26th December 2006

Praise for ProfCast

posted in distributed-learning, podcasting |

I’ve just used ProfCast software (Mac only) today for the first time, and was delighted with its ease of use and the options it provides. I recorded a “draft version” of my presentation for MacWorld 2007, which I’ll share on January 10th in San Francisco. I’m about to post the results of today’s experiment, both as an enhanced podcast (created with ProfCast and then tweaked a bit in GarageBand) as well as a mp3 audio-only version.

As a tool that lets a presenter or teacher just open up and record his/her narration to accompany PowerPoint or Keynote slides, ProfCast is simple, straightforward, and effective. After you finish recording, it gives you several options which include exporting directly to an enhanced podcast, or exporting to Garageband for some additional post-production editing. Because I had to pause near the end of the preso and messed up a bit (my laptop battery was running low) I needed to make a few tweaks. I also inserted a few audio clips for my introductory podcast audio as well as the regular outro with copyright info. I was disappointed to see that the size of the final Garageband exported version was about three times the size of the version I initially exported directly from ProfCast. The ProfCast (unedited) version was 34.4 MB, the final Garageband tweaked version is 92.8 MB. The audio-only mp3 version is 14.9 MB. The presentation is 64 minutes long. (I used a 32 kbps for the mp3 version, which I converted using iTunes. I’m not sure on the details, but it appears the export quality settings must be higher in some way for Garageband (by default) than ProfCast.

Camtasia Studio is an extremely powerful and versatile software program on the Windows-side for recording narrated multimedia presentations as well as screencasts. It does not have a Macintosh version yet, but I’ve heard rumor a Mac version is in the works. While Camtasia is about $100 for a single-user license, ProfCast is just $30. I’ll be curious to try the Mac version of Camtasia if and when it is released, and especially hopeful the creators will include support for enhanced podcasts. The export to Flash format of Camtasia is excellent too, however, from an accessibility standpoint. Accessibility is a very important issue for me– the main reason I always release an audio-only mp3 version of podcasts whenever I create a video or enhanced version.

Tools like ProfCast and Camtasia Studio are essential, in my opinion, for the toolkits of 21st century educators. As I discuss in this presentation for MacWorld, we need to more carefully consider the best contexts and ways to have students “sit and get” for content in our digitally networked world. Both ProfCast and Camtasia offer options worth trying.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

On this day..

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 5:45 pm and is filed under distributed-learning, podcasting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

There is currently one response to “Praise for ProfCast”

Join the conversation!

  1. 1 On January 6th, 2007, David Chmura said:

    I just wanted to drop a line and say thank you! My name is David Chmura, and I am the CEO of Humble Daisy, Inc, the makers of ProfCast.

    I also wanted to drop a line and encourage you (and your readers) to contribute their wishes/desires/gripes etc…

    ProfCast is designed to be a pedagogical enabler, and I personally feel that we have done a pretty good job, but it’s nowhere near perfect! You have a readership that is particularly focussed on the pedagogy of technology, and I am hoping that your readers will be generous in expressing what they desire in a podcasting tool!

    Thanks again,

    David Chmura
    Humble Daisy, Inc
    Makers of ProfCast