Making Tutorial Video – From Beginner to Expert

Once you go onto the Internet, it’s easy to find thousands of how-to tutorial videos about software presentations and Website demos. And making tutorial video by screencasting has become one of the most popular ways for training and presentation. If you are looking for the tips of how to create a professinal-looking and impressive tutorial demo, here we share some basic but must-have hints that every beginner should master, and there is a step-by-step guide helping you to be a screencast expert.

Don’t neglect the things that you should know before starting to make tutorial video. I’ve recieve many friends’ emails asking about how to avoid from duplicate work on their demos many a time. It’s clear and import to realise a well-done preparation can help you a lot as well as save tons of time. Read these points and have a self check, especially if you are the first time to do screencasting.

Do a comprehensive preparation

Once I get an idea, I spend about 10 minutes to think over. Should I explain the solution step by step or directly show people the answer at once? Should I recommend the best way in my opinion or leave several choices for people to choose? How long the video will take and what component it consists of? By doing those pre-work, you can keep a clear head while recording since you’ve already known what to do next. No sticking with unexpected circumstances or putting things in reverse order any more. If necessary, prepare a script and write your idea down.

The importance of audio

In many cases, explain with narration brings more incredible effectives than describe with full text. Though you can add plenty of callouts and text boxs, people always get tired with reading lines of text on the screen. Prepare a good microphone for your desktop recording. It won’t cost too many but can save a lot of time typing text. Furthermore, people can get more information and tips by listening to compared with reading substitle.

Practice

I often run through my script two or three times in advance. I will pick up those important parts out and double check if they are clearly described in detail. By rehearsing the script, you can find some points that can be optimized and improved, which help to make your tutorial video smooth and clear.

When you get familar with your script, prepare to record screencast. First thing is to clean up your table, put the script in front of you, close all unnecessary programs that might bother you while recording. Now open the program and record.

Simplify the whole process

Begin your video with a simple self introduction and outline description of your tutorial. Then here many people want to explain everything appears on the screen as comprehensive as they can, sometimes they even add many topics which do little relationship to the video. Make sure you are telling the right thing to the point within the shortest time. For example, use a 1-2-3 step guide so people can easily catch up what you are talking about.

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Emphasize the key point

In some cases, you have to spend more time on the key part and have people’s attention. Generally speaking, try to put more objects into your tutorial to emphasize the key point. The highlight square frame, the sparkle cursor, the zoom-in, the illustration note and vivid animation clip. You can even remind people with your charming voice. Remember, no matter what things you do, make your audiences concentrate on the most important part of your tutorial video, if only for a minute.

Make full use of pause

This part is mainly for these time-consuming operation like you have to demostrate copying a huge file from drive C to D, installing a program which might cost 3 minutes or repeating some duplicate work. You can press pause button and resume recording when they’re done. Many screen recorder offer the pause features so you don’t have to trim your video later.

Keep your mouse stay

It seems to be a tiny thing but can make a fatal mistake to your tutorial video. Many people like to move the mouse back and forth while talking, or pause frequently to say something irrelevant. Not only does this behavior bothers your audiences but also distract their attentions to the tutorial. The best way is to keep your hand off the mouse and use it only when you’re going to move to the next step.

The advanced editing

If you use screen recorder with editing features like DemoCreator or others. It’s a great idea that you can do some intensive studies on your tutorial video. As I mention above, the excessive plain text can make your audience fall sleep, but you can try to add some callouts, arrows or animations to draw people’s attention. Besides, the zoom and highlight are two useful screencasting feature for making tutorial video.

Video and audio sync

I recommend to record these two seperately if you are not sure about final result. First you record the video (with no voice over), save the video. Then add narration when you playback it. Import the the audio track into the video and you’ve done. You can also import music as back ground music in your training demo.

Compression file size

Video in Flash (SWF) file is the smallest output, but it requires a web hosting place which is compatible with Flash so people can watch it in browser. For people share their videos on streaming video site like YouTube, save your video as AVI or MP4. I’ve tried many compressed codec and found Microsoft Video Codec 1 fits my needs for the most of time.

Leave your real personal info

As for the author, you might lose one potential audience who can spread your tutorial videos in his social circle with his family and friends, and you might miss a chance to score a massive smash with your video. Don’t be stingy to tell people who you are, leave your contact information at the end of video and let people find you, praise you, make you well-known if possible.

Make a sequel for your course

People like to watch more if they find there’re still libraries of things you can share with them. Publishing desktop videos in a queue is a good way to keep people stay around. The contents of video series can be coherent, continually updated. If you like to make one set of videos which are not closely related to each other, it’s OK but remember to keep all of them under the same category.

I just list what I’m using as recommendation. If you have a better idea or program, let me know.

Microphone: Currently, I use Logitech USB desktop microphone. It’s easy to use portably and you don’t have to add an analog mic interface to your computer. Perhaps you need one which has a headphone. That’s a great idea and costs you less than .

Screen recorder: I’ve used many and here are many choices. By making a balance between function and cost, now I use DemoCreator. If you don’t want to spend much try Camstudio.

Video editing software: For basic editing, I use the built-in editor of DemoCreator. And if you use Camstudio then there is Windows Movie Maker. If your bugdet isn’t tight, go for some professional tools like Sony Vegas.

Audio editing software: In this part I don’t have much idea, and there is an open source program Audacity.

Above are my tips of creating professional lokking tutorial videos. People would prefer to watch desktop recording videos which are helpful, interesting and full of creativities. I hope you enjoy it and consider exactly how to improve your demo creation skill and turn to be an expert in this field.

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