How to Make 720p High Definition Screencast Videos for YouTube

This tutorial will show you to how record and produce 720p High Definition (HD) screencast videos (Widescreen) for YouTube using Camtasia Studio, the best screencasting tool for Windows that will soon be available on Mac.

HD video mostly refers to web video with display resolution of either 1280×720 (720p) or 1920×1080 (1080i or 1080p - full HD). YouTube, at the moment, only supports 720p HD resolution with a 16:9 (non-square pixels) aspect ratio and 24fps frame rate. Watch the clip to know how a 16:9 widescreen video is different from the 640×480 4:3 standard definition video.

Ok, so let’s get started. You need the following software to make 720p HD videos for YouTube with any fake black border around the video:

1. Camtasia Studio - download a 30 day trial for free. This will act like a virtual high definition video camcorder for your computer screen.

2. Apple QuickTime - for encoding with the H.264 video codec for HD quality on YouTube.

3. Any computer with a decent processor - long HD videos may take some time to render on a slow machine.

When you begin the screen recording process, make sure that the recording dimensions are set to 1280 pixels x 720 pixels.

From the Camtasia Recorder, go to Tools -> Options, change video configuration to manual and set the screen capture rate to 30 frames per second. Under audio format, use PCM with 44.100 kHz 16 bit Stereo. Save these settings and record your screencast video.

Once you are done with the recording and editing process, it’s time to produce your screencast video in HD format for YouTube. You may either use the MP4 or MOV formats for the output video as they both use the same MPEG-4 / H.264 codec.

HD Using .MOV format

Open the Production wizard in Camtasia (choose "Produce video as") and select "custom production settings". Use Quicktime Movie (mov) as the output format and under QuickTime options, use the following settings:

• Frame Rate: 30 fps; Quality: Best; Key frames: Automatic
• Export Size Settings (dimensions): 1280 x 720 HD
• Sound: 44.1 kHz, 16 bit Stereo

HD using MP4 format

Select Flash Output (MP4/SWF) in the Production wizard and use a template with no controls. Under video, select MP4 with a frame rate of 30 fps and change the audio options to at least 96 kbps. Manually set the video dimensions to 1280 (width) x 720 (height). The MP4 settings are courtesy Matt Pierce.

Upload HD to YouTube

Now that your HD screencast is ready, upload the file to YouTube. Once the video is uploaded and available for viewing, you may not immediately see the "Watch in HD" link as it can take anywhere between 5-15 minutes for YouTube to provide an alternate HD format.

If you see a green bar on the video page that says "this video is still being processed. Video quality may improve once processing is complete," it means that YouTube could recognize your recently uploaded screencast video as HD.

How to Embed HD YouTube Videos

If you like to embed HD videos from YouTube into a web page such that readers can directly watch the high definition version of the video without having to click the "HD" button in the YouTube player, just add &ap=%2526fmt%3D22 to the YouTube embed code in two places:

&ap=%2526fmt%3D22">&ap=%2526fmt%3D22"type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always"

If that was a bit confusing, view the source code of this page that also includes an HD screencast created with Camtasia.

Linking to HD 720p YouTube Videos

You now know how to embed an HD video clip on a web page but consider another scenario where you have to link to an HD video on YouTube.

If you use the default video link provided by YouTube, it would only show the standard quality video unless someone hits the HD button on the YouTube player.

To directly link to the high-definition version of the video, simply add &fmt=22 to the video URL and anyone who clicks that link can watch your screencast video in widescreen and full HD quality. See example:

Standard Quality: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lsbA8RhiI

Full HD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1lsbA8RhiI&fmt=22

YouTube HD Alternatives

Other than YouTube, you may upload HD screencast videos to other sites like Vimeo, blip.tv, Motion Box or even Daily Motion which is not just free but imposes no limits on the video duration and file size. Feeling confused? Check this detailed comparison of HD video sites on CNET by Josh Lowensohn to understand which site would suit your requirement best.

I am quite happy with the HD quality of YouTube videos and best of all, the service is absolutely free with no bandwidth limits. If you are looking to further widen the reach of your HD video clips, check other services that may help you upload videos to multiple sites at once.

