Advise on Creating Screen Capture Tutorials

[Mark Suszko]

Why don’t you just talk out loud casually while doing your demo, recordign it rough, then use that initial recording to help write the final, polished one, then just re-cut your audio into the demo? It seems to me way easier to narrate play-by-play of a finished demo than to perform it while doing the demo. Less spontaneous, sure. But like my wife says: “There’s a time and place for spontenaity“. I know a lot of COW experts DO narrate live as they go, then again they have been doing it a lot longer. And they are good enough to seamlessly hide the occasional audio edit where necessary.

[John Cuevas]

At our facility we have had to do some very techinical screen captures with approved scripts. We’ve found in that recording that audio, then playing it back and following along to that that audio works pretty good.

Often a section of audio will be quicker then the action, so we just stop the audio, then start again when we are caught up.

Finally audio and screen captures(usually more than 1) are all put into an editor and cut together. Now if you are just doing something for the Cow, I think you could be quite a bit less formal.

Anyway, it’s an alternative way of approaching the project.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor

[Luis O maymi]

Excellent suggestion Mark. Although, like you mentioned, is less spontaneous, but it could work on some tutorials. Also, this could really speed up the process of making tutorials, I will definitely try this one out. Thanks

The meaning of a movie are the characters, the life of the movie is the music, but the magic is in the editing.
http://www.xeneuxe.com/lomaymi

[Adam Taylor]

Screenflow by Telestream is an excellent piece of software for recording these tutorials, on a mac.

I have recorded a few using it, and whilst i did script beforehand, i just used that as a rough guide, and ad libbing most of the time. I would re-do each section until i was happy then move to the next. I prefer a more natural flow to the delivery, so this worked for me. It depends on your subject matter how you present your own recording.

Screenflow has a built-in editor so you can do all your editing within the same application, and it also lets you alter alsorts of parameters, such as the size of your cursor, zoom into specific areas of the recording, etc. And these can all be altered after the screen recording!

good luck

Adam Taylor
Video Editor/Audio Mixer/ Compositor/Motion GFX/Barista
Character Options Ltd
Oldham, UK

http://www.sculptedbliss.co.uk
My YouTube Animations Page

[Stephen Smith]

When I do a tutorial such as this Kinetic Typography tutorial I write the script and record the VO before I do a screen capture. I listen to the audio on my iTouch and pause it when I need to. I find this to work the best. I can’t stand tutorials when someone screws up or wastes time because they are winging it. I want to try iShowU HD Pro. If you do try it let me know.

Stephen Smith
Utah Video Productions

Check out my Motion Training DVD

Check out my Motion Tutorials

[Rich Rubasch]

Screenflow….

Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com

[Luis O maymi]

Thanks for all the advise, I finally finish my first After Effects video tutorial. I invite you to see it here https://xeneuxe.com/lomaymi/after-effects-tutorial-paypal-animation/
I made a lot of mistakes (A LOT) while recording the tutorial. Since I did it in both English and Spanish, it was twice the amount of work and twice the mistakes :-). I just record live what came to my mind following some key points in a script and practice a lot before recording. The English version was a little more difficult because is not my native language and sometimes I had to stop to think what word to say (translating in “real time”). I used Screenium and fix all the mistakes in Premiere Pro (thank God for the magic of editing). Once again, thanks for all the help, I will sure make more exciting tutorials later on.

The meaning of a movie are the characters, the life of the movie is the music, but the magic is in the editing.
http://www.xeneuxe.com/lomaymi

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Luis –

You may want to take a look at Camtasia for the Mac. Although recently released for the Mac platform (I think it’s on its’ second version now), it is a very powerful and intuitive package.

I produce training videos for a client’s use on the web and on handheld devices, and my workflow has changed over the first five or so projects.

Initially, I would read along with the script, and roughly time my screen movements with the mouse to hit the rough read of the script. Then after a couple of rehearsals, I would record it with Camtasia, which gives you the ability to track mouse movements, and then automatically add zooms to the critical screen real estate. I would then have to do a lot of dissolves and edits to time it exactly to the VO in Premiere Pro – a lot of work, and once in a while I would have to go back and recapture in Camtasia to get it exact.

Over time, I have found that it’s WAY better to produce the final, approved script in the recording studio, convert the .wav file to .mp3, then play it back on the computer which contains the client software and Camtasia. It takes several rehearsal to get the timing right, but when I bring it into Premiere Pro for the final edit, to add graphics, music, and titles, there is no editing necessary for the screen capture segment – it matches the VO perfectly.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com