Archive for September 20th, 2010
And that’s a wrap……
As you know we were tasked with creating two short Crystal Reports how-to videos. I was not apprehensive about my topics, it was the fact that I had to record and edit my own video that had me worried. I had never used any video editing software; in fact the only thing that comes close is screen capturing with Snag It.
The week got off to a bad start as I was confused about which were my two how-to selections. Now you wouldn’t think that was hard since I picked the topics myself, but somehow I managed to mess that up. It was Tuesday evening by the time I realized I had been working on the wrong topics. So there I was two days in to a five day event with nothing to show for it.
With Mountain Dew in hand I started with the default settings in Snag It to capture the video and began my test run. I told myself that my test run would just be to see what the video capture looked like. I started recording me moving the pointer around the screen, opening menus, pretending to select something. Well that was enough recorded video, now to see what it looked like.
Lesson one, the default settings include audio. Now realize it is 1 AM Wednesday morning, I am a little stressed and a little tired and I’m alone. As I start to watch the video I realize that the microphone is on and is really good. It can pick up the sound of me moving the mouse. Soon I hear myself clear my throat and then take a drink of Mountain Dew. Next is the sound of me burping. Not a polite in the restaurant kind of burp, but the one reserved for teenagers in a burping competition. After all I’m alone who was going to hear it? Duh!
Next is me cursing myself because I opened the wrong menu item, then I admonish myself for doing so. That’s when Ivan my dog came over to see if he can help. So with a voice one would use to speak to a new born I say “Who’s a good boy, who’s a good boy? Daddy loves you but I have to get back to work.”
Lesson two, have a script ready. There is nothing more wasteful then recording without a script. I know what I am doing but it is completely different when you are recording your every move. So after a number of not so good recordings I decided to make a script and tape it next to the monitor. This way I could create a polished video that needed a limited amount of editing. I also realize that Snag It won’t give me the video quality I need so I end up using Jing.
Lesson three, halfway through the contest is not the time to choose and learn your video editing tool. I had several video editing software programs already installed. I know that seems like a lot but they were bundled with applications to support devices like my camera or scanner. I had never used them so I opened the first one I found, of course it had to install an update which in turn made me reboot. After the reboot I opened the application again and watched a quick how-to video. Wow they make it look so easy, I feel so silly for worrying about the editing process. Wrong, I had plenty to worry about.
Lesson four, don’t fix what isn’t broke. My laptop and I were very happy prior to this week. All applications were compatible, no one complained about out of date drivers, everything was supported, everything was harmonious. That is until the first video editing software update and that is when the dance began.
The dance I speak of is launch, update, reboot, launch, error, Google, patch, reboot, launch. I did this dance part of Wednesday morning and most of Thursday evening in between video editing/learning. I should place more emphasis on the learning. The software I finally ending up using for editing was Camtasia. It was fairly straight forward and had some very easy drag and drop features along with intuitive right click menu options.
Lesson five, yes you do sound like that! My first video is now edited but needs the narrative. So how hard can that be? It’s just five minutes of me talking about what I am doing on screen. My first of several failed attempts was to create the narrative in one take. An hour in to making a 4 minute narrative I realize that I am going to have to make this narrative in pieces and splice it together. I will just have to learn how to splice voice recordings on top of everything I had to learn.
So here we are, Friday evening and the two videos are due by midnight. I have one video with no narrative and I haven’t started the second. The final touch on the first video was adding ABBA’s Dancing Queen to the intro. I wanted to tie in the whole Reportapalooza theme to the videos I was making. If you don’t recognize the second song for the beginner video it is ABBA’s Should I Laugh or Cry.
The reason I chose that song was that it was Saturday morning, I had been up since Friday morning and was at the point where I was asking myself should I laugh or cry when the second video had a problem I could not fix.
All in all it was a good week in which I proved to myself that I am not too old to learn something new and that being alone doesn’t mean you are alone in this electronic age. My new webcam that came with the microphone was on during this entire week without my knowledge so who knows if or where I was streaming live video?