Search Suggestions in Yahoo! Images are just Brilliant

Not sure when this feature was introduced but if you search for images on Yahoo, it also offers some brilliant and useful suggestions related to your query.

For instance, when I searched for images of domino’s pizza on Yahoo, the suggestions included McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Burger King, KFC and Subway - all fast food chains. However, the suggestions for the word "pizza" were about ice creams, cakes and only food items.

And here are some more examples for "India" and "Barack Obama". It’s useful because you get to see related places, personalities, objects, etc. right in the same search query.

How to Check Multiple Email Addresses for New Mail At Once

In the last 15 years, I have had at least four different primary email addresses. My first email account was on MSN Hotmail (now Windows Live Hotmail), then I shifted to Yahoo Mail for some time, then to Google mail followed by Google Apps for Gmail.

Creating a new email account is easy (and often free) but the big problem is that you can’t completely ignore the old inbox (unless the service supports auto-forward) because some of your past contacts may still try to reach you on your previous (primary) addresses.

Now if you are in a similar situation as me and maintain two or more email addresses, here are some solutions that will help you check for new mail across all your web email accounts from a central location without having to log into individual accounts.

Option #1: Use a Desktop based mail client

Gmail, Google Apps for Mail and now Windows Live Hotmail officially support the POP3 protocol so you can check mails in any of these accounts though desktop mail clients like Microsoft Outlook, ThunderBird, Windows Live Mail or Eudura.

Since the free version of Yahoo! Mail doesn’t offer auto-forward or POP access facility, there’s a simple workaround - you can either use WebMail (for ThunderBird) or YPOPs and manage your Yahoo! emails from any desktop mail client.

Another good alternative here is Zimbra Desktop - it’s an Outlook like desktop software (developed by Yahoo) that will help you check mails across all your Yahoo! accounts for free. Zimbra is available on Mac, Windows and Linux.

If you prefer reading and replying to emails on the service provider’s website itself but need some sort of a desktop notifier to ping you as soon as new messages land in any of your inboxes, get ePrompter - this runs in the Windows system tray and can retrieve messages from all your web mail accounts at pre-defined intervals.

Option #2: Check mails on any computer

If you work across multiple computers, it may take lot of effort for you to install and configure desktop mail clients on all these individual machines. What you therefore need is ThunderBird Portable - it’s just like the desktop version of ThunderBird except that all settings and data are stored on the USB drive so you can easily carry it around and check mails on multiple email accounts from any computer anywhere.

Alternatively, you may try web based services like Fuser and Mail2Web that help you check all your email accounts on a single website. They provide a common inbox for all your web email accounts where you can send as well receive messages without having to log separately into any of you different mail accounts.

Fuser works with Microsoft Exchange as well so you check both personal and work related email simultaneously. Mail2Web offers a WAP version of the website optimized for the small screen of your mobile phones.

Option #3: Let one email address rule them all

The solutions that we discussed so far involved pulling up emails from multiple web accounts into one central location. What if all the messages that reach your secondary inboxes are pushed automatically to your main email address so you can check them in the web browser itself without having to configure anything?

There are two services that can help us here - the good old Gmail and the second is NutShellMail - it’s new and awesome.

Let’s start with Gmail. This Google mail service includes a featured called Mail Fetcher that will help download messages from up to five other email accounts into your central Gmail inbox. Thus you can check even non-Gmail accounts from Gmail as long as they support POP access (e.g., Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail Plus).

Things get much simpler if you want to use your Gmail (or Google Apps) account as a secondary address because Gmail can auto-forward all incoming messages to any other email account so you really don’t have to check your Gmail account ever except for any false positives that get caught in the Spam folder.

Next in this category is NutShellMail - it’s a relatively new web service that takes a different but very original approach to dealing with email.

Let’s assume that your main address is on Gmail but all the junk newsletters reach your Yahoo! address. You also maintain an AOL account because some of your old college friends still have that address.

Now NutShellMail is a web based service that will monitor all your secondary email addresses in the background and will send you a digest mail containing a list of messages that may have arrived in any your web mail accounts. You can click on the subject line of any message to read the contents.

