How to make a blog entry video walkthrough

How to use the Activity feature on Knowledge Trails

I’ve finally gotten this tutorial recorded to my liking, and uploaded onto blip.tv. It took a while but I’m glad that it’s finally done.

Now to do the rest of the tutorials. I really hope I can all of them done properly by 3pm. Eeek!

Blip.tv

It turns out I need to host the screen cast videos on a video sharing site such similar to Youtube or Vimeo. After my discussion with Adrian, we’ve decided to use blip.tv to host the videos. I’ve just recently set up an account on the site and will soon upload the iShowU HD videos there so it can be shared.

I showed Adrian my 9 minute video that I made yesterday and it turns out even though it cant be used on the site, it was still useful because I got really good feedback from it.

So before tomorrow I’ll need to break the 9 minute video into shorter but more detailed parts (minus the individual scenario based walkthrough).

When I’m finally done with all my videos, I’ll upload them on this blog.

Video walkthrough on how to use the tools on Knowledge Trails

I’m quite relieved that I’ve gotten this particular walkthrough done because it was a long one. It took me a few attempts and it’s my first successful walkthrough using iShowU HD. I am a bit annoyed that I’m not able to post the actual clip on this blog as well as on knowledge trails. I couldnt put it up on Alternative Collaboration because it doesnt accept .mov files and I think the file is still too big to be posted on Knowledge Trails.

I dont think compressing it any further is a good idea because I already recorded the video in quite a low resolution. I’ll run this mini dilemma by Adrian tomorrow when I go in to uni to get my ethics application form signed by the Head of Dept (I’m quite happy that I’m about to put that baby to bed). =D

Anyways, I know I was meant to make one more video walkthrough from the standpoint of one of the personas interacting with the system but I feel that after making this video walkthrough it may not be necessary because I think that this walkthrough was conducted in a scenario based manner. Well, we’ll see how the discussion with Adrian goes tomorrow. I’ll make another walkthrough if it’s necessary. =)

anyways, here’s the video walkthrough that I’ve just made.

ISUHD6

Screen Cast 2

The video walk through on how to edit your profile page is now up on Knowledge Trails. =)

Screen cast number 1

This screen cast took three attempts before getting to this stage. I figured that it would be better to have many short screen casts as opposed to having a few really long ones. That way it targets specific problems users may have.

Here is the first one

Video Walk Through of how to personalise your dashboard

Using Jing!

I realised that creating a screen cast isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. It is simple in the sense that all you have to do is click on the links in a progression that you’d normally use when going through a website. The difficult thing to do is to time your words and try as hard as you can not to stutter.

Under normal circumstances, I’d just take the screen cast of what to do first and do a voice over later on. Unfortunately when using Jing! it’s not possible because you can only do one take and you get your finished product. Since it is a free screen casting software, I am not able to edit my final product, unless I choose to invest in Camtasia Studio (which would be a good investment if I were to use it more than for just this project).

I have started creating video walk throughs, unfortunately it’s taking me a lot longer than I initially thought it would because I keep messing up and stuttering. I really do hope I’ll be able to get it done as soon as possible though, seeing as uni is set to start next week. eeek!

I shall try to put the video up on this blog as well as on Knowledge Trails when it is done.

It also turns out that because I’m using the free version, I’ll only be able to create .swf files as opposed to MPEG-4 files if I had Jing! Pro.

I’ve recently tried to upload one of the the trial screen casts onto knowledge trails as part of the Video Walk Throughs in a series of how-to tutorials for newbies to the site, unfortunately since the video files are about 15mb, I wont be able to host them on Knowledge Trails itself. The only other way that I can put the video files on the site is to host it on screencast.com and post the link on the Knowledge Trails site. But for this to happen, I’d have to create an account on screencast.com.