One of the most annoying problems I have with Camtasia is the bug where you export a video…it goes through the entire export process, and when it finishes a dialog box pops up saying that it is finished and you can reveal the file in the finder. Clicking on the “reveal in finder” button does nothing. So I go to where I saved the file…no file. I check everywhere, no file. I check my hard drive space before and after, no change, which means it just spent 2.5 hours exporting nothing. So I say hey, maybe it just screwed up…I’ll try again. Another 2.5 hours later…nothing. So I think maybe it is the computer. I change computers, 2.5 hours later, no file. So I think it is the file itself, I change files, 2.5 hours later, no file. I think maybe if I try changing the export options…2.5 hours later, no file. Good lord. I google the problem and many other people have the same problem. Someone suggests saving the file to your documents folder…it worked for them. So I try it on both computers…2.5 hours later, no file. So I try using my PC instead of my Mac…but as you may have found out, you can’t transfer Mac Camtasia files to PC Camtasia. Boo. Guess what else, all videos recorded with Camtasia are saved as Camtasia extensions and guess what, no other program can open them…so…I HAVE to export them…but it won’t work. I had this same exact problem with my Female Hunter AND the Final Charge videos. Sometimes it would fail, and I would try again, and it would work. Sometimes it would fail two times in a row, and I would try again, and it would work. No settings would change, no files would change, nothing. I would just hit export again and it seemed to work or fail at random. Now I’m thinking, “holy crap I just spent like 2 weeks on this video and I can’t get it to export…I’m screwed.” Oh, by the way, the file I’m trying to export is only an hour long. 15 or so hours later I give up and go to bed.

I think maybe I should try breaking the file up into two smaller parts. One annoying change Camtasia made recently is that all videos recorded in a project are saved into the project file instead of being saved in another location. This means that if you duplicate the project it will duplicate all of the videos. If you don’t want duplicates, you have to go back after the fact and delete them by hand by clicking “show package contents” in the finder. An hour or two later and finally the first part exported. Let the clouds part and the sunlight shine down and burn my eyes out…something actually worked! So I tried the second part, and it too exported. Now that I have the first half of the video exported, it is time to do the last half. During this whole time I was speaking with TechSmith support, and after going back and forth with them and not coming up with a solution, they finally said “Camtasia has a known issue with not being able to export longer videos. We will try to address it in our next patch.” So if you plan to make a video that is longer than 30 minutes, be ready for an ulcer. The thing that is weird is that I was able to export much longer videos before…but I guess maybe one of the new updates screwed things up…I dunno. So you might be thinking maybe this is just a Mac issue…well I used Camtasia on my PC for the Liche Priest video, and it had just as many problems. It tended to cause my entire computer to crash while I was filming…very awesome.

So armed with the knowledge that I can’t export longer videos, I tried to export the last half of my video. I broke it into two sections and exported them, both worked. I started to listen to it and I realized I forgot to change some of the audio properties. I go back and make the fixes and then export again…surprise surprise, the bug is back and it didn’t export anything. All I did was change an audio setting and now it doesn’t export. So I leave everything the same and just hit export again…magically it worked this time. Yay for random bugs.

You may think my bug issue is over, but not so fast there buddy. Now I am on to my crashing issues! Someone had asked me about adding captions since they have a hearing disability, so I figured I would go ahead and do it. See all those black boxes with audio waves in them that are above all of the green boxes with audio waves? That is the caption timeline. In order to write captions you have to click on one and then start typing as it plays that section of audio. Seems simple enough, until you click off of it. Crash time. It doesn’t crash every single time you deselect the caption timeline, but I would say between 20-40% of the time it will crash. Now I’m saving my file about every 30 seconds in case it crashes. Here is the kicker…in order to save you HAVE to deselect the caption timeline. If you have it selected, the save option is grayed out. BUT, in order to save you have to deselect and risk the program crashing. Kind of a Catch 22. At one point it crashed 7-8 times in a timespan of typing less than 10 minutes of captions. The other awesome thing is that it takes 1.5 minutes for Camtasia to reopen my file after it crashes (yes I actually timed it). I have autosave set to 1 minute, but still, having your program crash that many times in that short amount of time starts to add up to a lot of time lost. Oh, and it isn’t a file or computer related issue…I have tried using captions on two different computers using many different files. Maybe I am just lucky. It could be a Mac thing…maybe I should try it on my PC.