This service will also come handy in places like your office where you can’t check personal mails (on say Gmail or Yahoo!) as access to the mail website has been blocked due to company policies. You can configure NutShellMail and it will send you snapshots of all your inboxes on a recurring schedule.

FeedDemon 3 Is Coming Next Week

If you are looking for a desktop based RSS reader that has more features than your current online reader and won’t die even if the "cloud" goes down, FeedDemon is a great choice.

The Best of Both Worlds

The upcoming FeedDemon 3.0 release will even may add Google Reader synchronization meaning that you can won’t have to switch but can use both the services simultaneously. Any changes (like subscribing to new feeds, marking items as read, etc.) that you make in FeedDemon will be made available in Google Reader and vice-versa.

And it’s not just about synching feeds. Some of the native Google Reader features like sharing with notes and keyboard shortcuts are also expected in FeedDemon 3, the first beta of which is expected next week according to this tweet from Nick.

Update: The upcoming first public beta of FeedDemon 3.0 won’t have support for Google Reader due to "business related" issues.

For someone like me who spends a major part of his day skimming through web feeds, this news is almost as exciting as Apple releasing a new OS for the iPhone.

Microsoft Surface Like Wearable Computer That May Cost No More Than a Mobile Phone

Science fiction meets reality. Pranav Mistry from the MIT Media Lab has developed a wearable internet-connected computer that can turn virtually any physical surface (like the wall, your hand or even a book in your hand) into a Microsoft Surface like table computer allowing you to interact with that surface using simple freehand gestures.

Called Sixth Sense, a prototype of the device was recently demoed at the TED Conference by Pattie Maes (Pranav’s advisor) and it left the audience completely awestruck.

For instance, you could pick up any book from the store and the device will display ratings from Amazon.com on the book itself. Or you could project Google Maps on the wall and zoom & pan using fingers.

The video also show how you can display a pile of photographs on the wall of your room and arrange them using natural hand gesture similar to Microsoft Surface. Or do graffiti on the wall by moving your fingers in the air without touching real paint.

In this picture, a newspaper shows live video news projected from the video camera of the "Sixth Sense" computer. Pranav says in an interview that any application, now on your computer or mobile phone, can be used inside Sixth Sense.

The device costs less than $350 to build but the price will obviously models "if" it goes commercial and reaches the "mass production" stage.

Googlebot Can Execute JavaScript on Web Pages

Googlebot, the web spider that crawls web pages for inclusion in Google’s search index, can sometimes run JavaScript code as well in addition to fetching text content from a web page.

Here’s why - my Google Analytics report for Web browsers says that 500+ visits to the site were made using Googlebot 2.1 browser which is actually the code for the user-agent for Googlebot.

These Googlebot visits can only be recorded in Google Analytics if the JavaScript code of Google Analytics on those web pages was executed by the Googlebot.

While it is possible that that some people may have changed the user-agent of their web browsers to mimic Googlebot, that is not the case here because even Statcounter recorded the Googlebot visits with more detailed information including the time it spent on the whole site for that session.

Am not sure how Googlebot determined web pages where it had to run the JavaScript code but this could be of some interest to AJAX based websites.

How to Link to HD Quality Videos on YouTube

If you have to link to a 720p HD video on YouTube from your web pages or share those links in an email, here’s a simple hack - just append &hd=1 to the YouTube video URL and it will directly play the high-res widescreen version of that video in the browser.

For instance, the URL youtube.com/watch?v=ZOmLnGrq-bA links to the standard (grainy) version of the YouTube video while youtube.com/watch?v=ZOmLnGrq-bA&hd=1 will prompt YouTube to show the high quality HD version of that video.

This is more easy than all the previous parameters (like &fmt=22 or &fmt=18) as they weren’t supported officially and therefore your video links could break in the future. [via]

Google AdSense Video Units Are Being Discontinued

AdSense video units, a program that allowed AdSense publishers to embed YouTube videos along with Google Text ads, will be discontinued from April 2009.

Unlike referrals, the video units weren’t really popular among website owners so in case you haven’t seen an AdSense video unit before, here’s a screenshot for you.

