Making A Tutorial

[Pneumatic]

Hi there!

I am making a tutorial for a project I am working on. I want to be able to capture my moves on the screen as I click and select things AND narrate with a microphone as I do it. It will be a walk-through of the program just like this one:

http://www.stardock.com/video/wb4-demo.wmv

I have downloaded and installed Windows Media Encoder , but I can't make it smooth. When I record video of my desktop it's choppy and the curser jumps from one part of the screen to another. In addition the file size is HUGE. About 10 seconds is 3 Meg.

The one in the example above is smooth and 9 minutes takes up only 7 Meg.

So.... Any of you guru's know the trick to putting something like this together? What is the best tool to use?

Help me Obi Wan Kenobi . You're my only hope!

[Pneumatic]

Well I figured it out myself.

First attempt.

[az]

There are tools that record only the mouse pointer etc, they don't create real movies, thus make much smaller files with much better quality. If you're interested, I'll dig around a bit tonight and post about them

AZ

[Kooldino]

Originally posted by Pneumatic
Well I figured it out myself.

First attempt.

Cool! I didn't you you could do that w/ trill pro. Nice vid btw Very pro. How'd ya do it?

[agallag]

There's a component of Lotus SmartSuite called ScreenCam that does exactly what you want. Finding a copy of SmartSuite might be tricky though.

[Lucid]

CamStudio is worth a look too.

[Pneumatic]

I used a program called Camtasia to record the screenshot video and voice. Then I put it into Pinnacle's Studio 7 to add the music, fades, and text.

The file is still too big to use effectively for the site. When I lower the resolution on the wmv the words are muddy and you can't read them at all. I will check out some of the recommendations given here and keep playing with it.

If anyone else has an idea of how to get a file like this into a smaller box, I am all ears.

[Ribbit]

There's a program out there called ShowAndTell which records just the mouse pointer etc. But my understanding is the creation software costs about $300. Might be worth a look, just in case I'm wrong - I've used the files it creates, and it works really well.

[GNEP]

Originally posted by agallag
There's a component of Lotus SmartSuite called ScreenCam that does exactly what you want. Finding a copy of SmartSuite might be tricky though.

Damn! I was sure there was something that Lotus did that was exactly right for this sort of thing... couldn't remember exactly what it was called though so didn't post...

Possibly Kazaa?

[Pneumatic]

Here's a new one I am working on.

Still too big but I am working on that now.

[Paddy]

nice, but it gets a bit crapy at the end (Trillian preferences).