I want to create subfolders on Screencast.com

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bummer. tough to organize a large content library that is broad in scope serving a varied audience with only a single folder structure layer. and it appears from your other reply, no ability to put playlists even in the top level folders. can quickly get out of control / unmanageable.

if there is anything i can do to facilitate this or the other functionalities I inquired about in future feature releases, please let me know. i am a volunteer for a non-profit reviewing screencast for education of our volunteer base. we've got 40 geographic regions and a few thousand volunteers. there is so much that is GREAT about the platform so we would love to make it work. if interested, i would be more than happy to detail the specifics of our structure and needs. i can't imagine we're that unique, so would expect any takeaways would be applicable to your broader user base.

I would like the ability to have sub-folders on Screencast.com so that I can better organize my content.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Adding Subfolders to Screencast.com.

Nice, thanks Moshe. I expect if we go down this path, we'll share the progress and look for feedback here. I have to admit I don't use Gmail's tag functionality, although I know I probably should. I am familiar with the categories and tags on a blog. It would be neat if people could make little Jing videos of any workflows they particularly like or dislike in other apps. I think it might be nice to achieve a "Windows-explorer-like" capability (I am bracing for the gripes here) for those who are used to that, but also some way of achieving a more "blog-like" workflow as well.

It sounds like this is related to my interest in having sub-folders in the Camtasia library.

In reality, the folders that do exist are nothihng more than XML descripters -- and perhaps the Screencast folders are the same way?

Please add my vote for sub-folders on Screencast.com, however you achieve it.

AND JEFF -- I'd like to know more about what you are doing and the organization you are with. I have been interested in working with non-profits myself. Perhaps I can help?

-
Bruce Rothwell

I am considering converting to the Pro account. A critical piece for me would be the ability to nest folders so I can stagger the access to content by week in a class. Having a miasma of folders at the same level will make evrything very confusing. What's up with this

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Search Topics.

Subfolders are necessary to organize content, and to distribute effectively. Signing up for Screencast was step one in our organization's effort to digitally archive content, though it has been less than successful because I would have to have search through many folders to find one file. I am very please with the ease of use, but how long before we know if this will be an option for Screencast users?

Thanks for starting the discussion, Jeff.

Another vote for sub-folder capability. I have heard Techsmith employees frequently say, "We just came from a meeting that was discussing that...". Maybe time to move from discussion to action? :-)

I'm a Screencast user, and I often find this and other limitations frustrating. Subfolders would be a nice start.

Hi everyone. We're working on something that will hopefully solve a lot of the issues you raise. It might not be subfolders in the sense of Windows Explorer, but there is no doubt we can make it a lot easier to manage and organize your content.

We haven't put a lot of development into this yet, but next week either I or a developer will make a video to show you what we have so far and what we're thinking. We'd love your feedback!

Until then, have a great weekend!
Mike Curtis
User Assistance, TechSmith

As promised on Friday, here's a peek at what Jared and Evan have been working on. It's early, and we'll have more updates, but check out this 4:12 video to see the latest. It's quite a change--hopefully for the best!

Let us know what you think so far!

Video demo: http://www.screencast.com/t/LHkNwksp

It looks like a serious improvement :).

With that said, I still would like some traditional folders - my mind just works in that way. The other ideas you mentioned are fine - I imagine you could have those and folders and sub-folders also.

The left hand panel is all set up for sub-folders basically, just need to add some tree-like structuring. In terms of the central area - perhaps give people the option to view it in different formats (folder-view, tag-view, playlist-view, everything, etc.).

Also - in terms of search - perhaps have drop-down whereby we can indicate what we want to search (everything, a particular folder, a particular tag, etc. - perhaps even groups of folders, tags also).

Be well,

Moshe

Thanks Moshe, I noticed since the screencast is hosted on Screencast.com, there have been a number of views but only one comment. Any more thoughts? I debated changing the title of this thread to be a little more general and talk about management and organization in general, but perhaps the correct thing to do is a new thread on that category and keep this one on the strict notion of sub-folders.

