I'd Rather Be Writing » video tutorials

Captivate Versus Camtasia Studio

Tom Johnson — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 05:20:38 +0000

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 the video is correct as you’re listening to the audio, or if you make an adjustment to your video or audio timeline that affects your other actions — good luck trying to resync the audio with the video.

When you edit the audio, it opens in another window, or even in Soundbooth if you have the Adobe eLearning suite. But the video recording doesn’t play, so you can’t tell if the small addition or deletion you make on the audio timeline is throwing everything else out of sync with the video recording.

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Why Tech Comm Professors Don’t Teach Video

Tom Johnson — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:18:15 +0000

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 materials. Many professors focus on documentation and design more than video, yet many end-users, as visual learners, prefer multimedia formats when they’re learning software.

My question sparked about a dozen comments, which people communicated both collectively and privately to me. It turns out one of the biggest reasons professors don’t teach video to tech writing majors is due to academic turf wars over who has rights to teach video.

One professor explained that as soon as you include the word “video” in your syllabus, the other departments, such as Film, start to object. Video is the film department’s realm. You’re pretty much confined to documentation topics for a technical writing curriculum.

Other professors ran into the same problem with the word “design.” Throw in the word design and you suddenly start a turf war with the Design department.

Professors mentioned some other reasons for not teaching video as well. Many professors aren’t familiar with video tools, so they don’t teach it. Others may be familiar with the tools, but the tools are beyond the scope of the student’s budget. Others explained that the tools change so frequently, by the time they get a curriculum approved (which may take a year or more), the tools have already changed.

Of course the same turf war sometimes happens in companies. If technical writers start producing e-learning, the instructional design or training departments may cry foul. If you start producing screencasts, the audiovisual department and voiceover talents may feel shorted.

These responses explain why audiovisual skills continue to be underdeveloped in our industry. Incoming tech comm graduates often don’t have these skills, many existing tech comm professionals don’t develop these skills, and there doesn’t seem to be a transition point at which the tech comm professional acquires the skills for video.

As such, video will continue to remain a gap among technical communicator skillsets. It’s a ridiculous trend that starts in the university and perpetuates into the professional field. It’s part of the reason why so many technical communicators continue to be “just writers.”

In response to some of the comments after my presentation, I encouraged teachers to use Jing Project (free) to record video and to focus on the oral delivery, the voiceover (the hardest part), more than the tools. But I could sense that even this route would be met with the same resistance.

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7. Fixing Fumbled Sentences

Tom Johnson — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:27:37 +0000

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, can be problematic. Eddie VanArsdall commented that using this method often results in a lot of mistakes. He says,

I always scripted my narration and sometimes improvised parts of it, but I could never record it in real time. The pressure of recording and multi-tasking seemed to guarantee that I would make mistakes.

Eddie is right. Unscripted narration can result in a lot of mistakes. Even if you’re 100 percent comfortable with the app, even if you have rehearsed exactly what you’ll say, even if you’re fresh and alert and full of energy, if you’re human, you’ll make mistakes — especially when you read a script or outline and narrate and record at the same time.

Making numerous mistakes can be frustrating. And the more frustrated and tense you are, the more mistakes you’ll make. But before you smash your microphone on the floor or burst a blood vessel in your forehead, consider this comparison: when you write a help topic or article, do you write it perfect the first time? From the first word to the last, do you type out the entire concept and task details flawlessly? Of course not.

So why should we expect to do the same in speech? Speech is perhaps a trickier, more nuanced medium, since changing the tone of one word can bend the meaning in multiple ways. In addition to unintended inflections, when you string together words in real time, you’re bound to have poor constructions, fumbled words, and other errors.

You can re-record the sentences that you fumble. And as you re-record the sentences, you can splice them into your original recording, similar to the way you delete some sentences and add other words in written text. The danger here is ending up with a hodgepodge of different sounds. To avoid the hodgepodge effect, consider the following tips for fixing fumbled sentences.

Record in 1024x768px Resolution

Set your monitor’s resolution to 1024x768px and record the full screen. If you do this, the screen recording will be the same each time. If you need to re-record part of the screen, your recording will match the previous screen’s position exactly — each time.