I also mentioned problems with iDVD. I wouldn’t really call it a bug, but rather just poor implementation of the program. I guess you get what you pay for (same with Camtasia). In iDVD you can make it so that it has a “Play Movie” button. BUT, it only works if you have 1 movie file. Since Camtasia wouldn’t allow me to export one large movie file, I had to break it into 5 parts. If I try to make a DVD with iDVD, I can’t make the DVD play through all 5 parts back to back. You have to select part 1 from the menu…watch it, and when it is over it will take you back to the menu where you have to select part 2…watch it…go back to the menu…select part 3…and so on. That is really annoying and something I don’t think anyone would want to deal with when trying to watch a video. I did find one bug that caused iDVD to crash. If you select something on the timeline and hit “smart delete,” half the time the program will crash. Wee! As of right now I probably won’t release a DVD version of my environment tutorial simply because I don’t want people to have to go to the menu 5 times in order to watch the whole thing.

Update Oh man…so I was able to stitch all 5 parts of my video together with Camtasia and export it as one file so that I can burn it to a DVD. I created my DVD project in iDVD, tried to burn it, and after about 30-40 minutes, I get an error saying something is wrong with the menus…the menus that COME with iDVD. So I think maybe it is just a glitch. I try again, it fails again. I try deleting the stuff out of my library/quicktime folder like people suggested…didn’t help. I deleted my entire project and created another one like people suggested…didn’t help. I tried saving to a different location like people suggested…didn’t help. So I decided to completely change the theme and bingo, it finally worked. It took 6 hours to burn one dvd because of the encoding time. The first one always takes the longest, but now it only takes 30 minutes to burn one DVD. Soooooooo, I will have DVD versions available when I launch the tutorial. Sorry, the DVD version does not have captions. If you want captions you will have to get the digital download version.

So yeah, with all of the crashing and the bugs, I have lost several days of work. Gotta love it! I should probably just invest in Final Cut Pro, but the $1k price tag is a bit steep. Maybe if I worked on videos all the time it would be worth it, but it has been almost a year since I last created a tutorial. When, you may ask, will my tutorial be finished? Well, the tutorial is done but I’m still in the process of trying to add captions. The other thing about the captions is that Camtasia will only allow the option to turn them on and off if you export it to YouTube or Screencast.com. If I want to export it as say, a quicktime file, I have to either leave them on all the time or leave them off all the time. That means I need to export two versions, one with captions and one without. This also means doubling my chance of running into the export bug. Adding captions is a lot more time consuming than I had anticipated (especially with all of the crashing), so it might be another week or so before I am finished.

Here is a link to the app description and sample images. The app is made in association with Imaginism Studios, so be sure to check out some of their other awesome sketchbook apps. Thanks!

With this layout I can do almost everything without having to move my hand at all. If I need to change to the eraser or brush I can just move my index finger down to the next row of buttons. If I move my little finger down it will save my file. Moving my index finger straight down to the last row flips my image horizontally. It takes a little while to get used to the layout if you have never used a Nostromo before, but I think it is definitely worth it, especially since I don’t really like the layout of the Intuos 4 buttons. I hope that helps!

You know it is the holiday when large tablets of awesomeness abound. I am a total sucker for new technology and the new Intuos 4 is no exception. The first thing that one notices about the Intuos 4 is the widescreen format and the new express keys and speed ring. The cool thing about the Intuos 4 is its ambidextrous design. In the control panel you can set the tablet to either right handed or left handed. There are two usb ports that you can choose from depending on which one better suits your taste. Yes, this tablet finally allows you to disconnect the cord, now all they need is a wireless tablet.