Create Short URLs for Google Maps Links

Google Maps URLs are pretty unwieldy especially when sending over an IM, tweet or email. MapOf.it provides you a quick way to link to Google Maps by simply specifying the address of the location as a search parameter.

http://mapof.it/

So, for instance, the Google Maps link for the Taj Mahal is mapof.it/taj+mahal.

If you need directions between two locations, then specify the two addresses separated by a slash. So, to get from the Taj Mahal to Gateway of India, the Google Maps link is mapof.it/taj+mahal/gateway+of+india

http://mapof.it//

While MapOf.it uses Google Maps as the default mapping option, you can also opt to use other mapping options - Multimap (mm), Yahoo Maps (y), Open Street Map (osm), Tiny Geocoder (t), by adding the map service code before the address.

http://mapof.it//

Also see: Create Short URLs for Google Search

Note that unlike other short URL services, MapOf.it URLs give you some idea about the shortened URL. [via]

Compare Changes on a Web Page Side-by-side Like a Wiki

Most wikis maintain revision history for every web page in the system so you can easily visually compare changes between any two versions of the same page side-by-side. For instance, this colored edit log from Wikipedia shows how the page for Bush changed the day Obama was sworn in office.

Now if you like to have a similar change log for regular web pages as well so that you know exactly what text has been added, removed or where the edits happened since you last visited the site, check out Versionista.

Versionista is both a web page monitor and visual comparison tool. You supply a list of web addresses (or URLs) that you want to track with Versionista and it will send you an email alert as soon as the site owner edits something on the page.

What I like most about Versionista is the way it highlights changes in a web page (see example)- all the edits are color coded and both versions of the page are timestamped and placed side-by-side so you can quickly compare the old content with the new.

This can also be a great companion for tracking changes in legal documents, where every word matters, like the terms of use or privacy policy of some organization. The free version of Versionista will track up to 4 different versions of the same page and you can monitor a maximum of 5 web pages.

Other services that can help you monitor web pages include Google Docs, Change Detection, Watch That Page or Page2RSS - the latter helps you track changes on a page via feeds itself and is good for ego surfing through Google search.

Now Upload Excel 2007 Files to Google Docs

This may seem like a minor improvement but would certainly help lot of Google Docs users who frequently exchange spreadsheets with people who use Microsoft Office 2007.

If a person on the other side sends you a spreadsheet saved in the newer Excel 2007 format, you neither have to ask him for a previous xls version nor do you need to upload that "sensitive" data on to a third-party website for online conversion.

That’s because you can now upload Excel 2007 files (saved as xlsx) into Google Docs and it will import all cell data and formulas though the formatting was not preserved as you can notice from the above screenshot.

XLSX is the only format currently supported by Google Docs. You still need the help of other services for converting Word & PowerPoint 2007 files in a format that Google Docs can understand. Even Gmail can process Office 2007 files.

Make a Mobile Friendly Version of your Blog with Google Reader

You blog design may be perfectly optimized for the desktop screen but there are lot of people out there who frequently check your website for new content using their mobile phones.

They are not interested in the sidebars, navigation areas and other design elements - all they want to see is a simple listing of your blog posts in reverse chronological order. If they like to read a post, they can click the title and a mobile friendly version of that page should open on the screen of their cell phone.

You may not be a geek or may have the time to create a mobile edition of your blog so here are two simple hacks to help you out - your blog content won’t just look extremely readable on a mobile phone screen, it will also load very fast.

1. Google Reader - The Ten Second Solution

Google Reader can generate an excellent mobile view of your RSS feed without any effort. Just append your feed address to the following URL and your mobile blog is ready.

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/[feed_address]

And here’s a live example - use your mobile phone to see the awesome page rendering

http://www.google.com/reader/m/view/feed/http://feeds.labnol.org/labnol

Call this link "Mobile Site" and place it somewhere at the top of your blog design so mobile phone users will notice it instantly and switch to the mobile view.

2. The next solution is to create a free account at mofuse.com and they’ll give a personal mobile website with a .mobi address - something like http://labnol.mofuse.mobi/.