In contrast, if you just position a capture screen at 1024x768px on a higher resolution monitor, such as 1600x1200px (my monitor’s resolution), then you have to guess about where you’re positioning the capture rectangle on the screen. If you need to rerecord an area, you may not reposition the capture screen in exactly the right spot. But if you change the actual resolution of your monitor and always record at full screen, you can splice in multiple recordings in a seamless way. Trust me on this one — it works.

Wait, you say your users can’t view screen dimensions that big? Okay, if you need to use 800×600, be my guest. But you’ll have to implement so many pan and zoom effects to move around the capture window, it will be maddening to produce the video.

Use Dual Monitors as You’re Recording

Use dual monitors when you set up to record. Put the application and capture window on the monitor with the low resolution (1024x768px). The monitor with the high resolution should have your script. I also set the high resolution monitor as my primary monitor. All my pop-ups from email and other apps appear on the high resolution monitor.

Having the ability to look at a script on my right monitor while recording the application on my left monitor reduces the number of mistakes I make. If you’re trying to read a script written on paper, you’ll struggle trying to figure out where to prop the paper up. If you have to look down and then up to your monitor, and then down and up, recording at the same time as you narrate won’t really work.

Also, you may want to make last minute changes to your script, and if you’re stuck with paper, you’ll have to reprint it each time. The dual monitor provides greater ease for fine tuning your script moments before you record.

Keep the Microphone the Same Distance Each Time

Maintaining a consistent distance between your mouth and the microphone is critical for achieving a consistent sound. If you have the mic at varying distances when you record, it will be difficult to reproduce the sentences that you fumbled and splice them in seamlessly. You’ll find that some recordings sound a little louder, others have more depth, others are softer, and so on. Be consistent with your mic distance and you avoid these problems.

Write Out a Script or Outline Beforehand

Although I recommend against completely reading a script from start to finish, if you write out a script, it will help prepare you for the “unscripted” delivery. Knowing what you’re going to say is key to an articulate delivery. Even if you don’t look at your script at all, having written it will put the words in your mind, ready to be recalled at the right time. When I give presentations at conferences, I write out my scripts via blog posts beforehand. I can talk for more than an hour without a carefully detailed list of bullet points to look at. It’s the same concept with recording screencasts.

Hit the Pause and Resume Key Often

Almost every recording software has a pause and resume key. In Camtasia, it’s F9. I often deliver a paragraph or concept, pause, and then rehearse the next part of the script before resuming. Pause and resume works well as a way to reduce mistakes, because you’re not trying to remember a five minute script in one go. You piece together little parts to make a whole.

Fix Errors Immediately After the Recording

As soon as you finish recording, go back and listen to it. Where you make mistakes, re-record those sentences right then, while your tone and mood are still the same. If you wait until another day, chances are it will be harder to reproduce the exact sound. Your voice’s sound is a combination of a lot of variables — how you feel, what time of day it is, what you ate, what room you’re in, the alignment of the stars, and so on. By fixing the fumbled sentences immediately, you increase the likelihood of a seamless patch.

Match the Tone of the Fumbled Sentence By Repeating the Previous Sentences

Before you re-record the fumbled sentence, listen to the previous few sentences. Repeat them several times to get in key with the tone and rhythm. When you record the fumbled sentence, chances are your recording will sound much more seamless.

Repeat Entire Sentences Rather Than Fragments

If you make a mistake while recording, restart the entire sentence from the beginning rather than just the word or phrase you made an error with. If you re-record mid-sentence, you’ll find that some words are blended together in inseparable ways. For example, if you fumbled the sentence “I want more ice cream,” saying instead “I want more axe cream,” don’t just stop your self and re-say “ice cream.” Do you see how the word “more” blends right into the word “ice”? You can’t delete a word from your recording very easily when the words aren’t separate entities. But sentences usually have breaks between them, so they’re much more editable. Also, shifts in tone within the same sentences are more noticeable than shifts in tone between entire sentences.

Try Not to Narrate While Dragging the Mouse

It’s easy to fix fumbled sentences and recordings when you don’t have any mouse movement that takes place while you’re speaking. While it’s not always feasible to leave the mouse stationary as you narrate, you might try to avoid speaking while dragging the mouse around where possible. Fixing those type of recordings can be more difficult, because you can’t chop a second off the timeline without having the mouse jump an inch.

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PowerPoint from Screencasting Webinar

Tom Johnson — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 08:00:33 +0000

If you’re interested in the PowerPoint for my screencasting webinar, here it is below.