It's tricky because essentially we're overhauling the whole Library and it touches many aspects of the workflow.

We'll get you a new update next week!

Cheers Moshe,
A good attemt even if directionally different than the traditional. I think you may have something in the share concept. Ultimately I want to create a bunch of artifacts and then create a play list within a folder so it can chronologically build into a steam of consiousness that I am trying to communcate. With that said sharing them into different folders is a good thing as I can correct the artifact in one palce and all the folders using this artifact are automatically updated to the new version. If you can do this and I can send people to the particualr folder. Most of my needs are taken into account. A tactical note if I had the ability to callan artifact somethinglike step 1 in one folder and link it to the file in another folder where the original is called time value of money than I can get around like I need to. Maybe you can allow an object that would be a playlist that we could customize so they clik from the lsit and the other object invokes.

Regards

Ted Haas

You should have deeper directories. I should be able to create a folder, and then inside that folder, another folder and so on.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Need deeper directories.

With no sub-folders...then my customers can SEE what else is in the folder. I need sub-folders so my viewers have a very limited and controlled experience. I want to give them very easy access...but I dont want my public viewers to be able to see other clips in the same folder.

Exactly!

We really like this idea! We are putting more and more material on screencast, and being able to divide it into client folders would be very, very helpful.

Hi Mike. I've just looked at your"taster" and recognise you and the team have been putting a lot of work in on this. Possibly, for many of us users, too much refinement! By having a simple sub-folder, we can update (i.e. replace but use the same title) video and the viewer won't have any hassle getting to it, whilst we've responded to the client/viewer's needs. In simplistic terms, our main folder is 'My Library' and then any folders we put inside are, in fact, sub-folders of 'My Library'. So, why can't we just continue that hierarchy-type? I'm along with raylasky12 & TedHaas12 on this (except that I can't fathom the emoticons, when I thought I had!) I remain, frustratedly, waiting in hope...

Here's another request for sub-directories. Or if that isn't technically feasible in the short term, how about allowing us to move playlists into a folder? And maybe change the playlist icon to look like a folder...

Cheers All,
Its been a couple of months and maybe a bit more, We have circled the bowl here with maybe a half dozen very nicely crafted verbal variations on the same functionality. Personally I don't much care what we call it, the same basic need to segregate and structure content is what is being asked for here. I appreciate this is a directional change, but from my perspective its a deal maker or a deal breaker. If this is destined to be a recreational capapbiltiy fine. If it is desired that more industrial strength users be attracted something needs to be done. Having given two months time to see what will happen here and seeing the response and progress I think I have to widen my net and see if other alternatives that fit our needs exist. I am not abandoning the hope that Screencast will in the end be our solution. But time is wasting and before too long some decisions must be made. Best wishes

Ted and others,

What comparable alternatives to Screencast have you considered? i.e. not including Youtube etc. Something with equivalent or better file management, security/authentication, performance, playlist authoring etc. capabilities? either for corporate or educational use.

Sorenson 360 is an excellent alternative. At $99 per month that is - what? - 12 times more expensive than Screencast. So it's not cheap. http://www.sorensonmedia.com/video-de...

Hi everyone,
Sorry I've not had an update in a while. We're trying to polish up phase one and make it accessible to everyone to use themselves in an optional beta mode.

I'll try by the end of next week to share another video and update you as best I can as to the status & progress.

Cheers Jeff,
Both Media Silo and Mediafire seem to be reasonable alternatives. I think the latter might be more viable for us I ams till hoping the Screencast will move before the end of the year. If they can get the folder cocnept done It would be helpful.

Good day,
We just pushed the beta live. You can just sign in and click the beta view link (http://screencast.com/t/qvtnnKX2R7f ) You still won't see subfolders, BUT we're still working and a lot of the prerequisites and ground work is in place so we can next work on folder management and we know we need to do more work with playlists.

