I’ve been exploring Captivate lately because I wanted to translate some screencasts for a project I’m undertaking. It turns out, Captivate doesn’t work so well for screencasting. Slide-based eLearning, sure. But when you have a lengthy software simulation, it fails because you can’t edit the audio while watching the video play. Really? Yes. Really. You know, like if you wanted to ensure the timing of … more »

The other week, by invitation, I was at a Missouri State University Workshop for Teachers of Technical Writing. I presented about trends in technical communication and highlighted multimedia, particularly video, as an important trend. Near the end of my presentation, I asked the academic audience why so many teachers don’t require students to create video (e.g., screencasts, e-learning, video tutorials) as part of their help … more »

One of my first recommendations for achieving a natural, believable voice is to employ more free narration rather than always reading a script. I recommended this because all the video tutorials on Lynda.com are narrated at the same time as they are recorded, and the less you read, the more natural your voice sounds. However, I realize that unscripted narration, even just a few sentences, … more »

If you’re interested in the PowerPoint for my screencasting webinar, here it is below. I always smile a little when people ask for the PowerPoint, because it just consists of pictures. I resist detailed bullets points on each slide because it locks you into a certain order that may be at odds with your presentation’s flow. Also, when you give people text to read while … more »

At the STC Summit in Dallas this year (May 2-5), I’ll be giving a presentation titled “Developing a Personal Voice in Audio.” I’m moving in the direction of screencasts, focusing on the audio component in this presentation. Here’s the presentation description: Narrated video tutorials — both scripted and spontaneous — are a powerful tool tech writers can employ to help users learn software. But the … more »

One of Flare’s shortcomings is the inability to easily embed video files. However, if you use the Camtasia Studio’s Express Show format as your video format (and you choose the SWF option), you can insert the video into Flare by inserting the video as if it were a picture. Here’s a two-minute screencast showing the processing for inserting a video into Flare. You can also … more »

I recently spent 10 days in Florida visiting my family and giving a couple of presentations to the STC-Suncoast and STC-Orlando chapters on blogging. You can hardly take a family of kids to Florida without going to Disneyworld and Seaworld, so we did that as well. In case you’re unaware of the cost of theme parks, prices are enough to bring on a cold sweat … more »

Sometimes I can hardly believe I’ve gotten along for so many years as a technical communicator without a thorough understanding of Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Flash. They seem critical to technical communication. Why Illustrator With vector images (which Illustrator allows you to create), your images in quick reference guides will look sharp and crisp. The more quick reference guides I create, the more I realize … more »

With all the talk about latest trends and avoiding extinction as communicators, and integrating web 2.0 and wikis, blogs, podcasts, and other interactive social media into help, it’s a good time to look at how Google — practically the leader of the web — does help. Last week Google released Google Voice, a service that allows you to integrate all your phones into one number … more »

Official Google Blog: Google Voice invites on their way. This is the kind of short video tutorial I want to learn to do. To get dynamic motion in videos, am I limited to Final Cut Pro, Adobe After Effects, PowerPoint animations, or Flash? Does anyone know what tool the creator used to get dynamic motion here?

Google Voice. The help content for Google Voice is pretty cool — just a list of basic tasks (about 20) with short instructional video clips. I don’t know why the scripts to the video tutorials aren’t made available, but it’s a good example of how to do video tutorials for help content. Usually Google knows what it’s doing, too.

When I talk to most technical writers, video is a format they haven’t done much with. This surprises me, because I find that, as a user, video tutorials are often the most helpful type of material for me to learn software. Video most closely simulates the universal desire we have for a friend to show us how to do something in an application. Perhaps I’m … more »

[Audio clip: view full post to listen] Download MP3 (to download, right-click and select Save Target As) Length: 65 min. Screencasting Presentation Summary In this podcast, Collin Turner presents on “Screencasting — Workflow and Presentation” to the Intermountain STC chapter in Utah. Here’s the presentation summary: Screencasting (when applied properly) is a valuable tool whose popularity is gaining traction. Most available software is accessible and … more »

At the last voice workshop I attended, the instructor (Scott) gave us scripts to read and then critiqued our performance. I tried to imagine myself talking to a friend rather than reading the script, but it didn’t come across with much effect. Scott said I was being too reserved, too monotone. I realized that my conversation technique with voice overs, which I wrote about with … more »

A few weeks ago I tweeted about an interesting voice over site, and my friend Kevin, who runs the Short Cummings Audio podcast, replied that a local voice-over guru in Salt Lake, Scott Shurian, gives workshops on voice. I wanted to improve my voice-based video tutorials, podcasts, training, and presentations, so I thought I’d check it out. Scott is a nice guy and was willing … more »