Powerpoint for Screencasting webinar (click the image to download the file)

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 you’re speaking, you lose some of their attention.

I promise to record a podcast this week covering some of the same screencasting content, so stay tuned for this.

By the way, the more presentations I give, the more I find that Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint really is true.

Also, someone asked for examples of screencasts I’ve done. Most of the screencasts I do are for work and are behind the firewall, unfortunately. But here are several of my screencasts (the first three in the list below) as well as screencasts from other sites.

I’m also finishing a bunch of screencasts for a public-facing project at work this week, so I’ll post those when they’re ready.

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What I’m Presenting on at the Dallas Summit

Tom Johnson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:28:28 +0000

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.

2010 STC Summit in Dallas, Texas

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 audio component of a video tutorial can be challenging. Both the audio processing and personal delivery pose challenges for tech writers, whose strength may be the written word rather than audio. Often the voice component of these video tutorials is outsourced to “voice talent.” But what do professionals with voice talent know that regular tech writers don’t? By imagining a situation, adding inflection, learning to breathe and pause, and integrating other voiceover techniques, you can develop a personable, friendly voice that engages users. You can also give your voice a deeper, richer sound by using the right microphone in the right acoustic environment and applying several post-processing techniques.

People who attend the session will learn the following:

How to choose the right microphone, set up a makeshift sound booth, record and post-process sound.
How to deliver audio for a tutorial in a way that users find personable, friendly, and engaging.
How to avoid pitfalls in audio that drag a video tutorial down, such as speaking monotonously, falling into a predictable rhythm, or popping P’s.

I’m actually working on about 25 Joomla screencasts at work right now. (Joomla is an amazing CMS, by the way.) Last month I created a guide for web administrators across the globe to build country websites, basically a simple version of LDS.org in their language. About a month after creating the guide, the PM said to me, hey, we’re wondering if you could do some videos too.

Why the videos? Wasn’t the guide enough? No, because that’s not how the majority of people learn software. A software application is a visual experience — the buttons, the layout, colors, movement, the functionality. It makes sense that a visual learning mode (e.g., screencasts) would be the most helpful in learning a visual interface. I know that when I’m looking to learn a new program from scratch (not just looking up a specific information for an application I already know), video tutorials appeal to me. When I see, I understand. And videos are exploding all over the web — because videos appeal to others as well. We are visual learners, for the most part.

There’s a lot to learn about screencasting. You could be a full-fledged sound engineer, videographer, voiceover artist, and interactive multimedia producer before you feel completely comfortable. Screencasts combine all of these elements into one experience.

For the Dallas presentation, I’ve narrowed the scope considerably to focus only on voice. Even a dull screen can come alive with an engaging, warm, interesting voice.

If you have any tips, tricks, resources, or other insight in developing a personal voice in audio, let me know.

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Embedding Videos into Madcap Flare

Tom Johnson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:44:32 +0000

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 put the video in a drop-down hotspot.

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Why Is It Important for Video Tutorials to Be User-Led?

Tom Johnson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:34:41 +0000

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 and tremor. (Thanks to some friends, one park was free.) After we completed our four day theme park immersion (Seaworld x 2, Disneyworld, and Busch Gardens), we took life a little more slowly and went to the Fort DeSoto beach.

While my kids were digging in sand and collecting seashells, I dared to ask whether they would rather spend a day at the beach or a day at Disneyworld.

Their answer? Unanimously, they said the beach. I even asked them multiple times on different occasions. Always the same answer: the beach, Dad. We would rather go to the beach and collect seashells.

The interesting question is why. Why do kids prefer the beach to Disneyworld? I think the answer is wrapped up in the phrase “child-led.”

What child-led means

My sister is a proponent of child-led parenting. I was first introduced to the idea when we went on a walk along a trail near Timpanogos Cave in Utah. Rather than pull her kids along or push them in a stroller, my sister preferred to follow her children, allowing them to explore what they wanted and go at their own pace. Given that she has a one and three year old, we moved at about .01 miles per hour.

She later added that child-led parenting doesn’t mean you let your children do whatever they want without rules. Instead, her model of child-led parenting is to allow the children to make decisions and determine their course of action by themselves (to some extent).

