The Process on Creating The InTitle Search Engine Tutorial

It came to me that I was trying to build Mt. Rushmore when I had only climbed a steep hill. This is not a good approach. Not for me anyway. I'm tabling the Fuze videos until I've feel more grounded in creating solid tutorial videos.

I took a step back. I thought about what I liked and did not like in tutorial videos. I also thought about what is the shortest amount of time can I communicate a concept?

What did I want to see? Could I do it with what I have on my system? How much structure do I need? This is what I came up with that seems to work.

Creation Tools

• Blue Snowflake USB Microphone
• Drawing/3.5 cards
• Help pages from Ask.com, Bing and Google
• Memento Express (Photo animation program no longer being produced or distributed)
• Serif Movie PlusX3
• SUPER(c)Video Converter
• TechSmith Snag-It
• TechSmith Camtasia 6.0

Process

One of the things I learned from my nine hour catastrophe is that I do not need to record in one sitting. I also learned this from hanging out at the Screencasting Handbook group on Google.

So I thought in terms of recording in segments. That took a lot of pressure off and gave me the ability to control just what I needed to focus on at the time.

I used Snag-It for static shots of each search engine to use in the title. I used Camtasia 6.0 for the recording. Smooth, slick and loved the fact that I could pause the recording, move the area to a new location and then resume.

I recorded in the native Camtasia format because I wanted to use the Smart Focus feature. Still having problems with that but I was able to use the pan and zoom to get in closure to the Search box area. Once I got the hang of it that worked really well for the Bing and Google segments.

I did a rough edit in Camtasia and then exported out so that I could work in my normal video editor Serif MoviePlusX3 I can do L cuts, change volume, pan and zoom and it is a good program affordable program that does not get the respect that it should.

I exported it out as an .wmv and used SUPER(c) to convert it to an .mp4. SUPER(c) is a free video conversion program and it can convert almost any file format. It has it quirks but so do I. We have reached an operational truce.

I wanted the video in 640x480 format which in many programs will not let you do because they are customized to fit the iTunes/iPod format. I didn't want to do that just yet and some video web host will transcode for you anyway.

Only thing left to do was review, upload and post.

The Errors Along the Way

Oh, yes. it is not perfect. My goodness yes, I made mistakes. It is the little things that just kick you straight in the rump such as:

• I may have reduced my Plosives but my Sibilant sss are rising to the challenge. Looking for old pantyhose and a loop.
• Making sure the mouse pointer is out of the way each and every time is a new point of focus for me.
• I had to cut parts of the video out when I kept saying inline instead of intitle. Not the same thing.
• Had to do the whole thing over when I discovered that I misspelled title in the final reminder card.

Inspite of having said what went wrong I have to say I feel better about doing this. I'm going to make a few more that I'm donating to the PCC Library Technology blog. I can't do things in a vacuum.

The good news is that I'll get better. Once I learn the structure and can control the work flow then I'll have a better sense of the rules or concepts I'd like to see changed. I would like it not to be so dry. I want to incorporate the things I learned from the Presentation community.

This is the long way up the mountain side. Be prepared and take your time.