Creating Video with Sound on the Lumens DC 166 Document Camera

It’s relatively simple to create a video file using the Lumens DC 166 document camera. It’s not as easy to create a video file that includes sound. So here is the way I did it. The first step is to click the video record button in the Ladibug software. You have to click the advanced button to see the video button. I do it this way so that I can choose where to save the file. I don’t want to save the video file on the hard drive of the video camera. The video is saved as an avi file. The next step is to open the video in a minimized window. This will open in Windows Media Player. I moved it the bottom half of my computer screen. I plugged in my headset (microphone/headphone combination) and double clicked the sound icon in the system tray to make sure my speaker and microphone was not muted. I opened Audacity. I played the video from the document camera and narrated the video while I recorded my voice in Audacity. Audacity has many options to edit the sound recording so it’s ok if you make a mistake. When I was happy with my sound recording, I exported it as a wav file. Then I opened Windows Movie Maker. I’m only going this option because Movie Maker is free. It wouldn’t be my number one choice, but that’s ok. Import your video file and your audio file into Movie Maker. Make sure you switch to the timeline mode of Movie Maker. Drag your video file to the video area of the timeline and the audio file to the audio/music area of the timeline. Save the project. You don’t have very many video editing options in Movie Maker. You can only cut part of the beginning or the end but keep in mind it is a free program. You would have a lot more options if you used Adobe Premiere Elements but that would run you about $50.00. The last thing you need to do in Movie Maker is to save the file so that it can be played on any computer. The file is saved as a wmv file and can be played in Windows Media Player. If you are going to record your lessons and place them on your website be sure to break up the video files so that they are not so memory intensive.