Can you do me a favor? Can we keep this thread focused on subfolder-related comments and share your general impressions on the following thread? http://feedback.techsmith.com/techsmi...

Cheers MIke,
I clicked on your link and got a static graphic. I clicked on that and nothing happened

I just tried the new beta, and there are certainly some interesting improvements. The lack of nested folders is a serious shortcoming and should have been included in this release. I have only 63 videos created over two or three weeks of one section of one course I am teaching. My world looks like this:

semester > course > section > student > assignment

Right now all I can do is this:

student

So I have 20 or so folders named by the student's last name, with their assignment feedback inside. I already have to scroll down the nifty new folder list in the left panel to see all of these folders. I start teaching different course in a week, and a different semester of the current course in a month. The length of the folder list will double or more in just a few weeks. I teach hundreds of students a year, and it's already unwieldy.

Yes, the search functionality is also nifty, and reasonably quick. I worry that as the library grows, the search times will get slower. Right now I can see no benefit -- to me, the user -- to having only top-level folders.

I also am at a complete loss to imagine why this should be the least bit difficult from a technical perspective. You folks are lots smarter than I, but wouldn't nested folders -- combined with your new search capability -- be a really intuitive approach for most users? I think every file system I've used in the last ... oh ... 30 years ... included hierarchical directories. It feels like the engineering is being driven from the technical side -- or perhaps by limitations on the technical side -- rather than starting from the perspective of the user.

While you're at it, I've been using drag and drop as a way to manage file and folder hierarchies for ... oh ... 25 years on desktop computers and maybe 5 years on many web sites. I would consider that an essential feature of hierarchical folders.

Thanks for listening.

One challenge about subfolders is that right now you can share a folder, and folders have 4 levels of privacy. Technically, that gets really complicated (and hard to explain) if we allow, for example, a Hidden folder inside a public folder. What happens if you share a certain folder level?

David, your explanation of your folder list does a great job of conveying the pain. Clearly, that's not scalable.

Also, it's likely this sneaks by, but it is possible to drag and drop. You need to grab ahold of this little handle thing: http://screencast.com/t/Og7uw3Ou8t

I wonder how many discovered that?

Cheers Mike,
We seem to be making some progress albeit in less than a straight line. At the end of the day yu have a straight forward use case here that probably solves a multitude of issues and does not have to be over engineered. I would claim that the basic ability to next 1 level of folders inside a folder would solve a great majority of the pain here. Using The single level nesting all of the feedback john is talking about can be fit into a folder with the students name and then nested folders for each week. If john also has class artifacts for each week he can have a sperate folder for the classwork and both of the upper level folders labeled so the realtionship between class artifacts and feedback pertain to the same instance of the class and off you go. If there is a master artifact folder and then the artifacts can be linked to every instance folder so the artifact can be accessed from an instance folder you have a neat little navigation system. Instance of class folders can be repurposed over time as well as the feedback and the contents can be archived somewhere else either on or off system to keep things pure. As for the security, a simple password protected list of people who can access based on individual passwords. and maybe a time stamp to limit when a folder can be accessed so people don't get into week 4 work in week 1 and you have everything pretty well nailed down I would think. If someone wants deeper nesting and more robust access controls you could make that an even higher priced offering.

Mike

Thanks for the response, and thanks for the drag-and-drop tip. As soon as I saw your linked image, I instantly recognized seeing the little dotted panel before and wondering what it was for. When I tried it and it worked, it was really nice. After trying it a few times, I realized that having the huge info pop-up (very useful) visually distracts me from noticing the subtle changes in the cursor icon over small areas of each item, from the finger on the video thumbnail to the pointer over the filename and the checkbox, to the hand over the dotted panel. I might have discovered the feature if there was no pop up -- not asking for it to be removed, just pointing out that the cursor icon change is so much more subtle than the info box happening at the same time. Experimenting, I also noticed there is a tiny area between the checkbox and the filename where the hand shows up as well. I also get a text insertion icon hovering over the folder name above the thumbnail, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

