Do it yourself: how to make a video at home
Recently, we needed to make a few videos for our products. The videos were planned to be rather short and, which is typical, there should have been about 20 of them in all. In fact, each of them was supposed to be a “screencast” of working with our products with comments in one way or another.
The first and most logical thought was to turn to professionals (for example, to these comrades). They, indeed, do everything according to the highest standard, but, obviously, a pack of quite logical obstacles has arisen. First, before the shooting itself, we had to work out the script in detail so that it could be reproduced by a person who has no idea about the specifics of our products (we are developing components for .NET, including under such a rare beast as Windows 8 ). Secondly, it was necessary for us to write in advance a full “script” with an indication of all the replicas and the exact time when they are pronounced. Thirdly, it was extremely problematic to reproduce our very specific infrastructure (one Windows 8 with a touch interface and Visual Studio 12 can plunge anyone into panic). And, of course, not the last problem was a very impressive price roller. Of course, the amount was quite justified and logical, but our budget allocated for the video could draw a maximum of one or two videos per month.
Therefore, we decided to abandon the expensive and cool videos in favor of hand-made. Initially, we tried to approach the problem "head on." Above the result of this approach, you can laugh, for example, here (especially delivers the end of the video). However, I can not say that these videos - frankly bad experience. They did their black business in Google indexing quite successfully.
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When trying to create a good, suitable (and, which is typical - cheap) video, we ran into several problems. We will talk about them and their decision further.
The first problem was the English text. Of course, we all know the language, and we have specialists on our staff who have completed InYaz and continuously practice written and spoken language. But the accent remains the accent anyway. Moreover, unfortunately none of us are a professional speaker. We also tried to order voice acting for native speakers from our American office. It turned out, of course, much better than ours, but still it does not reach the level of professional speakers. We tried to make videos without any voiceovers or comments, but unfortunately, it was not clear what was going on.
An option that, oddly enough, arranged for us - to order the voice acting on a wonderful resource . We found a good announcer who, at an extremely reasonable price, voiced a 10-minute video (see the quality of voice acting here ).
The third way out came to my head completely unexpectedly and it seems that he has every chance of becoming the solution to most problems. The main point was to eliminate the need for video dubbing. How to do this is obvious: write text. But how to make the text read, and he did not distract from viewing?
If you think this problem was solved much earlier than we were in the era of ... silent films. Moreover, they solved it very simply - a pianist at the piano and a large, full screen, text with comments on what is happening, dialogues, etc. We tried, and we seemed to be doing quite well. An example of the video can be viewed at the end of the post.
The second problem we solved was a jerking mouse, unnecessary movements, errors, operator misprints, etc. Obviously, recording video without errors (without using scripted animation) is quite difficult, and re-recording takes takes a lot of time. Therefore, obviously, we need post-processing and editing of the captured video, which would allow us to get rid of errors and chaotic mouse movement while recording as much as possible.
For video processing (as well as for its recording) we used the Camtasia package. This is a great package for recording and processing screencasts, which, perhaps, has become the de facto standard in this area. I will not advertise it here. I will confine myself only to what I say - it performs all the functions necessary for normal installation.
So, what problems can occur when recording a screencast, and how I struggle with them:
Throwing the cursor on the screen - I cut out a piece of video on which the mouse “ran away” in the wrong direction until it returned to the correct trajectory. With the accelerated viewing (and we immediately after the recording accelerate the video one and a half times), moving the mouse around the screen with a “sharp jump” is almost imperceptible. In addition, in the last video I began to drive the mouse very slowly and thoughtfully, which allows me to think over its trajectory in advance. After that, I accelerate the fragment 3-5 times, which makes the speed of movement of the mouse quite normal.
Hanging the cursor at one point is the most frequent video artifact. The operator may think about something, it can distract, etc. At this time, the mouse freezes at one point, and for a few seconds nothing happens on the screen. It is treated by simply cutting this fragment. The main thing is to leave a little time at the moment when the mouse came to the point and at the moment when the mouse left it. 5-6 hundredths of a second on each side is enough.
A typo - if there is a typo when typing (and I notice it right away), I simply erase a piece of text that I just typed, returning to the original state, and then I type the text again. When editing a video, the entire piece is deleted with an error, and the remaining parts are glued together. Since we have erased all the erroneous text, the gluing is almost seamless.
Skype contact is online - one of the most unpleasant mistakes. Usually, you notice this window only during installation. Of course, the ideal solution is to turn off Skype, but you don’t always remember about it. Usually I just blur this out in the final video. He, of course, is visible, but it is no longer so distracting.
It is quite possible to shoot How-to videos "at home". With enough training and good tools, it turns out the video is quite tolerable quality. Now the whole process of video production from pressing the “record” button to posting a video on Youtube takes me about 6-7 hours. Thus, it is possible to produce a couple of clips per week. Some of these:
Do you make a video about your products?