Pressure

Another feature that I was really excited about was the fact that they doubled the number of pressure levels from 1024 to 2048. The Intuos 3 required 10 grams of pressure before the tablet could sense the stylus while the Intuos 4 only requires 1 gram. In the end you will notice a smoother, steadier transition with each stroke. You will probably need to mess around with the pressure sensitivity in the control panel in order to take full advantage of the larger range of pressure levels.

Aesthetic awesomeness

After rummaging through all the goodies in the box I came across some different colored rings. I realized that these rings go between the grip and the tip of the stylus. I know they are a complete gimmick and serve no real purpose other than aesthetics, but it made me very happy to be able to put a red ring on my black pen. What can I say, I am easily amused.

I also really like the matte finish and the sloped edges. The thing I didn’t like about the Intuos 3 was the clear trim around the edges. Dirt and dust would get lodged in there and it was a pain to try and clean out. The trim also tended to get damaged fairly easily.

ExpressKeys

The eight express keys have a nifty illuminated display next to each button so you can see which button is which in the dark. The speed ring has a button in the center that allows you to switch between four different presets. It seems really cool at first, but trying to change brush size with one preset, then clicking the button to make it switch to zoom, then having to cycle back through to change your brush size again takes too much time. Now I don’t really bother changing to the different presets, I just keep it on brush size. Trying to retrain my brain to remember the new button layout is taking longer than I expected. Recently I have just been using my Nostromo since I am used to using it all the time at work.

The removal of the touch strips on either side of the Intuos 3 is a good and bad thing. On one hand I had to disable the touch strips outside of Photoshop because I would accidentally brush

against them. On the other hand I felt using the touch strip to change brush size was faster. The other problem I encountered with the Intuos 3 touch strip was the fact that whenever I zoomed in or out, Photoshop would close. This may sound crazy, but it happened…all the time. The reason is because I had the right touch strip set to zoom. When I moved my pen hand over to use the touch strip my cursor would go to the top right corner of Photoshop, right where the close button is. For some reason when I touched the touch strip it would think I was clicking, so my cursor would click the close button. Obviously this problem was only limited to my PC. You are probably thinking “but if you clicked the close button it would ask if you wanted to save your image first, and you could just click cancel to avoid having the program close.” Yes and no. No because I work extremely fast, so when it thought I was clicking close instead of just zooming in/out, it would also go ahead and click “don’t save.” I probably run into this problem at least once a day.

Surface

Once you start painting you will notice that the texture of the surface is very different from that of the Intuos 3. The Intuos 3 was as smooth as butter, but the Intuos 4 has a textured feel to it. In some ways this is cool because it starts to blur the lines between traditional media and digital media. You start to forget that you are painting on a smooth, digital surface and begin to think you are drawing on paper, or some other traditional surface. The major drawback I found was that this new textured surface wears down the stylus tip extremely quickly. After only one week of painting (yes, one week…crazy I know) the tip has been worn down to almost nothing. With my Intuos 3 I only changed the nib once or twice in the past 30 months. Now I know why the Intuos 4 came with so many replacement nibs. Maybe it is all part of their evil plan to make more money, I don’t know.

You will also notice that the Intuos 4 stylus is quite a bit smaller than the Intuos 3 stylus in terms of length. This doesn’t bother me since the length doesn’t really affect my ability to paint. The grip part is also flush to the rest of the pen, which I actually prefer.

Other nifty features

All I have to say is Radial Menu. This thing is awesome. You can set one of your express keys to open the radial menu. Each pie section is completely customizable through the Wacom control panel. Below is an example of what I have mine set to. When you click “command” it opens the second radial menu, packed with the essential commands such as copy/paste and distort/warp. I almost never have to lean forward to use my keyboard, which saves a lot of time.

The pen stand houses a secret stash of extra pen nibs: five default nibs, one spring nib, one felt nib, three pencil-like nibs, and a tool to remove the nib.

Conclusion

The Intuos 4 is definitely an upgrade from any of the previous Wacom tablets and is well worth the money. Go buy it!