Some examples of non-child-led activities might be letting your children watch TV or parading them around rides at a theme park. In both cases, the child is floored by the external stimuli, not making decisions on his or her own but rather sitting back and letting someone else drive the input and thought.

In contrast, on the beach, the activity is much more child-led. The child drives the activity all the way, deciding where to dig in the sand, how deep, whether to build a castle or not. The child decides whether to wade deep or shallow in the water, to run from waves or into waves, whether to dance around or stand still. The child decides what seashells to collect, how many to put in his or her bucket, how to arrange them, which ones to keep, and so on.

In child-led activities, the child makes a ton of decisions about how he or she wants to do an activity. The activity doesn’t drive the child. The child’s choices drive the activity.

If child-led activities are more engaging to children than other types of activities, is there such a thing as user-led documentation? Most written documentation is more or less user-led, because the user must decide which topic to read, how long to read it, and how to navigate the content.

But when it comes to video tutorials, long narrations quickly tire the audience. Why is that? The same reason my kids prefer the beach over Disneyworld: most videos are not user-led.

Should cinema be the focus?

I recently read a good post by Brooks Andrus on combining cinematography with video tutorials. He mentioned incorporating a variety of cinematic techniques to keep the audience’s attention. Brooks writes,

How can we make screencasts more engaging? What can we learn from the masters of visual literacy, cinematographers, about pacing, depth, emotion and visual narrative? These sorts of questions are important to explore if we want people to engage with, learn from and, dare I say, enjoy our screencasts. That’s the mindset I think we need to establish for screencasting. We’re not just recording the screen, we’re telling a story and there is a well established historical record of the art and science behind motion picture narratives.

I agree with Brooks on the importance of story. And I certainly welcome the integration of cinema with screencasting. But no matter how good you make the video — even if you make the video as cool as a Disneyworld ride — your viewer is still going to be bored if the video is not user-led.

The direction we should take with video, then, is not so much moving into the domain of cinema. It should be to make the videos a user-led experience.

Some concrete ideas

Exactly how does one make a user-led video? Here are a few ideas that come to mind.

Present the user with learning options in the middle of the video (branching).
Provide users with a let-me-try experience at the end of the video.
Keep the videos short (30 seconds to 2 minutes) so that you allow the user to click and watch the segment of the video he or she wants.
Require the user to perform some actions during the video or at the end (like homework).
Make the videos into more of a choose-your-own adventure.
Provide periodic quizzes during the video.

User-led is a concept that I’m going to be thinking more about in the upcoming months as I create videos for my documentation projects. If you have any tips or thoughts on creating more of a user-led experience, please let me know.

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Two New Tools I’m Learning

Tom Johnson — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:10:21 +0000

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 how necessary images and diagrams are in giving the guides appeal. A good image makes or breaks the quick reference guide. If your image is pixilated or fuzzy, it lowers the value of your deliverable.

With vector images that you create through Illustrator, you don’t have to worry so much about size, because vectors scale without losing quality. You can also insert them as linked images in InDesign without having to export them to another format (such as JPG, PNG, or GIF). As linked images, you can continue to tweak and adjust the originals by dragging points. The images are versatile and can be easily updated based on different needs.

The main reason I’m learning Illustrator is simply that illustrations are powerful in technical instructions — it’s one of the most helpful skills you can develop. People may not read help, but they certainly stare at the visual images in help content. If you can master a tool that allows you to create sharp looking images demonstrating conceptual topics, your content will be engaging and visually attractive.

Why Flash

Video tutorials are also an important learning tool for understanding software. It amazes me how many technical communicators simply omit video. When I want to learn software, I prefer video tutorials over written instruction, so it’s natural that I see video as an essential deliverable. In fact, even outside of software, videos are helpful. When I recarpeted my daughter’s bedroom, I knew I needed a kicker to stretch the carpet, but I had no idea how to use it. A few Bob Vila videos clarified everything.

While Camtasia Studio is great for recording the screen, video tutorials that consist only of screen recording will tire readers. Often video tutorials have some conceptual information to relay to readers. This conceptual information is best illustrated through diagrams and other visuals — which you can create in Illustrator or other graphics tools (see my colleague’s post about this strategy). But Camtasia can only handle these images as static images — which is why I want to learn Flash, so I can create some animation and then pull the animated images into the Camtasia Studio timeline.