The first and most logical thought was to turn to professionals (for example, to these comrades). They, indeed, do everything according to the highest standard, but, obviously, a pack of quite logical obstacles has arisen. First, before the shooting itself, we had to work out the script in detail so that it could be reproduced by a person who has no idea about the specifics of our products (we are developing components for .NET, including under such a rare beast as Windows 8 ). Secondly, it was necessary for us to write in advance a full “script” with an indication of all the replicas and the exact time when they are pronounced. Thirdly, it was extremely problematic to reproduce our very specific infrastructure (one Windows 8 with a touch interface and Visual Studio 12 can plunge anyone into panic). And, of course, not the last problem was a very impressive price roller. Of course, the amount was quite justified and logical, but our budget allocated for the video could draw a maximum of one or two videos per month.
Therefore, we decided to abandon the expensive and cool videos in favor of hand-made. Initially, we tried to approach the problem "head on." Above the result of this approach, you can laugh, for example, here (especially delivers the end of the video). However, I can not say that these videos - frankly bad experience. They did their black business in Google indexing quite successfully.
')
When trying to create a good, suitable (and, which is typical - cheap) video, we ran into several problems. We will talk about them and their decision further.
Translation difficulties
The first problem was the English text. Of course, we all know the language, and we have specialists on our staff who have completed InYaz and continuously practice written and spoken language. But the accent remains the accent anyway. Moreover, unfortunately none of us are a professional speaker. We also tried to order voice acting for native speakers from our American office. It turned out, of course, much better than ours, but still it does not reach the level of professional speakers. We tried to make videos without any voiceovers or comments, but unfortunately, it was not clear what was going on.
An option that, oddly enough, arranged for us - to order the voice acting on a wonderful resource . We found a good announcer who, at an extremely reasonable price, voiced a 10-minute video (see the quality of voice acting here ).
The third way out came to my head completely unexpectedly and it seems that he has every chance of becoming the solution to most problems. The main point was to eliminate the need for video dubbing. How to do this is obvious: write text. But how to make the text read, and he did not distract from viewing?
If you think this problem was solved much earlier than we were in the era of ... silent films. Moreover, they solved it very simply - a pianist at the piano and a large, full screen, text with comments on what is happening, dialogues, etc. We tried, and we seemed to be doing quite well. An example of the video can be viewed at the end of the post.
Twitching mouse and other operator errors
The second problem we solved was a jerking mouse, unnecessary movements, errors, operator misprints, etc. Obviously, recording video without errors (without using scripted animation) is quite difficult, and re-recording takes takes a lot of time. Therefore, obviously, we need post-processing and editing of the captured video, which would allow us to get rid of errors and chaotic mouse movement while recording as much as possible.
For video processing (as well as for its recording) we used the Camtasia package. This is a great package for recording and processing screencasts, which, perhaps, has become the de facto standard in this area. I will not advertise it here. I will confine myself only to what I say - it performs all the functions necessary for normal installation.
So, what problems can occur when recording a screencast, and how I struggle with them:
Throwing the cursor on the screen - I cut out a piece of video on which the mouse “ran away” in the wrong direction until it returned to the correct trajectory. With the accelerated viewing (and we immediately after the recording accelerate the video one and a half times), moving the mouse around the screen with a “sharp jump” is almost imperceptible. In addition, in the last video I began to drive the mouse very slowly and thoughtfully, which allows me to think over its trajectory in advance. After that, I accelerate the fragment 3-5 times, which makes the speed of movement of the mouse quite normal.
Hanging the cursor at one point is the most frequent video artifact. The operator may think about something, it can distract, etc. At this time, the mouse freezes at one point, and for a few seconds nothing happens on the screen. It is treated by simply cutting this fragment. The main thing is to leave a little time at the moment when the mouse came to the point and at the moment when the mouse left it. 5-6 hundredths of a second on each side is enough.
A typo - if there is a typo when typing (and I notice it right away), I simply erase a piece of text that I just typed, returning to the original state, and then I type the text again. When editing a video, the entire piece is deleted with an error, and the remaining parts are glued together. Since we have erased all the erroneous text, the gluing is almost seamless.
Skype contact is online - one of the most unpleasant mistakes. Usually, you notice this window only during installation. Of course, the ideal solution is to turn off Skype, but you don’t always remember about it. Usually I just blur this out in the final video. He, of course, is visible, but it is no longer so distracting.
findings
It is quite possible to shoot How-to videos "at home". With enough training and good tools, it turns out the video is quite tolerable quality. Now the whole process of video production from pressing the “record” button to posting a video on Youtube takes me about 6-7 hours. Thus, it is possible to produce a couple of clips per week. Some of these:
Do you make a video about your products?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/159815/
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