We just published a “how to” video describing the use and benefits of the Specialization and Skills features of the Professional Profile section of the Xuropa Community Platform.
It was a new tool to me and the process was very efficient with no real gottcha’s. So I thought I’d share the process.
1. The tool: Camtasia.
- Extremely intuitive to use. I only had to refer to the help menu twice to research particular functions, but everything else was straight forward.
- There are some more things that I could learn how to do, but I was off to the races almost immediately.
- Use a headset and microphone.
2. Duration: 3 minutes
- I got this pointer from Tom Kozas of Tuscany. They do some pretty slick video demonstrations and it’s always better to learn from others than discover mistakes “new-to-you”.
3. Process: Fast Iterations
- Know up front the particular feature you want to emphasize. Remember that you’ve only got 3 minutes, so you need to focus.
- Without writing a script, capture a “sketch” video with your voice over. Tom recommended writing a story-board and a script up front. But if you’re comfortable with the tool and are familiar with demonstrations, I found that this was a quicker way to get started and to iterate to something that works. Don’t worry about the “ums” and “ars”.
- Play back the recording to make sure you captured the right flow and appropriate pace. (And check you’re around 3 minutes.)
- Type up the transcript of what you said during the recording.
- Clean up and edit the transcript keeping the same flow and pace.
- Play the captured video and re-record the audio as you read off the edited transcript. Using a headset, keep the old audio playing at a very low volume so that it can give you an audio cue for when to start and stop speaking. This may take a bit of practice so as not to be distracted from what you’re saying.
- Clean up the transitions in the video stream using Camtasia.
- Play back and edit accordingly.
- Publish and you’re done.
I published the video to Youtube so that I can embed it into my blog. It’s also within the Visitor Center of the Xuropa Community for members to reference. It’s a little hard to say how long it took me as I was multi-tasking as well, so I would say about 2 hours all in all to create the video.
Here’s the result.
Posted under Features, industry, marketing
This post was written by James Colgan on November 25, 2008
