like it.

I’ve also been collaborating with LB who works in another part of the Uni and has been making films for over 20 years. She wants to know about screencasting and new social software, so we’re doing a bit of skills exchange. She filmed me and several other staff talking about the project. We’ve taken stills and audio from her footage. I’ve added in a few screenshots and animations, plus more audio. I’m worried now that it will be too large for the participants to download if they are on broadband.

Captivate is a dog of a program and I never want to use it again. Captivate was great for storyboarding and easy editing. It took about 5 minutes to generate a 5 slide preview, and when I wanted to check the entire compiled screencast, I had time to make the kids lunch, and eat it with them before it started playing. I hear that v2 is on the market and hope it’s better.

I was dreading capturing, choosing and inserting images of myself. LB picked key points in my storyboard and pointed out that people would want to see me speaking there.

Doing the voiceover made me squirm even more, which I hadn’t expected. I look at myself in the mirror every day, but I don’t hear my voice as others hear it. My first attempt sounded like that voice you hear announcing flloors in a lift. Really dull and librarian-y. The next pass was a scary, hyper lady, full of false cheeriness.

Finally, I imagined that someone whose blog I read was sitting across from me. I presumed she didn’t know anything about the project and might not understand my accent. That made it a lot easier. Thanks Iris.

I still sound a bit more downbeat than I actually am, but this may be an advantage.

LB had some great tips for editing audio. She can intuitively pick out the “beats”, and suggest where there should be pauses. She explained how adding silence can actually make something, that was uncomfortably rushed, easier to listen to and thus sound shorter. Captivate is not good for this process as it’s hard to keep checking and measure the rhythm when it takes so much time to generate the preview.

Aaaaahhhhh. It’s done.