If you have self-hosted blog like on WordPress or Blogger Custom domains, you can easily setup the mobile edition of your site on a subdomain (e.g. m.labnol.org) - it is short and your users can easily guess the URL since almost all popular sites now follow the m. convention.

WordPress users are lucky as there’s a plugin that will automatically detect if the client is a mobile phone browser and it then renders a mobile friendly version of the blog to the visitor.

Browse the Web Faster on a Slow Internet Connection

If your current Internet speed is very slow and you are living in an area where broadband connections are still not available, here are some ideas to help you download web pages faster on your computer. You may use the same tips to improve your web browsing experience on a sluggish USB modem.
Surf the Web Faster on Slow Internet

1. Turn off web images, the Adobe Flash plug-in, Java Applets and JavaScript from your browser settings as these files are often the bulkiest elements of any web page.

2. Increase the size of your browser cache. If the static parts of a site (like background graphics, CSS, etc) are stored in the local cache, your browser can safely skip downloading these files when you re-visit the site in future thus improving speed.

3. Sometimes the slow DNS server of your ISP can be a bottleneck so switch to OpenDNS as it can resolve website URLs into IP addresses more quickly. If you aren’t too happy about OpenDNS redirecting your Google queries, follow this simple hack.

4. Finch can serve a light-weight version of any website in real-time that is free of all bells and whistles. For instance, the New York Times homepage with all external resources can weigh more than a MB but Finch trims down the size by 90% so the site loads more quickly on a slow web connection.

5. Flinch (mentioned at #4) is good for reading regular websites but if you just need to check the latest articles published on your favorite blogs, use BareSite. This service will automatically detect the associated feed of a website and render content quickly inside a minimalist interface.

6. The Google Transcoder service at google.com/gwt/n can split large web pages into smaller chunks that will download more quickly on your computer (or mobile phone).

7. Monitor your Internet speed to determine hours when you get the maximum download speed from the ISP. Maybe you can then change your surfing schedule a bit and browse more during these "off peak" hours.

8. You can use a text browser like Lynx or Elinks for even faster browsing. It downloads only the HTML version of web pages thus reducing the overall bandwidth required to render websites.

9. When searching for web pages on Google, you can click the "Cache" link to view the text version of a web page stored in the Google Cache. Alternatively, install this GM script as it adds a "cached text only" link near every "Cached" link on Google Search pages.

10. Move your web activities offline as far as possible. You can send & receive emails, write blogs and even read feeds in an offline environment. Also see: Save Web Pages for offline reading.

11. You can interact with websites like Flickr, Google Docs, Slideshare, etc. using simple email messages. Uploading a new document to Google Docs via email would require less bandwidth than doing it in the browser because you are avoiding a trip to the Google Docs website.

12. Applying the same logic, you may also consider using tools like Web In Mail or Email The Web as they help you browse websites via email. Just put the URL of a page (e.g., cnn.com) in the subject field of your email message and these services will send you the actual page in the reply.

13. Bookmarklets are like shortcuts to your favorite web services. You neither have to open the Gmail Inbox for composing a new email message nor do you have to visit Google Translate for translating a paragraph of text. Add relevant bookmarklets to your browser bar and reduce the number of steps required to accomplish a task.

14. Use the netstat command to determine processes, other than web browsers, that may be secretly connecting to Internet in the background. Some of these processes could be consuming precious bandwidth but you can block them using the Firewall.

15. Use URL Snooper to determine non-essential host names that a website is trying to connect while downloading a web page. You may block them in future via the hosts file or use Adblock Plus to filter out advertising banners on web pages.

16. If you don’t want to spoil your web surfing experience by stripping images and other graphic elements from a web page, get Opera Turbo. It will first fetch the requested web page on to its own server and then send it to your machine in a compressed format. Opera Turbo won’t change the layout of a web site but can lower the image resolution so that they load faster on slow Internet.

17. Change the user agent of your desktop browser to that of a mobile phone like Apple’s iPhone or Windows Mobile. This will help you browse certain web sites like Google News, WSJ, etc. much faster because they’ll serve you a light-weight and less cluttered mobile version of their sites thinking you’re on a mobile phone.