I don’t want to create anything super dynamic, just a bit of motion. As I’ve written about previously, I love the Michael Pick videos on WordPress.tv. Flash is the tool that will help me give my video tutorials a bit more life and movement.

The way I see it, both Illustrator and Flash can work powerfully together. I know I could spend a lifetime learning either of these tools, but hopefully little by little I’ll master what I need.

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How Google Does Help

Tom Johnson — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 04:22:13 +0000

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 and includes a host of features, including voice mail, recording, conference calling, and other services.

To help users get started, Google Voice has a list of 20 short videos. Only the overview video contains animation. It’s certainly the video they’ve put the most work into, and it also functions as marketing collateral.

The other videos are fairly simple, with short looping background music, professional voice talent, and a read script. The defining quality is that each video is short, some as short as 25 seconds.

The videos aren’t integrated with the text help. So if you don’t feel like watching videos, you can’t easily read the same topic. Google Voice does have help text, but it’s on another page, only linked to from the videos with a tiny, hardly noticeable help link in the footer. It’s almost like one group produced text, another produced help, and they published them independently.

The video windows are small, under 500×500 pixels. The small video window allow you to easily move from one video to the next without losing your place in the site. If you click outside of the window, the window doesn’t automatically minimize, which is nice. You have to close the pop-up window to go back to the list of videos.

All the videos are pulled in from Youtube, so they’re shareable. After one video ends, you see a list of related videos, but the related videos aren’t other Google Voice videos. Instead they are other Google services. So the related videos somewhat fail if you’re trying to learn more about Google Voice.

You can’t comment on the videos, or upload your own, or do anything other than watch them. Unlike the Michael Pick videos on WordPress.tv, Google’s videos are somewhat boring. Except for the overview video, which contains an animated stick figure, they lack a sense of being cool. They feel a bit corporate.

Similar to the length of the videos, the help content is also short and to the point, but the help topics are too text-heavy, with almost no illustrations, diagrams, or screenshots. The pages are embedded on the web, and navigating the topics is somewhat tedious. A search field appears at the top of the help, but if you search for the word “videos,” nothing appears.

Glaringly absent is any printable manual. You can print a single page, but not a group of pages in a PDF manual format. Additionally, Google does not provide any kind of quick reference guide to get started.

You can’t comment below the help topics, but there is a forum. The forum allows you to be notified by email and see the most popular discussions. You can also read a Google Voice blog, but the blog, like the help and the videos, isn’t well integrated with the rest of the help materials. It somewhat lives on its own. Google’s blog also takes the backward position of disallowing comments and only allows linkbacks to the posts.

One interesting characteristic of Google Voice help is a lack of parallelism in the topics. Here’s a list of video topics:

Call screening – Announce and screen callers
Listen in – Listen before taking a call
Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay
SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS
Place calls – Call US numbers for free
Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones
Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls
Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

The help topic titles are similarly unparallel. Usually help contains all verbs or nouns in a more parallel list.

My Analysis

Google puts a lot of effort in the overview video. That’s a smart move. When people want to learn about Google Voice, the overview video communicates the service in a catchy way, with more of Google’s branding. This video is probably watched thousands of times (a lot more than any other video), so it makes sense to go to the effort of including animation.

What I don’t like about Google’s help is the lack of integration between the video and help content. Not every topic deserves a video. Many times I’d rather read the help. And sometimes I’d rather watch a video. Separating the two formats so strongly is a poor usability move. The forum and blog also need to be more closely integrated with the other help materials.

Additionally, the lack of any printed manual makes me think Google has no single sourcing strategy. The help content is probably just written as regular text on each page. I would have appreciated the opportunity to print a quick reference guide or short manual, only because reading on the web is a nonlinear experience, and moving from one topic to another without any logical sequence can be tiring.

I also think Google chose the wrong voice for its videos. Google is playful, young, and irreverent. But the voice they chose is professional, corporate, scripted, and somewhat ordinary.

I’ve been thinking a lot about voice in videos. Professional voice talent is not necessarily engaging. It sounds professional, but a professional voice isn’t always what users want, even if it’s what they expect. Users want a voice that is friendly, engaging, conversational, and real. I wouldn’t even mind it to be a bit spontaneous.

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Official Google Blog: Google Voice invites on their way

Tom Johnson — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:06:16 +0000

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?