So I was happily dragging and dropping my latest set of uploads into their student name folders and found that process pretty easy. But as I got further down the alpha list of folders, I realized I could not see the entire list. I used the scroll bar on the right of the window, and that scrolled the name list up, but it also scrolled the video thumbnails up and they disappeared under the panel at the top of the window. I discovered that if I had about 18 names in the folder list I could still see the first row of videos and drag them to a folder near the bottom of the list, but I could not get the thumbnails and the proper folder on screen at the same time if I had more folders than that. (Macbook 13" with resolution set to 1024 x 640 because I need large type). Whatever the screen size, if the thumbnails and the folder list scroll up together, the thumbnails will eventually disappear before a certain number of folders are reached. As said before, I've added about 20 folders, but I teach hundreds of students a year, so the drag and drop will always reach less and less of the alphabet as the name list grows longer. I resolved it with the Move-To drop down, and that works fine, but that also is going to become increasingly cumbersome as the name list grows longer. The drop-down list does not respond to keypresses to jump through the alphabet. 20 names is fine to scroll through. 200 will be difficult.

Thank you for explaining that the privacy levels are a significant challenge in nested folders. In my first week of using screencast.com I discovered I totally misunderstood the way the privacy settings work after a student let me know he could see the other students' videos. That was my mistake, but yes, you will probably confuse quite a few users as privacy settings become nested. I'm not an engineer, but hasn't this problem already been solved on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS? They all have permissions settings on a per-folder basis and work roughly the same way as far as I know. A shared folder inside of a restricted folder is still accessible (I think) because the rights are per folder, though they can be applied from any parent folder to all of its children if you wish (but I may have it backwards). Icons or other visual cues could easily help users recognize the permissions on a per-folder basis. I see some gray dots in the folder list and I suppose that could be an indicator if the color scheme were more distinct.

Mike, again let me express my genuine thanks for the dialog. Few companies are anywhere near this transparent with both their desire to address customer needs and a pretty frank discussion of the obstacles to getting there. That feels good, and it tells me this will get worked out sooner or later. Once this course is over, I will probably explore some other options for hosting the videos, including cloud storage like Dropbox or a watched folder that triggers ftp/synch to a shared host account. Both of those would have the advantage of mirroring the folder structure on my desktop, and save me the step of using ScreencastUploader to batch them to screencast.com, as well as the step of then moving them to their appropriate folders. (Yes, you can upload to specific folder, but when you've got 30 videos going to a dozen different folders, it's much easier to batch them to the root level and rearrange from there.)

All of this said, I should mention that I teach teachers to teach online, and in my Online Teaching and Learning 101 course, the participants absolutely rave about getting feedback on their assignments with Jing. In the final week of the course (happening now) we also each share a couple of favorite web tools, and of course I talk up Jing for its ease of use (but not its idiosyncratic interface) and price. Folks who don't even own a webcam or a microphone and are planning to teach online get very excited by the ease and simplicity of the product, and the very positive impact it has on teacher-student interaction online. So even though I've bumped into a few obstacles, I remain greatly impressed by Jing (honestly even more than Camtasia), and I'm a happy evangelist.

My apologies for a lengthy response that is not entirely on topic, but I thank you for listening.

There is currently a "Ask for file name" as an option for file names.

How about an "Ask for folder name" for capturing screens for different projects.

Here's how it could be used:
You are reviewing different parts of the ABC application - user accounts, data entry, reporting.

Currently, you would need to set up three profiles for each of the areas or you would captures for each of the areas all in the same folder.

But it you could set up "Ask for folder name", you could have three folders under ABC captures and when you make a capture, you would enter or choose from the drop down list of user accounts, data entry, or reporting.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
How about "Ask for folder name" as file naming option (subfolders).

doglivenordin@hotmail.be

All this seems to be discussed 1 year to 3 months ago. Where are we with this? Is this coming?